copyright


Thou shalt not steal O


Plans to let AI companies take creators’ work are unethical, unworkable and undermine the law, says Andrew Wiard Every picture I send out carries my


n one day in March, every newsstand displayed a range of front pages all with the same bold message


– Make It Fair. So, what was that about? The copyright and artificial intelligence consultation. And what was that all about? In a word, theft. Our government is proposing to demolish the essential basis of UK copyright law. They think, with no evidence whatsoever, this will give them an edge in luring artificial intelligence (AI) developers to our shores. According to Caroline Dinenage, who


chairs the culture, media and sport committee, the proposals would be “the largest copyright heist in the world’s history”. The consultation declares: “The lack of


clarity … means that leading AI developers do not train their models in the UK, and instead train in jurisdictions with clearer or more permissive rules.” This is simply not true. The AI tech


companies, who are thieving our work on an industrial scale, are not worried because the law is not clear. They are worried because it’s all too clear. We own it; they don’t. All spelt out beyond any doubt in the Copyright Designs and Patents Act. We own it because we create it. They must seek our permission to use it and, if granted, must pay for it. This consultation is not about clarity. It is a thoroughly disingenuous attempt to give these AI thieves a free pass and legal absolution for past and future sins by way of an exception to copyright law. This exception would permit text and


data mining for commercial exploitation of all we create unless we ‘opt out’, by somehow or other ‘reserving’ it. This is wrong not only in principle. As Baroness Beeban Kidron put it so succinctly in the Lords: “Should shopkeepers have to opt out of shoplifters?” It is also quite unworkable. Take photography. There are millions of photographs already online, all beyond any hope of retrospective ‘reservation’. On this ground alone, this idea should immediately be scrapped.


08 | theJournalist


prohibition on data mining, in machine- readable metadata, ‘reserving’ my rights. But so what? Metadata is not secure. It is routinely stripped out, together with any such opt-out ‘reservation’. There is no effective legal defence against this as, once this has been stripped out, innocent infringement is impossible to disprove. Besides, I have neither the time nor the money to spend my life playing copyright whack-a-mole. Today, I still have my rights. They are


clear. Why should I be dragged, in the name of clarity, into this legal morass? The entire creative world, from the


Creative Rights in AI Coalition to the TUC, who issued the AI for Creative Workers Manifesto, is up in arms. The government has three choices: • To force this through, with their


unbeatable parliamentary majority • Just drop it • Devise a madcap scheme to divide


and rule, by exempting certain sectors from the opt-out system, as reported in the Guardian. Somehow, I don’t think they have a photography sector in mind. All


“


The government is about to sacrifice our right to own what we create to propitiate the AI corporate thieves


creators are born equal, but some would have more rights than others. The Guardian reported that officials


are looking for ways to offer protection. One was allowing creative industries to opt in, while letting AI companies use mass media for free unless they opted out. So, what about freelances, we individual intellectual property creators? Clarity, anyone? This is a right mess. They have not thought this through.


It would be in clear breach of our international copyright obligations under the Convention of Berne. This exists to stop member states breaking the fundamentals of copyright law. Any such legislation risks judicial review. If the UK insists on going ahead, it


would undermine the £1.25 billion creative sector. Generative AI would replace creativity with aesthetic sterility and reliable reporting with fake news. Realistic fake pictures would threaten public trust in press photography. This is not like any other fight. The


government, chasing the mirage of growth, is about to sacrifice our right to own what we create ourselves to propitiate the AI corporate thieves. We now face two partners in crime. Silicon Valley steals our work. Our own government stealing our rights. I hope that’s clear.


ZUMA PRESS, INC. / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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