SFC Responds to Big Tech's Disengenous Arguments in Copyright Office's “Artificial Intelligence Study”

[Software Freedom Conservancy]

      SFC Responds to Big Tech's Disengenous Arguments in Copyright
              Office's “Artificial Intelligence Study”

URL:
  https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/dec/11/response-to-bigtech-arguments-copyright-office/

Social media:
  https://social.sfconservancy.org/notice/AciISjyi7h9R7NR1rk
  https://x.com/conservancy/status/1734336605882835300

After filing our initial comments [0] in the Copyright Office's request
for comments [1], SFC staff have remained engaged in the process — we've
given particular attention to comments related to software freedom and
rights as assured through copyleft licenses like the GPL. We advocate
for your software rights and freedoms in many ways — including
participation on public policy discussion of relevant issues, such as
this Copyright Office study.

In this case, we're particularly glad to stay engaged. We discovered
that we were the only charity to bring up issues of copyleft and the GPL
with the Copyright Office. We appreciate so much the support of our
donors so that we can show up to defend your rights regarding copyleft
licenses. Meanwhile, Big Tech was all over this comment process
undermining software rights. We were able to address, in particular,
serious attacks on software rights from Microsoft — who dismissed as
irrelevant copyright holders' rights with respect to copyleft licenses
and the GPL. As we stated in our reply comment, directed primarily at
Microsoft's attacks:

"To concede Microsoft’s “fair use” claims would be the first step in
eviscerating the copyleft licenses that protect the primary commons of
software source code, which, in turn, comprise much of the software in
Training Sets already in use for these Generative AI systems."

Microsoft seeks maximalist copyright protections, but only when
convenient to their proprietary software business model and none in the
providing the basis for creating ever more proprietary software. We
stand for the users — to protect against corporations who unduly extract
labor and profit from copyleft-licensed works. As our Policy Fellow
Bradley M. Kuhn has previously written [2], community-led efforts must
lean even stronger into the judo move of copyleft in the age of
Generative AI; copyleft works because it reverses the power of copyright
maximalism that Microsoft and other large corporations created to
liberate users:

"While we and other FOSS activists might support a full reconsideration
of copyright rules for software from the ground-up, we do not think a
piecemeal reworking of some rules in some contexts, particularly to
merely serve the interests of large corporations, is in the interest of
authors who do not have Big Tech’s resources. Such changes would be
particularly toxic to those of us who have chosen to license our
copyrights under copyleft licenses, which were specifically designed to
assure full transparency and the complete sharing of source code."

Finally, our comments reiterated our timely concern: “compulsory
licensing” for use in generative AI systems for copyrighted work such as
copylefted software. Compulsory licensing typically finanically
compensates authors for a use of their works, but we believe no amount
of money should be sufficient to buy Big Tech “out of” their copyleft
obligations to users and consumers.

You can read our full comments on our website [3] — we'll update with
the published link on the Copyright Office's site when available. 

Please consider becoming a Sustainer [4] of our organization to support
work like this. If you donate before January 15th, your donation with be
double while our matched fundraiser is going on, so your contribution
will go twice as far!

[0] https://sfconservancy.org/news/2023/nov/01/us-copyright-office-generative-ai-machine-learning/
[1] https://www.regulations.gov/comment/COLC-2023-0006-0036
[2] https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2022/feb/03/github-copilot-copyleft-gpl/
[3] https://sfconservancy.org/docs/2023-12-06_Software-Freedom-Conservancy-Copyright-Office-Generative-AI-Comments-Docket-2023-6_reply.pdf
[4] https://sfconservancy.org/sustainer/#annual