The IU welcomes the first draft of MEP Axel Voss' report on copyright and generative AI. The report contains important demands such as transparency obligations and remuneration. Nevertheless, the initiative warns about some aspects and calls for specific improvements.
In July, Member of European Parliament (MEP) Axel Voss (EPP, Germany) shared the first draft of the report “Copyright and generative artificial intelligence – opportunities and challenges”, for which he is rapporteur in the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs (JURI) Committee.
Authors’ Rights Initiative (Germany) welcomes this first draft, which stresses several important concerns for authors, performers and other rightsholders and calls on the European Commission to make further changes on various points.
This report also rejects the application of the exception for text and data mining (TDM) to generative AI and calls on the Commission to impose a remuneration obligation on general AI providers. The report calls for full and actionable transparency by AI providers, with a presumption of use of protected works in AI training.
We appreciate the balancing tone of the draft, but we believe the following points might profit from clarification or improvement:
The Report strongly promotes AI at the expense of protected rights.
Past infringements are not addressed in an adequate way
The Report puts heavy burden on rightsholders by suggesting obligatory central registration
The Recommendation concerning territoriality lacks enforceable and written mechanisms.
The Report seems to sacrifice certain protected rights.
We must also express strong concern over the lack ofreferences to the moral rights of attribution and integrity, which are endangered by uses that put protected works out of contexts, violate personality rights and include AI fakes.We also recommend that copyright enforcement cannot be sacrificed in favour of vague trade secret claims, and that exceptions must be narrowly construed.
Members of the European Parliament are now called upon to submit their amendments by 12 September. The Authors' Rights Initiative, its member organizations and the umbrella organizations of its associations in Brussels will do everything in their power to ensure that the proposed Code of Practice, Guidelines and ‘Template’ are amended in the interests of the cultural, creative and media industries.
‘The EU Commission has finally caved in to the big tech companies,’ said DJV Managing Director Hanna Möllers when the template was published. ‘The AI Office is giving creators stones instead of bread and is disregarding the will of the European Parliament as set out in the AI Act.’
‘The Voss report is a wonderful tool for showing other members of the European Parliament, but also the European Commission, why the documents proposed by the AI Office fall short of the AI Act itself and are extremely harmful,’ comments IU Managing Director Katharina Uppenbrink.