There’s been this weird idea lately, even among people who used to recognize that copyright only empowers the largest gatekeepers, that in the AI world we have to magically flip the script on copyright and use it as a tool to get AI companies to pay for the material they train on. But, as we’ve explained repeatedly, this would be a huge mistake. Even if people are concerned about how AI works, copyright is not the right tool to use here, and the risk of it being used to destroy all sorts of important and useful tools is quite high (ignoring Elon Musk’s prediction that “Digital God” will obsolete all of this).
However, because so many people think that they’re supporting creators and “sticking it” to Big Tech in supporting these copyright lawsuits over AI, I thought it might be useful to play out how this would work in practice. And, spoiler alert, the end result would be a disaster for creators, and a huge benefit to big tech. It’s exactly what we should be fighting against.
And, we know this because we have decades of copyright law and the internet to observe. Copyright law, by its very nature as a monopoly right, has always served the interests of gatekeepers over artists. This is why the most aggressive enforcers of copyright are the very middlemen with long histories of screwing over the actual creatives: the record labels, the TV and movie studios, the book publishers, etc.
This is because the nature of copyright law is such that it is most powerful when a few large entities act as central repositories for the copyrights and can lord around their power and try to force other entities to pay up. This is how the music industry has worked for years, and you can see what’s happened. After years of fighting internet music, it finally devolved into a situation where there are a tiny number of online music services (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, etc.) who cut massive deals with the giant gatekeepers on the other side (the record labels, the performance rights orgs, the collection societies) while the actual creators get pennies.
This is why we’ve said that AI training will never fit neatly into a licensing regime. The almost certain outcome (because it’s what happens every other time a similar situation arises) is that there will be one (possibly two) giant entities who will be designated as the “collection society” with whom AI companies will have to negotiate or to just purchase a “training license” and that entity will then collect a ton of money, much of which will go towards “administration,” and actual artists will… get a tiny bit.
And, because of the nature of training data, which only needs to be collected once, it’s not likely that this will be a recurring payment, but a minuscule one-off for the right to train on the data.
But, given the enormity of the amount of content, and the structure of this kind of thing, the cost will be extremely high for the AI companies (a few pennies for every creator online can add up in aggregate), meaning that only the biggest of big tech will be able to afford it.
In other words, the end result of a win in this kind of litigation (or, if Congress decides to act to achieve something similar) would be the further locking-in of the biggest companies. Google, Meta, and OpenAI (with Microsoft’s money) can afford the license, and will toss off a tiny one-time payment to creators (while whatever collection society there is takes a big cut for administration).
And then all of the actually interesting smaller companies and open source models are screwed.
End result? More lock-in of the biggest of big tech in exchange for… a few pennies for creators?
That’s not a beneficial outcome. It’s a horrible outcome. It will not just limit innovation, but it will massively limit competition and provide an even bigger benefit to the biggest incumbents.
Source: If Creators Suing AI Companies Over Copyright Win, It Will Further Entrench Big Tech | Techdirt