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By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Our Ideas, Voices, Images, Songs, and Stories’
In a week already busy with news relative to the international book publishing industry and Big Tech’s generative AI, the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels, Germany’s publishers and booksellers association, has notified members of the news media today (May 14) that the German initiative Creators for Europe United has reached a 10,000-signature goal in its open letter to the European Commission’s executive vice-president for technological sovereignty, security, and democracy.
The timing is interesting, in part because the United States’ Authors Guild has just issued a petition to reinstate Shira Perlmutter, the former US register of copyrights who was dismissed over the weekend by the administration of Donald Trump (as was Carla Hayden, the former Librarian of Congress). Maria A. Pallante, the president and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, has provided Publishing Perspectives with useful commentary on that issue.
The States’ Authors Guild is looking to get its Perlmutter petition to congressional leadership in Washington on Friday (May 16).
The Creators for Europe United effort was opened on World Book and Copyright Day (April 23) and its information doesn’t seem to specify a point at which it’s scheduled to be released to Henna Virkkunen, the Finnish politician who is the second von der Leyen commission’s vice-president in question.
The program’s calls for action are listed as:
- “Full transparency about all works, contributions, and performances that have been and will be used for training generative AI models and other purposes;
- “Adequate remuneration for the use of our works;
- “Consistent enforcement of applicable copyright laws–including against global tech companies; and
- “Involvement of the culture, creative, and media industries in all regulatory processes for AI governance.”
Widening Objections
Both the US controversy over the weekend firings in Washington and the European campaign against “creative works being used as the basis for AI systems without our knowledge,” of course, are set against the setback experienced by the United Kingdom’s government on Monday (May 12) when the House of Lords’ peers sided with a “Data Bill” amendment requiring AI companies to specify what works they have used in “training” large language models.
There, too, the issue was amplified in public view by a campaign that was particularly heavy with cultural celebrities, and the bill in London now must go back to the House of Commons to see if the “Kidron amendment” promoting transparency will stay in place this time.
The Creators for Europe United effort is deliberately multidisciplinary, drawing together supporters in books, film, journalism, music, theater, architecture, design, photography, and visual arts. One layer of the structural strength of this approach is that it’s also able to engage what organizers say is the backing of more than 100 European associations, each of which of course can bring their memberships to the task.
In the text used to promote the Creators for Europe United campaign, you read:
“Our ideas, voices, images, songs and stories are the heart of Europe. Without our creativity, AI systems would be empty and meaningless. It’s high time that our contribution is recognized and respected. …
“Especially with the current implementation of the [European Union’s] AI Act, the concerns and demands of Europe’s cultural, creative, and media industries are not being given sufficient consideration. If this does not change, the third-largest economic force in the European Union will be acutely threatened.
“The main beneficiaries will be non-European tech companies that can continue to exploit European works.”
‘A Battle Taking Place in Global Capitals’
One of the key questions is whether creative industries in whatever region they work can clearly draw the line between benign applications of AI, as in the “back office” tasks that many in publishing like to tout as beneficial, and the copyright-infringing operations of generative AI “training” that pull in unknown numbers of properties without permission from or remuneration to rights holders. In fact, it’s unclear how well many in the broadest ranges of the creative industries understand what copyright is and does for them.
In short, the tasks of these growing and multiplying efforts to corral public attention and support in the AI-vs.-copyright issue—referred to by HarperCollins’ Brian Murray in his role as AAP chair as “a battle taking place in the public square, on university campuses, and in global capitals all around the world”—is going to include a good deal of educational work among the creative industries, themselves. Campaigns may have to be both public-facing and industry-facing.
As these growing, organized reactions begin to multiply in various parts of the international book industry’s markets, their effectiveness will be only as good as the actionable efficacy of their messaging is. Are they targeted? Durable for a long era of debate? Paced to keep supporters engaged? Lessons will arrive and can be learned, by one campaign from another, but this will require intra-issue networking and practical impact over passion.
The energy, however, is there for efforts that can make their emotional dynamics coherent—to backers, to policymakers, and to the public.
More from Publishing Perspectives on copyright is here, more on issues in artificial intelligence is here, more on the book publishing industry of Europe is here.