Some of the 2024 holiday season lighting on London’s Oxford Street. Image – Getty: VV Shots
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Dan Conway: ‘A Generationally Important Moment’
When the United Kingdom’s key publishing-industry players return from the current winter break, 2025 will move very quickly into high gear on a potentially pivotal point of policy.
Today in London (December 17), the UK government has announced an open consultation—a period of public comment—on the UK’s legal framework for artificial intelligence and copyright.
As many of our readers know, the issue has come to picture the tension between the critical protection of copyright for book publishing on the one hand, and what the UK government terms the importance of “leveraging AI to grow the economy and improve public services” through its “AI Opportunities Action Plan” on the other.
The Publishers Association has played a highly informed leadership role among the British market’s creative industries in the evolution of the debate, and the newly opened consultation is specifically focused on “how the government can ensure that the UK’s legal framework for AI and copyright supports the UK creative industries and AI sector together.”
This, then, becomes what may well be a make-or-break moment for publishing and its brother industries to influence, guide, and help anchor a policy approach that nourishes and sustains the books business and its nearby associate-trades in the arts and entertainment—or something that allows too much advantage to the tech sector and its ambitions.
In a thoughtful and forceful comment issued today to the news media, Publishers Association CEO Dan Conway captures the importance of the moment:
“We welcome this consultation and look forward to representing publishing’s views in the strongest possible terms in the coming weeks.
Dan Conway
“This is a generationally important moment for the creative industries and a real opportunity for the government to get the fundamental legal underpinnings right to support AI innovation in a way that works for the economy and society, based on trustworthy, ethical, and licensed content.
“AI is already proving transformative and has incredible potential to improve the way we conduct research, learn, and interact with content of all kinds. The way to get that right is to ensure that the content ecosystem, including publishers, is properly commercially incentivized to invest in high-value content and that rightsholders can retain their fundamental control of how and when a work is used.
“We see the government’s preferred package of measures outlined in this consultation as a genuine best effort by ministers at a compromise position between tech and the creative industries. We intend to engage fully and constructively with a view to publishing being part of an economy-wide policy solution.
“We do want to raise some concerns immediately, however, in that the measures being proposed are as yet entirely untested and unevidenced. There has been no objective case made for a new copyright exception, nor has a water-tight rights-reservation process been outlined anywhere around the world. We need to fix the current situation, but that solution needs time and full scrutiny, and a great deal is at stake.
“This may be a consultation about a seemingly technical bit of copyright law, but its implications will be felt across society and the economy for many years to come.”
Early Takes and Emphases
In various news media, today’s reports of the consultation’s opening have reflected a broad range of response.
“This is a generationally important moment for the creative industries and a real opportunity for the government to get the fundamental legal underpinnings right to support AI innovation in a way that works for the economy and society, based on trustworthy, ethical, and licensed content.”Dan Conway, Publishers Association
At Forbes, Virginie Berger writes, “Central to the controversy is the introduction of an opt-out system for copyright holders, which would permit AI companies to use copyrighted material by default unless rights holders explicitly request to opt out.”
That opt-out point is the copyright exception that Conway flags, as is reflected at the Financial Times, where Daniel Thomas and Anna Gross today write, “Tech companies may be forced to open their artificial intelligence models to greater scrutiny in the UK, in an effort to stop the creative industries having their work being reproduced without compensation. In a consultation announced on Tuesday, the UK government will offer an exemption to copyright laws, letting tech companies use material ranging from music and books to media and photos to train their AI models unless the rights holder objects under a so-called ‘rights reservation’ system.”
At The Hollywood Reporter, Georg Szalai writes, “Currently, uncertainty about how copyright law applies to AI is holding back both sectors from reaching their full potential, the still-new Starmer government has said. After previous attempts to agree on a voluntary AI copyright code of practice proved unsuccessful, it emphasized on Tuesday that it ‘is determined to take proactive steps with our creative and AI sectors to deliver a workable solution.'”
And John Leonard at Computing writes that the consultation “comes as prominent artists including musician Paul McCartney and novelist Kate Mosse have warned of a threat to creators’ livelihoods if copyright rules are relaxed.”
The open consultation is to run to February 25, meaning that it will have closed only by a couple of weeks when London Book Fair 2025 convenes on March 11.
A Programming Note
On London Book Fair‘s opening day, March 11 at a 3 p.m. GMT, a discussion on the Olympia London Main Stage will feature the Publishers Association ‘s Dan Conway and the Association of American Publishers‘ president and CEO, Maria A. Pallante on AI and Copyright: Policy Developments in the UK and US.
Clearly, the timing of the close in late February of the government’s open consultation will make this a timely conversation, to be moderated by Publishing Perspectives.
A description of this presentation reads, “AI is here to stay and so are the policy debates that will shape its development and deployment for years to come. In particular, many publishers around the world are watching developments in the UK and US, where regulators, legislators, and courts are weighing legal disputes and policy proposals that could have global ramifications for copyright laws.
“Please join us for a British, American, and decidedly human discussion on the most important issue of the day.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on artificial intelligence is here; more on copyright and international book publishing is here; and more on the United Kingdom’s book business is here.