[Plura-list] Copyright won't solve creators' Generative AI problem

Cory Doctorow doctorow at craphound.com
Thu Feb 9 04:33:25 EST 2023 

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/

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This week (Feb 8-17), I'll be in Australia, touring my book *Chokepoint Capitalism* with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We're doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 13. Next are Melbourne (Feb 14), Sydney (Feb 15) and Canberra (Feb 16/17). More tickets just released for Sydney!

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

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Today's links

* Copyright won't solve creators' Generative AI problem: The machine-learning monkey's paw.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2003, 2013, 2018, 2021

* Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

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🐟 Copyright won't solve creators' Generative AI problem

The media spectacle of generative AI (in which AI companies' breathless claims of their software's sorcerous powers are endlessly repeated) has understandably alarmed many creative workers, a group that's already traumatized by extractive abuse by media and tech companies.

Even though the claims about "AI" are overblown and overhyped, creators are right to be alarmed. Their bosses would like nothing more than to fire them and replace them with pliable software. The "creative" industries talk a lot about how *audiences* should be paying for creative works, but the companies that bring creators' works to market treat their own payments to creators as a cost to be minimized.

Creative labor markets are primarily regulated through copyright: the exclusive rights that accrue to creators at the moment that their works are "fixated." Media and tech companies then bargain to buy or license those rights. The theory goes that the more expansive those rights are, the more they'll be worth to corporations, and the more they'll pay creators for them.

That's the theory. In practice, we've spent 40 years expanding copyright. We've made it last longer; expanded it to cover more works, hiked the statutory damages for infringements and made it easier to prove violations. This *has* made the entertainment industry larger and more profitable - but the share of those profits going to creators has *declined*, both in real terms and proportionately.

In other words, today creators have *more* copyright, the companies that buy creators' copyrights have *more* profits, but creators are *poorer* than they were 40 years ago. How can this be so?

As Rebecca Giblin and I explain in our book *Chokepoint Capitalism*, the sums creators get from media and tech companies aren't determined by how durable or far-reaching copyright is - rather, they're determined by the *structure of the creative market*.

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

The market is concentrated into monopolies. We have five big publishers, four big studios, three big labels, two big ad-tech companies, and one gargantuan ebook/audiobook company. The internet has been degraded into "five giant websites, each filled with screenshots from the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

Under these conditions, giving a creator more copyright is like giving a bullied schoolkid extra lunch money. It doesn't matter how much lunch money you give that kid - the bullies will take it all, and the kid will still go hungry (that's still true even if the bullies spend some of that stolen lunch money on a PR campaign urging us all to think of the hungry children and give them even more lunch money):

https://doctorow.medium.com/what-is-chokepoint-capitalism-b885c4cb2719

But creative workers have been conditioned - by big media and tech companies - to reflexively turn to copyright as the cure-all for every pathology, and, predictably, there are loud, insistent calls (and a growing list of high-profile lawsuits) arguing that training a machine-learning system is a copyright infringement.

This is a bad theory. First, it's bad as a matter of copyright law. Fundamentally, machine learning systems ingest a lot of works, analyze them, find statistical correlations between them, and then use those to make new works. It's a math-heavy version of what every creator does: analyze how the works they admire are made, so they can make their own new works.

If you go through the pages of an art-book analyzing the color schemes or ratios of noses to foreheads in paintings you like, you are not infringing copyright. We should not create a new right to decide who is allowed to think hard about your creative works and learn from them - such a right would make it impossible for the next generation of creators to (lawfully) learn their craft:

https://www.oblomovka.com/wp/2022/12/12/on-stable-diffusion/

(Sometimes, ML systems will plagiarize their own training data; that *could* be copyright infringement; but a) ML systems will doubtless get guardrails that block this plagiarism; and, b) even after that happens, creators will still worry about being displaced by ML systems trained on their works.)

We should learn from our recent history here. When sampling became a part of commercial hiphop music, some creators clamored for the right to control who could sample their work and to get paid when that happened. The musicians who sampled argued that inserting a few bars from a recording was akin to a jazz trumpeter who works a few bars of a popular song into a solo. They lost that argument, and today, anyone who wants to release a song commercially will be required - by radio stations, labels, and distributors - the clear that sample.

This change didn't make musicians better off. The Big Three labels - Sony, Warners, and Universal, who control 70% of the world's recorded music - now require musicians to sign away the rights to samples from their works. The labels also refuse to sell sampling licenses to musicians unless they are signed to one of the Big Three.

