Tech Legal Brief #1 – The Copyright Dilemma

More on the copyright/AI issue and a book recommendation.

Welcome to the 1^st edition of Futuristic Lawyer’s Tech Legal Brief

Tech Legal Brief is a run-down of news and developments I didn’t have time to cover in my regular newsletters. From now on, I plan to publish these run-downs on perhaps a monthly or bimonthly basis, depending on the need. 

I am not attempting to capture everything that is going on in the space - as if that was possible. Rather, I want to use the Tech Legal Briefs to zoom in on a couple of significant developments that are not widely covered in the press or on social media and provide a few recommendations that I think are well worth your time.  

The Copyright Dilemma

This first edition is about the copyright dilemma. AI is in this context the natural progression of social media and streaming. The key attribute of popular social media and streaming platforms is that independent creators contribute with almost all of the value and receive most typically nothing or almost nothing in return for their efforts.

The intermediary platforms (YouTube, Spotify, Facebook, etc.) directly or indirectly claim ownership rights to all of the platform’s user-generated content and build new AI solutions based on all of this free labor. Now, the same users can pay $20/month for access to generative AI solutions. We, as users and creators on the internet, are like the slaves who built the pyramids, and now we have to pay an entrance fee to get inside and marvel at the rulers property.

At the same time, the tech press is caught up with Mark Zuckerberg’s newest outfits as Ed Zitron lays out in this excellent essay here.

This explains why the creator-based subscription model (aka Substack’s revenue model) is much fairer than the ad-driven revenue model as it puts the creators in focus rather than the platform. Secondly, while mainstream media is often obediently chasing trends like happy dogs are chasing frisbees in the park, more significant and truthful work is done by independent creators.