The UK Government Should Not Let Copyright Stifle AI Innovation
from the copyright-rent-seeking dept
As Walled Culture has often noted, the process of framing new copyright laws is tilted against the public in multiple ways. And on the rare occasions when a government makes some mild concession to anyone outside the copyright industry, the latter invariably rolls out its highly-effective lobbying machine to fight against such measures. It’s happening again in the world of AI. A post on the Knowledge Rights 21 site points to:
a U-turn by the British Government in February 2023, abandoning its prior commitment to introduce a broad copyright exception for text and data mining that would not have made an artificial distinction between non-commercial and commercial uses. Given that applied research so often bridges these two, treating them differently risks simply chilling innovative knowledge transfer and public institutions working with the private sector.
Unfortunately, and in the face of significant lobbying from the creative industries (something we see also in Washington, Tokyo and Brussels), the UK government moved away from clarifying language to support the development of AI in the UK.
In an attempt to undo some of the damage caused by the UK government’s retrograde move, a broad range of organizations, including Knowledge Rights 21, Creative Commons, and Wikimedia UK, have issued a public statement calling on the UK government to safeguard AI innovation as it draws up its new code of practice on copyright and AI. The statement points out that copyright is a serious threat to the development of AI in the UK, and that:
Whilst questions have arisen in the past which consider copyright implications in relation to new technologies, this is the first time that such debate risks entirely halting the development of a new technology.
The statement’s key point is as follows:
AI relies on analysing large amounts of data. Large-scale machine learning, in particular, must be trained on vast amounts of data in order to function correctly, safely and without bias. Safety is critical, as highlighted in the [recently agreed] Bletchley Declaration. In order to achieve the necessary scale, AI developers need to be able to use the data they have lawful access to, such as data that is made freely available to view on the open web or to which they already have access to by agreement.
Any restriction on the use of such data or disproportionate legal requirements will negatively impact on the development of AI, not only inhibiting the development of large-scale AI in the UK but exacerbating further pre-existing issues caused by unequal access to data.
The organizations behind the statement note that restrictions imposed by copyright would create barriers to entry and raise costs for new entrants. There would also be serious knock-on effects:
Text and data mining techniques are necessary to analyse large volumes of content, often using AI, to detect patterns and generate insights, without needing to manually read everything. Such analysis is regularly needed across all areas of our society and economy, from healthcare to marketing, climate research to finance.
The statement concludes by making a number of recommendations to the UK government in order to ensure that copyright does not stifle the development of AI in the UK. The key ones concern access to the data sets that are vital for training AI and carrying out text and data mining. The organizations ask that the UK’s Code of Practice:
Clarifies that access to broad and varied data sets that are publicly available online remain available for analysis, including text and data mining, without the need for licensing.
Recognises that even without an explicit commercial text and data mining exception, exceptions and limits on copyright law exist that would permit text and data mining for commercial purposes.
Those are pretty minimal demands, but we can be sure that the copyright industry will fight them tooth and nail. For the companies involved, keeping everything involving copyright under their tight control is far more important than nurturing an exciting new technology with potentially huge benefits for everyone.
Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon. Originally posted to Walled Culture.
Filed Under: ai, copyright, copyright exceptions, innovation, text and data mining, training, uk
Comments on “The UK Government Should Not Let Copyright Stifle AI Innovation”
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As much as Mike purports to disdain “but on a computer” patents, he sure is going hard on the plagiarism but a computer thing.
(And yeah, yeah I’ve heard all your snivelling little arguments before. None of which address the fact that AI as an industry relies on the nonconsentual, uncompensated use of people’s work. Get bent, robotfuckers.)
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So if it’s plagiarism, punish it as plagiarism, not copyright infringement.
Using the wrong law to go after an offense in the name of a cause, even if it is a cause you support, does you no favors. Especially when that wrong law is copyright law.
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I don’t think the AC you are replying to understand concepts like nuance, context and consistency.
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People who worship copyright rarely do. They’re the sort of folk to preach “forever minus a day” is a reasonable length for copyright, after all.
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Show me in the comment where it says that. Which of the four sentences says “copyright” or “forever plus a day”?
Re: Re: Re:3
Ah, the Bayside Advisory simp shows up again. I thought I smelled the stench of failure.
You once claimed that people in that article were demanding for the destruction of copyright. When that was proven to be a lie, your next move was to claim “Well, people have claimed on Techdirt to demand for the destruction of copyright, so the fact that it isn’t mentioned in THIS article or the comment section doesn’t count.”
If you don’t want your side to look bad, maybe Mary Bono should’ve chosen not to say shit like this:
It’s not my damn job to stand up for you because your team chose to be idiots.
Re: Re: Re:4
∞−1 = ∞
Did she really say that?
Re: Re: Re:5
That’s copyright-types for you, truly the most fucked up kind there is.