Thus, producing music with a sample requires that you take whatever terms the Big Three impose on you, including giving up the right to control sampling of your music. We gave the schoolkids more lunch money and the bullies took that, too.

https://locusmag.com/2020/03/cory-doctorow-a-lever-without-a-fulcrum-is-just-a-stick/

The monopolists who control the creative industries are already getting ahead of the curve on this one. Companies that hire voice actors are requiring those actors to sign away the (as yet nonexistant) right to train a machine-learning model with their voices:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d37za/voice-actors-sign-away-rights-to-artificial-intelligence

The National Association of Voice Actors is (quite rightly) advising its members not to sign contracts that make this outrageous demand, and they note that union actors are having success getting these clauses struck, even retroactively:

https://navavoices.org/synth-ai/

That's not surprising - labor unions have a *much* better track record of getting artists' paid than giving creators copyright and expecting them to bargain individually for the best deal they can get. But for non-union creators - the majority of us - getting this language struck is going to be a lot harder. Indeed, we already sign contracts full of absurd, unconscionable nonsense that our publishers, labels and studios refuse to negotiate:

https://doctorow.medium.com/reasonable-agreement-ea8600a89ed7

Some of the loudest calls for exclusive rights over ML training are coming not from workers, but from media and tech companies. We creative workers can't afford to let corporations create this right - and not just because they will use it against us. These corporations also have a track record of creating new exclusive rights that bite *them* in the ass.

For decades, media companies stretched copyright to cover works that were similar to existing works, trying to merge the idea of "inspired by" and "copied from," assuming that they would be the ones preventing others from making "similar" new works.

But they failed to anticipate the (utterly predictable) rise of copyright trolls, who launched a string of lawsuits arguing that popular songs copied tiny phrases (or just the "feel") of their clients' songs. Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke's got sued into radioactive rubble by Marvin Gaye's estate over their song "Blurred Lines" - which didn't copy any of Gaye's words or melodies, but rather, took its "feel":

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/robin-thicke-pharrell-lose-multi-million-dollar-blurred-lines-lawsuit-35975/

Today, every successful musician lives in dread of a multi-million-dollar lawsuit over incidental similarities to obscure tracks. Last spring, Ed Sheeran beat such a suit, but it was a hollow victory. As Sheeran said, with 60,000 new tracks being uploaded to Spotify *every day*, these similarities are inevitable:

https://twitter.com/edsheeran/status/1511631955238047751

The major labels are worried about this problem, too - but they are at a loss as to what to do about it. They are completely wedded to the idea that every part of music should be converted to property, so that they can expropriate it from creators and add it to their own bulging portfolios. Like a monkey trapped because it has reached through a hole into a hollow log to grab a banana that won't fit back through the hole, the labels can't bring themselves to let go.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/08/oh-why/#two-notes-and-running

That's the curse of the monkey's paw: the entertainment giants argued for everything to be converted to a tradeable exclusive right - and now the industry is being threatened by trolls and ML creeps who are bent on acquiring their own vast troves of pseudo-property.

There's a better way. As NAVA president Tim Friedlander told Motherboard's Joseph Cox, "NAVA is not anti-synthetic voices or anti-AI, we are pro voice actor. We want to ensure that voice actors are actively and equally involved in the evolution of our industry and don't lose their agency or ability to be compensated fairly for their work and talent."

This is as good a distillation of the true Luddite ethic as you could ask for. After all, the Luddites didn't oppose textile automation: rather, they wanted a stake in its rollout and a fair share of its dividends:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

Turning every part of the creative process into "IP" hasn't made creators better off. All that's it's accomplished is to make it harder to create without taking terms from a giant corporation, whose terms inevitably include forcing you to trade all your IP away to them. That's something that Spider Robinson prophesied in his Hugo-winning 1982 story, "Melancholy Elephants":

http://www.spiderrobinson.com/melancholyelephants.html


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🐟 Hey look at this

* AI psychosis https://blog.piekniewski.info/2023/02/07/ai-psychosis/

* White Collar Crime Risk Zones https://whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com/#9q8yyzf (h/t JWZ)

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🐟 This day in history

#20yrsago etoy vs. eToys: anarcho-Dadaist clash of the titans https://www.liketv.com/leaving/

#10yrsago PACER capers: the sordid story of America’s for-pay lawbooks https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/the-inside-story-of-aaron-swartzs-campaign-to-liberate-court-filings/

#10yrsago Beige politics: unbeatable bland politicos advocating “beige policies that nobody wants” https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/02/political-failure-modes-and-th.html

#10yrsago Publisher launches $3,000,000 suit against academic librarian who criticized its books https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/02/shocking-attack-on-academic-freedom-at-mcmaster-by-edwin-mellen-press.html

