Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Return copyright to its roots: Compensate human creators

Return copyright to its roots: Compensate human creators
John M Lund Photography Inc/Getty Images

Samantha Close is the Director of the Digital Communication and Media Arts program at DePaul University and a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project.

A new survey of the Milky Way galaxy recently revealed billions of objects in the celestial landscape. There truly is nothing new under the sun and U.S. copyright laws need to reflect that.


Many assume copyright is about plagiarism: taking credit for someone else’s work. But that’s not the origin of copyright in the United States.

The U.S. constitution’s “Copyright Clause” states that Congress will have the power “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.”

Essentially, the driving force of American copyright is encouraging creators to make things by allowing them to profit from their work. Copyright laws must return to these roots.

2023 is already a scary and contentious time for many creators. In one corner of the galaxy are corporations tightening their control over intellectual property.

For example, Wizards of the Coast, the company which owns the popular tabletop roleplaying game system Dungeons & Dragons, recently launched a firestorm of controversy when its new, much more restrictive license leaked to the press.

Its terms were so far-reaching that some lawyers questioned whether the company even had copyright over the production it was trying to claim. (They’ve since changed direction.)

From the other end of the galaxy are artificial intelligence generators that can create new work directly from a text prompt.

Midjourney, one AI system, intakes keywords and phrases from its users and outputs complex visual images in seconds. The infamous Chat GPT can write anything from computer game code and a poem to your child’s next school assignment. This only complicates copyright issues for human artists.

Corporate overreach matters because artists are rarely the ones who actually end up owning their own copyright. In this field, work is commonly on a “for hire” basis; whoever commissioned the creator owns the copyright to the work.

In his life, Michelangelo Bonaparte did not own the copyright to his timeless work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and neither does his estate now. Nippon Television Corporation of Japan does.

This year will be a turning point for creators. The original Mickey Mouse copyright, Ub Iwerks’ Steamboat Willie illustration, expires according to the terms of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act —which coincidentally extended US copyright just at the point when Mickey Mouse would have otherwise left the Disney Corporation’s control.

The U.S. Supreme Court is deliberating on the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. v. Goldsmith. That case will speak volumes on whether mechanical reproduction techniques, like silk-screening, are enough to constitute “transformational” use of original images.

The first two AI generator lawsuits have been filed in the U.S., one against the code generator CoPilot and another against the image generators Stability AI, Midjourney, and DreamUp. Stock image site Getty Images is filing in the UK.

It’s only in creative fields where the original investment is relatively low, such as writing, or fields protected by tradition, such as academia, where the actual creator usually owns their copyright.

But even this is changing, as new policies claim copyright over intellectual property created on “their time.” Some universities have even used recorded video lectures so a professor can teach online after they’re dead.

When original creators aren’t the ones benefiting from copyright, its purpose of encouraging creation is lost. Worse than that, corporate owners like Disney and Wizards of the Coast often discourage or outright sue artists trying to make new work based on their cultural heritage.

This copyright system has functioned over the years because creators at least got paid once, either when they worked for hire or when their work was licensed. With AI art generators like Midjourney, it is possible to make complex, sophisticated images with about 150 words and half an hour. It’s difficult to imagine how human artists can compete.

None of these systems would be where they are, of course, without human artists in the first place. “Artificial” intelligence only seems like a property of the technology.

These systems are powered half by code and half by vast archives of “training data” provided by people. Experimenting with Midjourney demonstrates that by far the easiest way to produce good work is to ask the system to replicate existing styles or even specific artists.

Artists can find out if their own text or images were scraped into these training databases and opt out. But there’s no mechanism to compensate creators for past harms or the likely impact on their future livelihoods.

Neither corporate overreach nor AI will stop artists from making art. If the internet has proved anything, it’s that people will create and share their work for the sheer joy of it, rather than because they’re getting paid.

What both of these forces will do, however, is prevent artists from making a living at their trade—the exact thing copyright is supposed to ensure.

Many compare the current copyright situation to music when free file-sharing sites like Napster reigned--a situation eventually resolved through paid services like Spotify. But Spotify and its ilk are notoriously poor at compensating the artists whose songs it streams.

Policymakers in Congress can help stop corporate overreach by passing laws like the Copyright Clause Restoration Act of 2022 that brings copyright back to a reasonable term limit. Artists can continue to advocate and legally pursue their rights to earn income for their creative efforts. The courts can decide to return copyright to its origins.

Payment is due.

Read More

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

The B-2 "Spirit" Stealth Bomber flys over the 136th Rose Parade Presented By Honda on Jan. 1, 2025, in Pasadena, California. (Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Jerod Harris/Getty Images/TNS)

Is Bombing Iran Deja Vu All Over Again?

After a short and successful war with Iraq, President George H.W. Bush claimed in 1991 that “the ghosts of Vietnam have been laid to rest beneath the sands of the Arabian desert.” Bush was referring to what was commonly called the “Vietnam syndrome.” The idea was that the Vietnam War had so scarred the American psyche that we forever lost confidence in American power.

The elder President Bush was partially right. The first Iraq war was certainly popular. And his successor, President Clinton, used American power — in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere — with the general approval of the media and the public.

Keep ReadingShow less
Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are
a close up of a typewriter with the word conspiracy on it

Conspiratorial Thinking Isn’t Growing–Its Consequences Are

The Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooting, the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and a man’s livestreamed beheading of his father last year were all fueled by conspiracy theories. But while the headlines suggest that conspiratorial thinking is on the rise, this is not the case. Research points to no increase in conspiratorial thinking. Still, to a more dangerous reality: the conspiracies taking hold and being amplified by political ideologues are increasingly correlated with violence against particular groups. Fortunately, promising new research points to actions we can take to reduce conspiratorial thinking in communities across the US.

Some journalists claim that this is “a golden age of conspiracy theories,” and the public agrees. As of 2022, 59% of Americans think that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories today than 25 years ago, and 73% of Americans think conspiracy theories are “out of control.” Most blame this perceived increase on the role of social media and the internet.

Keep ReadingShow less
Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job
woman wearing academic cap and dress selective focus photography
Photo by MD Duran on Unsplash

Why a College Degree No Longer Guarantees a Good Job

A college education used to be considered, along with homeownership, one of the key pillars of the American Dream. Is that still the case? Recent experiences of college graduates seeking employment raise questions about whether a university diploma remains the best pathway to pursuing happiness, as it once was.

Consider the case of recent grad Lohanny Santo, whose TikTok video went viral with over 3.6 million “likes” as she broke down in tears and vented her frustration over her inability to find even a minimum wage job. That was despite her dual degrees from Pace University and her ability to speak three languages. John York, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree in math from New York University, writes that “it feels like I am screaming into the void with each application I am filling out.”

Keep ReadingShow less