Americans are freedom loving people, and nothing says freedom like getting away with it.
Long Long Time, written by Guy Forsyth

Big Tech is jamming another safe harbor boondoggle through another government, this time for artificial intelligence. The defining feature of the DMCA scam is every artist in the known universe having to single-handedly monitor the entire Internet to catch each instance of theft in the act. Once caught, artists have to send a DMCA notice on a case by case basis, and then overcome what is 9 times out of 10 a BS counternotification. Then if they disagree with the BS counternotification, artists are faced with having to file a federal copyright infringement lawsuit which they don’t file because they can’t afford it.

And so it goes.

This is what an “opt-out” looks like. We have seen this movie before and we know how it ends–it’s called getting away with it. Let us be very clear with lawmakers: Notice and takedown and “opt out” is bullshit. It has never worked and has imposed a phenomenal cost on the artist community to the point that many if not most artists have just given up. The Future of Music Coalition and A2IM surveyed their members and determined that over half don’t even bother to look anymore because they can’t afford to run the search. The next largest group give up because they get no response from the notices.

Let’s understand–every time an artist gives up even looking for infringers, that’s a win for Big Tech. That’s why year after year, there are over a billion DMCA notices sent to a variety of infringers.

Ask yourself in all honesty, are you surprised? What head up the ass buffoon would ever think that an opt out would work? Unless the plan was to let Big Tech run wild and give both the biggest corporations in commercial history and the lawmakers a big fig leaf to cover up the theft?

That same approach is rearing its head again in both the US Congress and the UK. But this time it is being applied to artificial intelligence training and outputs. This is stark raving madness, drooling idiocy. At least with the DMCA an artist could look for an actual copy of their works that could be found by text-based search, audio fingerprints or just listening.

With AI, the whole point is to disguise the underlying work used to train the AI. The AI platform operator knows what works they used, which sites they scraped, or other ways to identify the infringed works. When sued, these operators have refused to disclose the training materials because they say that the sources of those materials are supposedly a trade secret and confidential.

Once a work is ingested into the AI, the output is also purposely distorted from the original. Again, impossible to conclusively identify. So what exactly are you opting out of? To whom do you send your little notice?

This entire opt-out idea is through the looking glass into the upside down world. Yet is is true.

The most current manifestation of this insanity is the UK government’s intention to pass legislation that would force artists to use an opt-out model, possibly on a work-by-work basis. And the worst part is that somehow they have been led to think that an opt-out is a protection for artists.

Orwellian.

Fortunately the UK government may seek public comment on this opt-out proposal. We will keep you posted on what the UK government actually proposes and how you can comment.

In the meantime, if you live in the UK, it’s not to early to contact your MP and ask them what the hell is going on. You may want to ask them why you can call the police when your car is being stolen but there’s nobody to call when your life’s work is being stolen. Particularly when the government protects the thieves.