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Keeping the fruits of copyright
Beeban Kidron
A GREAT deal of the recent running in the battles over our copyright has been made by Baroness Kidron – the film and TV director Beeban Kidron, whose TV debut Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit followed her documentary Carry Greenham Home, about the women’s peace camps. Spurred by the government’s clear preference for cosying up to corporations such as Google and allowing them to use our work to train their so-called “artificial intelligences” without permission or payment, she put down a series of amendments to the nearest handy Bill – which is now the Data (Use and Access) Act.
Several amendments sought to set up mechanisms for “transparency” – that is, obliging those who use our work to report on what they have used. That would enable payment for those who choose – and compensation for those whose copyright has been infringed to date.
The House of Lords passed them. The government voted them down in the Commons. One of the longer recent episodes of “ping-pong” between the two Houses ensued. In the end they were dropped in a traditional gesture of respect by the Lords to the Commons. As the Freelance understand it they were always intended provide a template for work to amend a future Bill.
That Bill is delayed. The consultation that was slanted toward the exception to copyright to suit Google got more than 11,000 responses, including the NUJ’s own. The upshot of a vigorous public campaign fronted (as usual) largely by music interests was that the government amended the Data Act to commit itself to producing reports on the effects of its proposals, within nine months, and not to legislate before then. We shall be busy with this in late 2026 and in 2027.
Please do complete the NUJ’s survey with your views on licensing works to “AI”.
Getty Images -v- Stability AI
Meanwhile, hearings in the Getty Images case against AI image company Stability AI have opened. Getty has dropped its primary “copyright infringement” claims as hard to prove. It is pursuing claims including trademark infringement, “passing off,” and “secondary copyright infringement” – for example the claim that Stability facilitates others’ abuse of works distributed by Getty.
The case continues
Facebook challenge fails
And colleagues in the EU may yet get money through Article 15 of the Digital Single Market Directive – which allows newspaper publishers to claim cash for use of content in internet services, and specifies that “Member States shall provide that authors of works incorporated in a press publication receive an appropriate share of the revenues...”
Meta, owner of Facebook, challenged the Italian implementation of this. On 10 June Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) issued an an Opinion on a challenge brought by Meta (Ireland) to the Italian implementation of DSM Article 15. He recommends rejecting the challenge, but with reservations.
Meta’s arguments included (a) that the law “does not establish remuneration rights but, rather, exclusive rights” and (b) “that because of the obligations imposed on information society service providers, [it places] significant limitations on the contractual freedom of economic operators.”
The Advocate General Maciej Szpunar says that implementation of Article 15 must “not deprive press publishers of the possibility of refusing to grant such authorisation or that of granting it free of charge, that they do not impose on information society service providers any payment obligation unrelated to the actual or intended use of such publications, and that they do not restrict the contractual freedom of the parties in a binding manner”.
The Freelance suspects that this resistance by Meta is not finished. The full Opinion is here.
NUJ seeks members’ views on licensing work to ‘AI’