The Electronic Frontier Foundation is participating in Copyright Week, a series of discussions focused on copyright policy and it’s impact on creativity and innovation. A central argument this week is that current copyright law isn’t protecting creators from large corporations – it’s empowering them.
Copyright owners frequently enough argue stronger laws are needed to combat tech giants. Though, these policies actually consolidate power among a few corporate gatekeepers, harming creators and limiting consumer choice. We need a system that lowers barriers to entry and fosters grassroots innovation.
Strengthening copyright won’t meaningfully help artists and creators. Giving them more rights, when they lack bargaining power against publishers and other gatekeepers, is like giving a bullied child money, only for the bully to take it.
History demonstrates this problem. From the late 2000s to the mid-2010s, music publishers and record labels secured multimillion-dollar direct licensing deals with streaming and video platforms. Google reportedly paid over $400 million to one label, and Spotify gave major labels an 18 percent stake in its now-$100 billion company. Yet, artists frequently don’t receive their fair share of these payments or benefit from equity arrangements. There’s no indication this would change with new copyright rules.
AI Training
As artificial intelligence develops, copyright might seem like a way to protect creators from tech companies profiting from their work. But it isn’t. Actually, it could have the opposite effect. Building large language models requires training on massive datasets. Requiring licenses for this training data would limit competition to only the largest corporations - those with existing data troves or the financial resources to acquire them.