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As a robotfucker and someone who thinks that the current crop of procedural content generators are not as valuable as Techdirt thinks it is, I’m siding with Techdirt regarding the copyright issues with said content generators.
It is, at best, a contract issue and not a copyright issue. And even I’m not so sure about it being a contract issue.
But it’s not like a copyrigbt maximalist like you to care about creators, Jhon. You’re more than happy to abuse Amazon to be a sixteenth-rate data broker.
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The way that people here jump at shadows and think that any AC who espouses an opinion differing from the group norm is axtually some troll from years past is proof positive that this “community” is broken. Get a grip.
Hasbro fired a ton of people and is now lookong to hire low-wage workers to touch up AI art for their projects. The “text and data mining for commercial purposes” that Glyn and his pals think is so important, is so companies like Hasbro can make AI sludge that they then pay people in peanuts to fix up instead of hiring on real artists. That is the end result of this shit that Glyn and Mike are boosting.
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I’ll agree that the AC you replied to seems to have failed pattern recognition. Jhon Smith mostly bitches about defamation and Craigslist.
Because the real artists are apparently not paid peanuts?
Companies paying shit for work done is not a new phenomenon. If you thought companies outsourcing skill-based jobs to low-wage grunts wasn’t already happening, you’re kidding yourselves.
Re: Re: Re:2
I’ll definitely take that L. I have not been here long enough to know the old trolls by their posting styles and topics.
Re: Re: Re:3
I mean, on the other hand… fuck John Smith anyway.
Re: Re: Re:2
There’s a difference between peanuts and the crushed fragments at the bottom of the bag
Re: Re: Re:3
The difference is called inflation. If you thought that artist and designer salaries weren’t already shrinking before AI became a thing, you’re kidding yourself.
This isn’t to defend AI or the companies that use it to justify shitty practices. It’s to point out that your anger is on the companies shafting the artists, not the companies making a tool. And copyright law is certainly not going to help you out here.
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Companies have had shitty hiring/firing practices long before AI was a thing. So how is it suddenly the fault of AI itself that companies have shitty practices related to the technology?
While this site is more positive than negative about the technology, they routinely call companies out who use it maliciously.
Re: Re: Re:2
Yeah, why should we take this iron bar away from companies when they’ve been beating people with sticks for so long?
Re: Re: Re:3
You’re awfully naive if you think removing AI from the world would make any difference in how hard corporations fuck people over if they’re given the opportunity.
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“The way that people here jump at shadows and think that any AC who espouses an opinion differing from the group norm is axtually some troll from years past is proof positive that this “community” is broken.”
Yep .. when you think that one comment is representative of all others .. “get a grip”.
Re: Re: Re:2
The way that I’ve seen Techdirt leap at people claiming that they’re Blue, or Jhon, or whatever notorious troll over the years, and the way that y’all can’t stop feeding trolls where comments become 100+ post feeding frenzies, then yeah, I do think that comments like the one above are representative of a whole lotta others.
Re: Re: Re:3
You spent years reading a website intentionally knowing you get a shitty experience?
Guy, if you don’t like it here, nobody’s stopping you from leaving.
Re: Re: Re:4
Glad to see the 4chanification of techdirt continues apace.
Re: Re: Re:5
No, it’s xkcdification. As in that xkcd comic where someone is showing you the door.
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And there you are jumping on the target of the day when the reason is the falling sales of toys, analysis by someone who knows people at Hasbro.
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Mr Grip over there apparently likes problems served with the most convenient excuse de jour so he can bombastically tell everyone how wrong and shitty they are. I doubt your link will change his mind, because that requires just a tiny bit of reason and owning up to the fact he is wrong.
Re: Re: Re:3
If it helps counter false information, by informing others, it is worth posting.
Re: Re: Re:2
How does your link disprove the claim that Hasbro is firing artists and replacing them with reverse centaurs to save money?
Re: Re: Re:3
That wasn’t the claim. The claim was that Hasbro was firing artists in order to replace them with AI, when, in reality, they’re firing artists because business is bad.
And why do you automatically believe the guy who made the “Hasbro+AI” claim, anyway?
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Has always been a thing since the fucking Industrial Revolution. And we don’t seem to be able to fix it, at least not without using means society finds horrific.
So, how do you feel about factory farming and agribusiness? Monsanto (now part of Bayer) and their shitty business practices? Big Agriculture and their abuse of of farmers and undocumented immigrants? Coca-Cola and them draining all the water for what is essentially fizzy brown sludge? Are you gonna praise them and call them captains of industry for not only doing the same thing, but also making future generations worse off nutritionally?
After all, techbros are only following what works…
Re: Re: Re:2
Yeah, whatabout all these other things that are beyond the scope of this website and are so loudly criticised that even a blob of nonsentient toenail scraping like you has heard of them?
