Roy Kaufman is Managing Director, Business Development and Government Relations at CCC, where he participates in a wide range of copyright and licensing conversations internally and with many industry groups. We recently caught up with Roy for an industry update.
CCC: Hi, Roy. What kinds of conversations are you having inside CCC and with external stakeholders about generative AI?
RK: It is not just generative AI but also other forms of AI, text and data mining, open AI systems, and the like. CCC is participating in several public commentary processes currently underway before governmental bodies in the US, UK, EU, G7, and elsewhere. It is certainly a hot topic, and whether you look at government interventions or the spate of legal actions, it has to be seen as an important issue.
CCC: I would expect that there is also a #2, #3 and #4 on that list of priority topics, though. Am I right?
RK: Yes. I read the DC Circuit Court of Appeals holding in the ASTM vs Public. Resource.org case with a great deal of interest; I am talking with a bunch of folks about the impact that is having on Standards Development Organizations’ (SDOs) licensing, development, and sustainability practices. That case too leads in curious ways back to AI, as does almost every copyright case, including Warhol.
Meanwhile, we are involved with responses to the White House Office of Technology Policy (OSTP)’s public access requirements. We are especially interested in the OSTP’s questions about persistent identifiers (PIDs) and other metadata. There is so much that funding agencies can do to promote scientific communication, and so many ways to get it wrong. At least with the discussions of PIDs and metadata there is a recognition that policy pronouncements do not in themselves enable change.
Another priority for copyright wonks is US Copyright Office modernization. I have been serving on a Library of Congress committee and recently participated in a participation discussion group in Congress. This has been ongoing for some time.
CCC: What were your takeaways from the Frankfurt Book Fair?
RK: Geopolitics aside, the big issue at Frankfurt was….AI. AI and technical standards, AI and Open Access, AI and publication ethics, AI in the publication process. AI is not new, and as you know; at CCC we have been licensing text and data mining (TDM) for years. Publishers and educational technology (edtech) companies have been using AI for a long time. What is different is how it has now crashed into all conversations.
CCC: Last thoughts to leave the readers of Velocity of Content with for now?
RK: I would like to underscore something about the nexus of generative AI and copyright. Copyright in its modern form has been around since 1709, when the most significant relevant technological advances were the move from animal skins to plant-based paper in the late Middle Ages and the introduction of the printing press to Europe in the 15th Century. Copyright law has navigated – to name a few– the introduction for photography, photo reprography, recorded music, radio, TV, silent films and talkies, eBooks, and MP3s. In each case, there was no doubt someone who sought to capitalize on the new technology by not compensating rightsholders, arguing that the technology was new, and that copyright would stifle innovation. AI is not new, and neither are the arguments that it is incompatible with fundamental copyright concepts such as advanced consent, attribution, and compensation.