FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 31, 2023 

CONTACT: Ashley Woolheater, woolheater@openmarketsinstitute.org 

“Copyright is a critical part of structuring the market and will shape competition in ways that will ensure that sectors like journalism and the creative industries remain viable.”

WASHINGTON – The Open Markets Institute submitted a public comment to assist the U.S. Copyright Office with its goal of providing clarity to the public concerning the application of copyright law to generative artificial intelligence (GAI).  

In the comment, we lay out a simple list of policy proposals to ensure copyright law is applied in the public interest, as required by the U.S. Constitution, by accounting for the fundamental power disparities between journalists, artists, and other creators against Big Tech’s GAI applications. 

We stress that in the absence of clear guidance, granting copyright protection to GAI outputs will radically exacerbate the harms Big Tech monopolies have brought on our society and democracy. This includes the way in which Big Tech has decimated news publishers by capturing the advertising dollars they rely on.  

“Google and Meta grew into the tech behemoths they are today largely by starving news publishers of funds that would otherwise have been used to support journalism,” we wrote. “Enforcing copyright laws and requiring companies to meet their legal obligations — whether that is compensating rights holders or ensuring transparency of training data — are critical in order to protect human creativity and reward the labor that goes into it.” 

We address how the implementation of GAI is yet another means for Big Tech to extend their control over our information and communications channels and its continued efforts to undermine real journalism – and how to help prevent it.  

“Given [the ability of Big Tech] to rapidly integrate AI into the vast array of products and services they already own, GAI is already becoming yet another way for Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Meta to extend and entrench their already dominant market positions. This will make it difficult, if not impossible, for sectors like journalism or the creative industries to remain independent, much less to maintain a public interest orientation in the case of the news industry,” our comment reads.

Read the full comment here. 

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