Diskurs

Dear Mr. Bercea, dear Mr. Jahier, dear EESC members, ladies and gentlemen,

thanks for having me.

I‘ll be speaking on behalf of Initiative Urheberrecht (Authors Rights Initiative), the German umbrella for authors and performers rights associations and unions. I am a composer, but last year I wrote a book about „AI, Culture and the Devaluation of Knowledge Work“. I might have been an expert before, but now I’m an Author.

The German cultural theorist Bazon Brock coined the term Authority though Authorship. Since the Enlightenment, Western societies have granted their authors the status of intellectual, societal authority.

AUTHORS in Brock’s words are

„people who have no backing, no pope, no military, nothing at all, and yet are listened to because what they say is interesting and important," due to their ability to „convey an understanding of the world.“

FREEDOM OF ART, says Brock, is a "world sensation", a „pinnacle of humanism“ …

However the value of art and science is not understood at all in society and politics.

Authors bring meaning into the world. They reflect, question, think out of the box, bring up visions of possible futures based on a critical reflection of the present. What authors do is described as creation, and you wouldn’t be able to enjoy most of their works without performing artists who read, speak, sing, play and dance. You’ll find authors in the arts, in the creative industries, in journalism & media. They write Music, Film & TV series, Theatre, Games. Authorship is attributed to Fotografers, Painters, Illustrators, Designers and many more. Scientists are authors too, knowledge workers. And creative work in art and culture is, by definition, considered to be knowledge work as well.

Now, European knowledge work is huge in terms of employment, value added, taxes … The creative industries alone are one of the three largest sub-sectors of the European economy. It is not only the cultural importance of authorship that is misunderstood. Still, despite all the economic evidence authorship is not even perceived as an economic factor.

Instead we’re facing growing anti-intellectualism, combined with a vulgar "might is right" ideology. Both fundamentally contradict our commitment to human dignity and diversity. The terms "progress" and "innovation" are increasingly being used in a way that is completely limited to technology.

… Just imagine (btw: only humans can do that!): Innovation without human creation? Seriously?

Actually creative professionals are indispensable for Western societies, even if you dislike novels and do not love theatre or cinema. They provide the CULTURAL CLIMATE that’s needed to be able TO INNOVATE. Because innovation is based on creative minds. But the creatives have been robbed. At least that’s how they feel. Our works have been given away for years. For free. To economies outside Europe. Thus the resulting added value is generated entirely outside Europe, while the products based on our property are sold back to us Europeans. That’s EXTRACTIVISM.

It goes far beyond authors rights. Your medical records, your mobile phone data, your messenger histories, your contacts and communications, your shopping profile, and most likely intimate information about your consumption behaviour, sexual orientation or deepseated fears – all of this was used for training purposes, together with our works and performances.

None of us were asked, none of us were paid. We have lost control.

Some call that promoting innovation. I call it self-castration.

• Europe is based on the core idea of human dignity; authors rights as well as informational self-determination are closely linked to that.
• Europe is founded on UNITIY IN DIVERSITY. The diversity of cultural expression and markets is threatened by extractivism and colonialism.
• Europe is dependent on knowledge work, and that means: on knowledge workers.

What’s been given away for free is our property, it embodies our identity.

But actually IP & Data could be a huge asset for Europe in the struggle for sovereignty. AI developers are completely and utterly dependent on our content and data. Generative AI models must be continuously fed with fresh training data. And this data and content must be human-made, otherwise they risk running into Model Collapse: The AI gets dumb.

It is so simple: Creators don’t need AI. But AI needs Creators.

Europe has an immense wealth of intellectual assets, many of which have not yet been digitised. It is a treasure that has not yet been unearthed. Konrad Adenauer once said that the sovereignty of a state could be judged by the degree to which it could not be blackmailed. There are strong indications of blackmailing when one of the world's largest economies gives away its crown jewels for free - and with it: its identity. Now, if we want to act sovereignly, to protect our intellectual property and to treat it as an asset, then the path forward is quite clear: We must support the creation of a LICENCE MARKET for European training data. This means that the TDM exception in the DSM Directive must be removed. Nobody complies with it anyway.

Establishing a LICENCE MARKET would resolve three of the most dramatic problems of copyright law at the same time:

1. Granting access to training data and content
2. Maintaining the incentivisation of creative work
3. Providing an enforceable option NOT to become part of an AI training corpus.

All in all, that would mean legal certainty, employment, gross value added AND sustainability.

Three final remarks:

• Future revenue will not be generated at the input level, but rather at the output level. It will be the task of policymakers to support us in getting our share of this.
• We are educating thousands of young people across Europe for a job market that we have so far threatened to abandon. As long as we educate students, we have a responsibility towards them.
• It is of utmost importance for the parliament to support the JURI initiative report by rapporteur Axel Voss for it brings urgent problems closer to a solution. They are rooted in culture and the media, in the single market, in the economy and, as you might expect, in social issues.

Thank you!