#10yrsago Hobbit producers to New Zealand: if you tell people how we got our sweet tax/labor deal, no one will want to make movies in your country https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/threats-fly-over-hobbit-document-release/NIBDE5KIIWFJ5GAJ62YJBZD574/?c_id=1&objectid=10864146

#5yrsago EFF tells the Copyright Office: we don’t know how to make voice assistants better, but here’s how not to make them worse https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/eff-vs-iot-drm-omg

#5yrsago Cable operator Fidelity Communications admits it that secretly created the fake-grassroots “Stop City-Funded Internet” campaign to kill Missouri municipal net https://www.theregister.com/2018/02/07/fidelity_astroturf_city_broadband/

#5yrsago Chinese transit cops deploy face-recognition glasses to spot indebted people, oppressed ethnic/religious minorities and criminals https://www.businessinsider.com/china-police-using-facial-recognition-glasses-2018-2

#5yrsago Tennessee sheriff who ordered deputies to kill driver of slow-moving car and gloated over his corpse faces excessive force lawsuit https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/06/tennessee-sheriff-caught-on-tape-killing-suspect-lawsuit

#5yrsago Your smart TV is trivial to hack and leaks your personal information like crazy unless you disable all its useful features https://www.consumerreports.org/televisions/samsung-roku-smart-tvs-vulnerable-to-hacking-consumer-reports-finds/

#5yrsago A pair of leaked powerpoints reveal the earliest-known evidence of the Republican gerrymandering plan that gave us Trump https://www.salon.com/2018/02/06/how-the-republicans-rigged-congress-and-poisoned-our-politics/

#5yrsago Leaked presentation from AI snake-oil salesmen to AAA game company promises horrific, dystopian manipulation of players to drain their wallets https://www.techpowerup.com/240655/leaked-ai-powered-game-revenue-model-paper-foretells-a-dystopian-nightmare

#1yrago UK Tories want a national database of porn-viewing habits https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#operation-red-meat

#1yrago Wall Street's landlord business is turning every rental into a slum https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

#1yrago Pixels of You: A illustrated tale of love and photos https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#young-doyler

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🐟 Colophon

Currently writing:

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. Yesterday's progress: 557 words (103847 words total)

* The Bezzle, a Martin Hench noir thriller novel about the prison-tech industry. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, WAITING FOR EDITORIAL REVIEW

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. ON SUBMISSION

* Moral Hazard, a short story for MIT Tech Review's 12 Tomorrows. FIRST DRAFT COMPLETE, ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION

* Spill, a Little Brother short story about pipeline protests. ON SUBMISSION

Currently reading: Analogia by George Dyson.

Latest podcast: Social Quitting https://craphound.com/news/2023/01/22/social-quitting/

Upcoming appearances:

* Chokepoint Capitalism: A Kiwi Perspective, Feb 13
https://chokepoint-capitalism-a-kiwi-perspective.lilregie.com/booking/attendees/new

* Future of Arts, Culture & Technology, ACMI, (Melbourne), Feb 14
https://www.acmi.net.au/whats-on/in-conversation-cory-doctorow-rebecca-giblin-esther-anatolitis/

* State Library of NSW (Sydney), Feb 15
https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/chokepoint-capitalism-rebecca-giblin-and-cory-doctorow

* ANU/Canberra Times Meet The Author (Canberra), Feb 16
https://www.anu.edu.au/events/in-conversation-with-rebecca-giblin-and-cory-doctorow

* Australian Digital Alliance Copyright Forum (Canberra), Feb 17
https://digital.org.au/2022/11/08/doctorow-giblin-first-speaker-announcement-ada-forum-2023/

* Antitrust, Regulation and the Political Economy (Brussels), Mar 2
https://www.brusselsconference.com/registration

Recent appearances:

* How popular movements can topple Big Tech monopolies (Transnational Institute)
https://www.tni.org/en/podcast/how-popular-movements-can-topple-big-tech-monopolies

* Chokepoint Capitalism: Can It Be Defeated? (UCL Institute of Brand and Innovation Law):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs0c7qE-Yyk

* A theory of how internet platforms die (Marketplace Tech)
https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-tech/a-theory-of-how-internet-platforms-die/

Latest books:

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59 (print edition: https://bookshop.org/books/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism/9781736205907) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books:

* Red Team Blues: "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books, April 2023

* The Internet Con: A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech, Verso, September 2023

* The Lost Cause: a post-Green New Deal eco-topian novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias, Tor Books, November 2023

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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