[teddyh]

Almost a year ago, I made¹ the following prediction:

It looks like to me that many companies want to use the new generative tools, and many others want it not to impact their stake in the copyright system. I’m pretty sure they will both come to a compromise which will leave most users without any benefits, either from reduced copyrights or from availability of generative tools. It’s what would make both powerful parties satisfied (if not happy), and will impact the status quo the least.

Say, for instance, that they instituted a mostly mandatory licensing scheme, so that an individual artist had no choice but to allow use of their art as input when creating generative tools. People using art in this way have to pay a rather high licensing fee, but it is not paid to the artist, but to some sort of central copyright office. Huge copyright holders can also pay an exorbitantly high fee (to the same recipient) to opt out of licensing. Win-win-win; Existing copyright holders keep their existing copyrights, only large-ish actors can create new generative tools, new political positions and institutions are created with lots of money flowing in. Of course, artists then get screwed by being co-opted by generative tools which they can never afford to create themselves, and the general public get robbed both of the opportunity of using and creating new generative tools, and of any less restrictive copyright law.

1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35191112>

[kolinko]

For music there are already similar mechanisms in place in many countries - in Poland it's ZAiKS, in US it's ASCAP. They collect fees from organisations playing copyrighted music publicly.

(I agree that it would be terrible if they began enforcing other copyrighted content and for training purposes, because it would lead to centralisation)

[PoignardAzur]

Sacem in France.

They're the worst, eg they will notoriously come after you if you play public domain music as well.

[et1337]

I hope you’re wrong, but I think you’re right.