The thing that should not surprise me is just how creative the creative industries are in articulating how horrified they are that the Government would undermine their viability – but surprised I am!
The Government’s proposal to allow an exemption for data mining to artificial intelligence companies sounds technical but when you consider that the data they are mining is the latest Ed Sheeran song, or the first novel of someone who worked double shifts to support themselves while writing, it brings to life the sheer audacity of the proposal of giving away other people’s property rights.
Today, whatever their political colour, the newspapers are all wrapped in blue demanding that as regards AI, the Government should Make it Fair.
The record industry and some of our greatest national treasures and recording artists have written to The Times to say Make it Fair, arguing that failing to protect copyright will scupper the possibility of a creative life for the next generation.
We have seen business leaders question why the Government has predicated this policy without an economic impact assessment, and some of the UK’s AI companies wondering why the Government is giving Silicon Valley free access to creative data, when they have paid for it.
But perhaps the biggest shout out goes to the hundreds of individuals who have written to me to thank me for my amendments to the Data Uses and (Access) Bill.
Amendments that would solve the Government’s stated problem of making copyright fit for the age of AI.
And now, a little slower to react, those companies and institutions who themselves rely on the UK’s incredibly successful, lucrative, and joyous industry, that drives tourism, brings inward investment, tells the national story are creaking into action.
For them, the watering down of copyright is an existential threat, and rather than wrapping themselves in blue or writing to the press, they are reaching for the law.
It will be interesting to watch the basis upon which a class action can be fought, or if the Government has acted fairly in putting forward a preferred option that will undermine their income, while taking advice from companies that will build products which are in direct competition with what they have stolen.
We have seen those with deep pockets in the US go to the court and watched as even last week a US federal judge found that ROSS intelligence infringed Thomson Reuters’ copyright, this judgment shows that it is far from inevitable that the US will have a far more permissive copyright framework than currently exists in UK copyright law, making the arguments of tech lobbyists and ministers that we must become more permissive in order to compete internationally entirely spurious.
This case is also important because the judge found that ROSS’s AI was designed to compete with the works they ingested and could make it more difficult for Thomson Reuters – the creator – to monetise their IP, a key concern of creators large and small start coming back saying that.
Reuters has deep pockets, but now the creative sector, press, music, films, drama, fiction, design and even fashion and academia have started to see their interests aligned, and in doing so, more than one sector has seen that they don’t have to fight one by one.
Over many months, the Secretary of State [Peter Kyle] has refused to meet with the creative sector, preferring the exclusive company of tech representatives and chief executives as shown by his official register of meetings.
The Government set up AI and creative industries as adversaries and picked a winner.
What should have been a collaboration between two sectors that if effectively and fairly managed could build Britain into a powerhouse, of both creativity and AI, has become a fight for survival for one party.
But the Government declared too soon. It forgot that the creative industries is well named, and the action that we have seen today, is the start not the finish, and that action may well be heading for the courts to Make it Fair.
Baroness Kidron is an advocate for children’s rights in the digital world and has played a role in establishing standards for online safety and privacy across the world