Hollywood Urges Trump To Not Let AI Companies 'Exploit' Copyrighted Works (variety.com) 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Variety: More than 400 Hollywood creative leaders signed an open letter to the Trump White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, urging the administration to not roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies. The filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians and others -- which included Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Erivo, Cate Blanchett, Cord Jefferson, Paul McCartney, Ron Howard and Taika Waititi -- were submitting comments for the Trump administration's U.S. AI Action Plan. The letter specifically was penned in response to recent submissions to the Office of Science and Technology Policy from OpenAI and Google, which asserted that U.S. copyright law allows (or should allow) allow AI companies to train their system on copyrighted works without obtaining permission from (or compensating) rights holders.
"We firmly believe that America's global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries," the letter says in part. The letter claims that "AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music and voices used to train AI models at the core of multibillion-dollar corporate valuations." [...] The letter says Google and OpenAI "are arguing for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America's creative and knowledge industries, despite their substantial revenues and available funds. There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish." You can read the full statement and list of signatories here.
The letter was issued in response to recent submissions from OpenAI (PDF) and Google (PDF) claiming that U.S. law allows, or should allow, AI companies to train their programs on copyrighted works under the fair use legal doctrine.
"We firmly believe that America's global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries," the letter says in part. The letter claims that "AI companies are asking to undermine this economic and cultural strength by weakening copyright protections for the films, television series, artworks, writing, music and voices used to train AI models at the core of multibillion-dollar corporate valuations." [...] The letter says Google and OpenAI "are arguing for a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America's creative and knowledge industries, despite their substantial revenues and available funds. There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America flourish." You can read the full statement and list of signatories here.
The letter was issued in response to recent submissions from OpenAI (PDF) and Google (PDF) claiming that U.S. law allows, or should allow, AI companies to train their programs on copyrighted works under the fair use legal doctrine.
Just ask who has more money (Score:4, Insightful)
And Trump will always side with whoever has more money because they're the ones with the biggest bribes. The only exception is Russia and I'm not entirely certain why. I mean I know the guy laundered money for the Russian mob non-stop for decades but you would think he wouldn't care about that being found out. Maybe the pee tape is real
Like Hollywood exploits everyone else? (Score:4, Insightful)
They also want to take but never give back: Disney strip mined the public domain and wants everyone to think Snow White and everything else was their idea.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
historic exploitations aside, aren't these the same exec studios that are facing union/guild strikes because they're wanting to roll talent into digital prints they can automate forever? with voices probably being most imminent
(though i imagine they're really just arguing over who gets how much)
so yeah, the industry has never given half a fuck about muh innovation or protecting creatives or whatever the theater is termed now, just legal tug-of-war and staying king of the IP hill
Begging Hitler for help? (Score:2)
These were the people who called Trump a Nazi just a few months ago.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And yes, it is also appropriate to compare Trump to Hitler. His administration is overtly acting like the Nazi Party did wen it ended democracy in Germany.
Your comment seems to imply that groveling to the government in order to avoid arbitrary punishment is the only way to protect ones interests. That is true in a dictatorship, not in a country with free speech. (See previous
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: Begging Hitler for help? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
You're really gonna get mad at him for attacking ISIS and the Houthis? So terrorism and openly attack neutral shipping and the US military hundreds of times is good now?
Propping up the oil industry.
On a different note, if we drop the copyright back to 7 years, renewable once for a grand total of 14, then sure.
Re: (Score:1)
1. Supporting Russian invasion of Ukraine.
2. Rolling back pollution laws -- which will kill a significant number of people.
3. Threatening to take over Gaza for his resort business.
4. Threatening to take over Panama for the canal.
5. Threatening to take over Greenland.
6. Talking about taking over Canada -- through use of tariffs as leverage.
7. Trying to take over the Gulf of Mexico.
He's well on his way...
Re: Begging Hitler for help? (Score:2)
Re: Begging Hitler for help? (Score:2)
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And yes, it is also appropriate to compare Trump to Hitler. His administration is overtly acting like the Nazi Party did wen it ended democracy in Germany.
History itself is worthless. It is too easy to misinterpret, cherry pick and recast events into preferable contexts in order to extract any justification or ideology anyone feels like extracting. The world would be far better off if everyone traded their history lessons for a psych textbook.
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These were the people who called Trump a Nazi just a few months ago.
Nazi? Noooo, Trump is more of a Fascist autocrat with strong monarchist tendencies.
It's no steal nor exploit if (Score:1)
they just pay once per movie.
I'm too allowed to train my brain with a movie and then build/draw/sing/program whatever i want with that knowledge. .. should not be too expensive for those ai companies to just rent out every book and every movie in existance just for the duration of reading the data once, not making a copy, but using it for 'training'. That's what copyright law is for, do we really need any change here?
Cat's Out Of The Bag (Score:2)
This is just a performative exercise, for an audience that arguably expects it. (even though it really has no purpose whatsoever, and will accomplish exactly nothing)
Copyright did good when it was all about physical goods and distribution. It started showing signs of being dysfunctional at the dawn of the digital age, and its lobby's staunch effort to not adapt to new r
Re: Cat's Out Of The Bag (Score:2)
Hollywood is urging the wrong person (Score:2)
If Hollywood wants to dramatically expand existing copyright regimes to exert control over who can learn or benefit from copyrighted works they should be asking congress to pass new laws. The president does not have the power to change the law.