The Govt. has stepped back from its 'preferred option' of reforming copyright law to allow expanded (unrestricted) use of content after extensive opposition from the creative industries in the UK.
The next step may well be further consideration of other reforms, but we can also expect a lot of blackmail-like lobbying from AI firms claiming they will withdraw from the UK if their casual theft of content is halted... many might say: good riddance!
I expect the techbros will shift strategy and we'll see a weak law with zero enforcement.
@TCatInReality @ChrisMayLA6 Not really, our company does some ML training; we literally have a budget for licenses, and being the new guy, I wondered what we are spending so “much” (relatively) money on, considering that our tech stack is, cough, rather mostly open source. It's actually specialized training data sets.
But then we are in the EU, and in the EU the copyright laws changed a couple of years ago already. Without big fanfare.
I'm talking about the big AI players. The ones who have bought control over US policy - and significant influence in UK policy.
Of course, those techbros *could* pay for licenses. They can also lower their prices, pay their employees and stop destroying the planet - but that would cut their grotesque profits.
Data theft has been their business model since Day One
@TCatInReality @ChrisMayLA6 Despite how they whine, a certain level of regulation and payments actually favors the big players.
See also how the “payments for news headlines” schemes worked out for news organizations versus Google around the world.
True.
Cory Doctorow has written some great pieces about how the Australia model was a strategic disaster.
Same here. The monopolist power of the big techbros will *not* be reduced by more industries feeding on their crumbs.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
TC Won't Give In To Lies
Andreas K