I have been thinking about the current media coverage of AI and copyright. Here are my views as expressed in a letter to my MP.
15 Upper Village Road
Ascot SL5 7BA
(01344) 626387
Jack Rankin, MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
12 December 2024
Dear Mr Rankin,
The Data (Use and Access) Bill
I write as a constituent with some knowledge and experience of copyright and intellectual property (IP) rights in general. I worked for forty years as a publisher with Macmillan, Oxford University Press New York, and Thames & Hudson. I dealt with IP in books, music, art and digital media. I was involved in combatting book piracy in China, South Korea, the USA and Australia, and at Thames & Hudson online piracy.
The British publishing industry is second only to the USA in English-language publishing and operates on a global scale. It is economically and culturally much more significant than many realize and should be protected as a national asset by the UK government. I recall a meeting in the early 2000s with a Vice President from Microsoft who demonstrated a new technology that reproduced type very crisply and clearly on a screen, a forerunner of e-readers such as Kindle. The people from Microsoft showed us a timeline that predicted that print newspapers and printed books would cease to exist long before now. Books, to the contrary, have continued to increase in sales. In short, beware of technology lobbyists who predict the future: they predict a future that suits their interests.
The technology industry, particularly the big Silicon Valley companies are fiercely protective of their own IP, but experience has already taught us that they violate the copyrights of others without compunction. Google set the precedent more than two decades ago, digitizing books (in copyright as well as out of copyright) without permission to create an online library of digitized books, claiming fair use (in the USA; fair dealing in the UK, a slightly different legal concept). Google’s arguments were without any foundation, simply a specious justification of theft of IP which the company would not have tolerated if the theft has been of their IP. After legal arguments, a settlement was reached with publishers.
Now, the AI developers are stealing IP again, this time using without permission not only printed books, but all media that are protected by copyright. I read a newspaper article recently about the CEO of Meta in the UK who is lobbying to allow the use of copyright material unless copyright owners opt out. If I, as a publisher, wanted to use copyright material in a book I was legally obliged to apply for permission. I can think of books which included the IP of Apple and Microsoft – had I not applied for permission I am sure I would have been pursued by their legal departments. Why should the same not apply to them?
I urge you not to be deceived by the technology lobbyists and to vote to protect important UK industries that are of global importance.
Yours sincerely,
Ian Jacobs
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