Re: Re: Re:3
Look, if you want to cry about random content generators putting out subpar generic bullshit content, I’m legit suprised you also aren’t calling out the same shitty practices taht have been going on since, I dunno, The Industrial Revolution.
Factory Farming is indeed making you eat garbage food. And the clothes you wear do wear out in a year or less.
It’s not whataboutism if I call you a hypocrite for not calling out the harms of factory farming and manufacturing while you pretend to cry about the poor creatives being harmed by random content generators.
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What are you talking about? Of course there could only be one person who would possibly disagree with His Philosophical Majesty King Mike and His Chosen Ones here at techdirt dot com!
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Given that last remark, I get the impression that you’re against the US’s concept of “fair use” as well. The whole point of fair use is to carve out certain circumstances in which people may use copyrighted material without seeking the copyright holder’s permission, such as for parody and criticism. Under fair use, the copyright holder’s consent is ignored, and the holder does not get compensated for it. Criticism and parody of copyrighted material would be prohibitively difficult without fair use.
It’s amazing how AI has turned so many people into bootlickers for the ultra-wealthy.
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You get that impression incorrectly. OpenAI is a billion dollar company in bed with Microsoft, a multibillion dollar company. Google and Apple are multibillion companies. Their AIs are not criticism or parody of the materials they’ve slurped up indiscriminately. Suggesting that what they’re doing is in some way fair use is bizarre.
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On a very technical level, LLMs are cutting-edge technology and do fall under the “research” part of fair use. And their output is also considered fair use, under “research”.
Just because Sam Altman is a Microsoft employee doesn’t make the research already done “not research”.
And for a LLM to actually make a plagarizing work, it has to be specifically instructed to do so, or be tricked into doing so. A very, very trivial task because LLMs are unable to modify their behaviors on the fly, though there’s been research into that area that seems promising.
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You have a very narrow understanding of fair use if you think it has to be criticism or parody to qualify.
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Neither is what Google Search, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Google Images, Google News, and Google Books do criticism or parody of the materials they scrape up, but they’re still considered fair use under US copyright law. Android’s use of the Java API isn’t criticism or parody, either, but it was also declared fair use by the Supreme Court.
Criticism and parody do not comprise the entirety of what is considered fair use under US law. They only form a part of it. There are many examples of fair use that do not involved parody or criticism.
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Where is the copying in learning from the works of others? Besides which the purpose of copyright is to control the making of copies, and the uses what legally obtained copies are put to, outside of creating copies.
The way you would limit the use of works would prevent artists getting involved in producing works that together form a genre of works. Indeed learning and copying how others did things is central to how things like music genres, artistic schools and fiction genres arise. It is also informs how court documents and research papers etc should be properly formatted.
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OH, I bet he’s also against education in general as well…
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Which is why he hates all the comments in response to his comments here, because he gets schooled so often!
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Not at all, in fact I think it would have been great if you’d had any.
Re: Re: Re:2
We really are back to the “I’m rubber you’re glue” arguments again, aren’t we, Mr. Bayside Advisory apologist?
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You say that as if people don’t get it in the neck for trying to pass off their copies of other people’s work as their own all the fucking time. Suggesting that giant corporations churning out sludge is the same as actual people practicing their art is demented.
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“And yeah, yeah I’ve heard all your snivelling little arguments before.”
I haven’t, but am interested, please list them for me and not just the ones that are snivelling.
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Please see the rest of the thread.
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You can’t distinguish between copyright, which is involved here, versus patents, which you evidently pulled out of your ass here.
Further, you conflate these two things with plagiarism.
You, sir, are a fucking moron.
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Mike was whinging about “but on a computer” like a week ago. And if adding a computer to an industrial process isn’t enough to distinguish it, why does adding a computer to the process of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own suddenly make it okay?
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Because you’re mischaracterizing what is actually happening and the scenarios aren’t actually comparable, but you’re using loose wording to pretend they’re the same. That you can’t see the difference isn’t an indication of a similarity, but rather an indication of a lack of comprehension on your part.
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Someone clearly has no idea how LLMs work.
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Don’t strawman. That’s not, and never has been, Mike’s argument.
Mike’s argument is that LLM’s learn the same way that people do: by taking in information and synthesizing it.
What people actually do with LLM’s is a different case altogether.
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It doesn’t. The point is that what LLMs and similar programs do isn’t that but, rather, learning to make art/getting inspiration from others’ works to create new ones, just like how humans do. The argument is quite the contrary from saying it’s different because a computer is involved.
If there’s plagiarism, it should be treated no differently from if the work was created by a human. Same for copyright infringement (which is entirely separate). (That said, it should be noted that the provider of the tool is not responsible for how it gets used.) However, the training of a LLM or something similar is not either of those things, just like training a human isn’t.