Yet Again, the Copyright Industry Demands to be Shielded From Technological Progress
upstart writes:
Back in October last year, Walled Culture was one of the first blogs to point out the huge impact that generative AI would have not only on copyright but also on creativity itself. Since then, the world seems to have split into two camps. One believes that generative AI will revolutionise everything, and create some kind of golden age; and the other that thinks the whole thing is a complete sham and/or will destroy civilisation.
The new AI systems certainly have massive problems, not least in the sphere of privacy, as I have written about elsewhere. But the response by the copyright world to generative AI is increasingly extreme, rather as a Walled Culture post back in February warned it might be. The latest manifestation of that tendency is a "Call for Safeguards Around Generative AI in the European AI Act" from "over 40 associations and trade unions that joined the Authors' Rights Initiative". It is a typical anti-technology, anti-progress set of demands from the copyright industry. Its signatories "demand" regulation of generative AI, and they demand it "NOW" (sic).
The document throws in just about every recent criticism of generative AI, some of them undoubtedly quite justified. But those criticisms are largely beside the point, because the letter is really about one thing: copyright, and shielding it from the latest technological advances. [...]
[...] the new document has an entire section devoted to what it calls "The EU's misguided text-and-data mining exemption". Part of it tries to address the argument (made by this blog too) that "use of copyright protected material to train generative AI should be permissible because such training would be equivalent to the (lawful) use of works to get 'inspired'":
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