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Hollywood Urges Trump To Not Let AI Companies 'Exploit' Copyrighted Works (variety.com) 85

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
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.

Hollywood Urges Trump To Not Let AI Companies 'Exploit' Copyrighted Works More | Reply

Hollywood Urges Trump To Not Let AI Companies 'Exploit' Copyrighted Works

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  • Like Hollywood exploits everyone else? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ihadafivedigituid ( 8391795 ) on Monday March 17, 2025 @11:47PM (#65241391)
    The unionized crafts and trade people seem to do OK (when there is work, which there isn't at the moment), but Hollywood is notorious for screwing everyone (like actresses, and not figuratively) they can and laughing all the way to the bank. It's a cliché for a reason.

    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:Like Hollywood exploits everyone else? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @12:31AM (#65241459)

      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

    • These are the industry's creatives signing this petition, not the people truly running things. Notice the names they list, I dont see the CEO of Disney anywhere on that list.

      • Maybe you should read the list. I see a bunch of PGA members, and DGA is also out in force.

        Rich & famous SAG/AFTRA members don't have much credibility here: they will defend the golden goose no matter what. It's like the small percentage of winners who defend the bloodsucking PROs (ASCAP/BMI/SESAC in the USA) in the music world--and I say this as a recording artist with label releases.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by skam240 ( 789197 )

          Maybe you should read the list. I see a bunch of PGA members, and DGA is also out in force.

          I also dont see a single corporate head listed here. Where's the CEO of Disney since you brought Disney up? Where are at least senior members of the company? How about MGM, Paramount, or Sony? No? That's because you're conflating creative types with the actions of the corporations they work for.

          Remember that Hollywood strike that was only two years ago? That was people just like the ones signing this petition (in most cases it included very specifically the people listed here) protesting against more AI inv

          • You don't think there is a conscious effort to manage the optics here? It's suckering you in so I guess it worked ...

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by skam240 ( 789197 )

              Or you have your head up your ass and dont want to admit it.

              • Pretending those fat cats are a bunch of penniless auteurs is a special kind of headassery.

                If they produced something more watchable, on average, I might have more sympathy.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by skam240 ( 789197 )

                  Pretending those fat cats are a bunch of penniless auteurs is a special kind of headassery.

                  Of course I'm not doing that all. One again you're conflating the people who run Hollywood with creatives.

                  The people on that list of signatories are not responsible for anything you laid at their feet. Most are just actors and even for those who sometimes work as producers they are only working for the people that are responsible for your complaints. These are not at all the people that control Hollywood.

  • It's no steal nor exploit if (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jkechel ( 1101181 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @01:42AM (#65241535)

    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?

    • hould 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'.

      If they want to use it to train future models, they're going to either have to rent it again, or buy it. The argument is in large part about their storage of training sets of copyrighted information they haven't paid for. By the exact same copyright laws that these same corporations lobbied for, they are guilty of thousands to millions of instances of criminal copyright infringement.

  • Cat's Out Of The Bag (Score:3, Interesting)

    by zuki ( 845560 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @02:00AM (#65241547) Journal
    Realistically, how is that going to stop anyone outside of the US to train their LLMs on the very same content they're clamoring about?

    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 realities started to create stress points. When AI's disruptive effects started to get noticed, it was already too late. I'm not saying I'm jumping up and down about it, but it's the new reality, and there's ain't a doggone thing any of these megacorps (copyright cartels) and their lawyers wielding IP laws as an adversarial tool are going to be able to do about it.

    The going was good while it lasted. Far from being overjoyed about it, thinking about our many friends in the creative professions who depend on this income for their livelihood. But I just don't see it going backwards. The sum total of published human knowledge, encapsulated and distilled, now available at our fingertips.

    Time to start leveraging these new tools, however primitive they are today, they will soon get much better. This is the nature of reality: it keeps shifting and evolving, most times out of our control.

  • Hollywood is urging the wrong person (Score:3)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday March 18, 2025 @02:17AM (#65241565)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The president does not have the power to change the law.

      No, but he seems to be able to "re-interpret" or ignore it whenever convenient, whether that's via whatever stack of executive orders the Heritage Foundation place in front of him that day, or through whatever incoherent rambling he spouts off to the sycophantic media he permitted to listen.

      And let's not pretend he doesn't hold the strings over the people who do have the power to change laws, who are either part of the cult or too afraid to question it.

  • No need to let Big AI steal from copyrighted material (mostly Big Hollywood).

    Big Hollywood (looking especially sideways at you, house of mouse), been stealing from Public Domain for years. Go to the source and skip the middleman.

    Of course stealing from Public Domain and stopping new works from entering Public Domain, but I digress.

    • Big Hollywood (looking especially sideways at you, house of mouse), been stealing from Public Domain for years.

      You cannot steal from the public domain, and not only because copyright infringement is by definition not theft. Anyone is free to tell the same stories that someone else is telling from the public domain, as long as they tell it differently (or more true to the source material, where the two are similar.)

  • Most of current video AI is coming from China. Trump is the wrong person to ask, he can at most stop companies like OpenAI which already struggle to keep up with the Chinese companies anyway.

  • I suspect, once anyone can train there own AI system using existing AI with a simple click,Google et al will rethink their position.

  • Presumably the people complaining are quite happy to use AI to answer questions based on scientific or factual information - without any payment to the researchers, explorers and thinkers who found the answers.

  • This collection of folks are appealing to which side of the President's nature?

    - The side that values making sure individuals are compensated
    - The side that believes in reining in massive companies
    - The side that has a strong sense of fairness

    I mean, clearly this will end well for them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      Which of the companies (Hollywood vs. AI giants) believe in:

      - Compensating individuals fairly
      - Reining companies
      - Fairness

      I think neither.

  • I am good with keeping AI copyrights out, but Hollywood should have to give 75 year/after death for copywrited items as well. 50 years is more than enough time is suckle on the tets of profit.
  • The entertainment industry is not essential to life or the security of the nation.

    Let the creative get back to creating things that are new and leave the stories already told to AI and public domain.

  • Western AIs may abide by copyright, Chinese AIs won't.

  • How good are the arguments for/against? And wouldn't it be sufficient for the AI trainers to subscribe to the big streaming services and let the models do the watching?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      wouldn't it be sufficient for the AI trainers to subscribe to the big streaming services and let the models do the watching?

      Unless they use the analog hole (point a camera at a screen) they need to decode and rip the stream, thereby violating DMCA. So they're going to need to buy some kind of change to the law, Fair Use notwithstanding. (Unless they analog hole, which sounds practical at first but might be too slow/inefficient.)

      I do happen to think watching the video (whether you're a human or a computer) i

      • Instead of a camera, wouldn't it make more sense to just have the thing ingest the window in which the video is playing?

        What I really don't understand is why showing a video to a computer isn't fair use. It shouldn't be a copyright issue unless their work is being reproduced. That it could be is irrelevant. There is no ground, that I can see as a non-lawyer, for a lawsuit over damages that have not occurred. Isn't it a moot issue that a court wouldn't touch? And if no harm has occurred, there is no

  • Trump will be on the wrong side of this, too. He doesn't care about America. To Trump, America is something you cover yourself with to protect yourself, from going to jail.

  • Since AI is entirely commercial use, I am not sure where fair use comes into play.

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