Just saw this over on Blue Sky - thought it was worth sharing. Original post by @/ednewtonrex.bsky.social
Today, the UK government announced a proposal to change copyright law - for the benefit of AI companies - that would cause huge, irreversible harm to creators.
Here's what you can do (wherever you live):
1. Email your MP - if you're in the UK, here's a template you can use, and you can find your local MP to send it to here
2. If you're a creator, email your representatives. Your publisher, record label, union - whoever represents you. Here's a second template letter you can copy.
3. Respond to the consultation. You can do so by emailing [email protected]. If possible, write your own response, and go into all the detail you can. Feel free to use info / data Ed-Newton-Rex prepared here
4. Share these template letters with anyone you know. The more people get involved, the more the government will get the message that a broad copyright exception is the wrong path to be pursuing.
Ed Newton-Rex summarised some of the more problematic stuff included in the proposal, such as:
Broad new copyright exception for commercial generative AI training. AI companies will be able to train on British copyrighted work without a licence even if the AI model is designed to compete with the creators whose work is trained on. This would make the UK one of the most punitive jurisdictions for creators in the world.
Rights holders can 'reserve their rights', i.e. opt out. But opt-outs don't work (you can't successfully opt out downstream copies of your work), most creators miss the chance to opt-out, doing so is a huge admin burden, etc. AI companies should be getting opt-in consent - it's unfair to shift the burden to creators
AI companies must offer some level of transparency over their training data. This would be good if presented on its own, but it's much less helpful if you're packaging it up with a broad copyright exception that lets AI companies train on most of the UK's creative output with impunity.
The consultation on these proposals lasts for 10 weeks. Anyone who cares about this issue should do whatever they can to make their views known to government now - there will only be one chance.
(I did have a look to see if they'd posted over here, but I couldn't find anything on a search - so go share their original post on Blue Sky if you have an account over there!)
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