https://www.techdirt.com/2025/05/15/ai-is-making-many-people-rethink-copyright/
"For the last hundred years or so, the prevailing dogma has been that copyright
is an unalloyed good, and that more of it is better. Whether that was ever true
is one question, but it is certainly not the case since we entered the digital
era, for reasons explained at length in
Walled Culture the book (free digital
versions available). Despite that fact, recent attempts to halt the constant
expansion and strengthening of copyright have all foundered. Part of the
problem is that there has never been a constituency with enough political clout
to counter the huge power of the copyright industry and its lobbyists.
Until now. The latest iteration of artificial intelligence has captured the
attention of politicians around the world. It seems that the latter can’t do
enough to promote and support it, in the hope of deriving huge economic
benefits, both directly, in the form of local AI companies worth trillions, and
indirectly, through increased efficiency and improved services. That current
favoured status has given AI leaders permission to start saying the unsayable:
that copyright is an obstacle to progress, and should be reined in, or at least
muzzled, in order to allow AI to reach its full potential. For example, here is
what OpenAI’s proposals for the US
AI Action Plan, which is currently being
drawn up, say about copyright:
America’s robust, balanced intellectual property system has long been key to
our global leadership on innovation. We propose a copyright strategy that
would extend the system’s role into the Intelligence Age by protecting the
rights and interests of content creators while also protecting America’s AI
leadership and national security. The federal government can both secure
Americans’ freedom to learn from AI, and avoid forfeiting our AI lead to the
[People’s Republic of China] by preserving American AI models’ ability to
learn from copyrighted material.
In its own suggestions for the
AI Action Plan, Google spells out what this
means:
Balanced copyright rules, such as fair use and text-and-data mining
exceptions, have been critical to enabling AI systems to learn from prior
knowledge and publicly available data, unlocking scientific and social
advances. These exceptions allow for the use of copyrighted, publicly
available material for AI training without significantly impacting
rightsholders and avoid often highly unpredictable, imbalanced, and lengthy
negotiations with data holders during model development or scientific
experimentation. Balanced copyright laws that ensure access to publicly
available scientific papers, for example, are essential for accelerating AI
in science, particularly for applications that sift through scientific
literature for insights or new hypotheses."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
