You wouldn’t steal an internet

“It puts startups in a very difficult position.” Vinous Ali, of lobby group the Startup Coalition, was painting a grim picture to a combined hearing of Parliament’s Science and Culture committees. Her members, plucky little businesses who just dreamed of making it big, were being held back from their full potential. 

On she went. “We have so many of the raw ingredients here that make the UK, you know, a beacon in the world for startups and scale ups. We have deep pools of talent. We have world class universities and research institutes as well.” And what was it that was holding them back? What deep injustice had bound in chains these future heroes of British industry? Would Ali name the restraint of trade that dampened their spark? She would: “Access to large scale data”.

Ah. It turns out that her members are pirates. Their view is that the barrier between the UK and unlimited wealth is our pesky copyright laws. If MPs would just agree to abolish them, then we’d be a nation of billionaires by the end of next week. Robots trained up on Richard Osman books and the Pet Shop Boys’ back catalogue would be able to find new sources of unlimited energy, cure Alzheimer’s and solve the problem of war. (Ali didn’t actually say that, but it was very much the implication.)

If this sounds laughable, you’re probably not a government minister. As they cast around for something, anything, that might get the economy going, ministers have effectively hung a sign outside Downing Street saying “hucksters welcome”. In have trotted an army of people in sharp suits, each armed with a magic stone that will make a beautiful soup if you just add a few vegetables and a bit of meat. Oh, and the right to steal other people’s work.

If Britain didn’t let its pirates pillage everything in sight, there was a danger that America’s pirates would overtake them

In Ali’s view, it was simply unreasonable to expect anyone to launch an artificial intelligence business in the UK if they weren’t going to be allowed to take whatever data they wanted from wherever they wanted, ideally without paying for it. How, she was asked, were the people generating those things expected to live? “Respectfully,” she said, not entirely convincingly, “the US has a thriving tech sector and it also has a thriving creative industry.” It is possible that she hasn’t followed recent news out of Hollywood very closely. 

We shouldn’t be too hard on Ali. She is paid to speak on behalf of pirates, and she was doing her job. Pirates need lobbyists, too. And she had at least turned up. Google and OpenAI had been invited to appear, but had declined. They may feel their access to power in Britain is sufficiently good that they don’t need to bother with mere MPs.

She had a warning for the government, too: if Britain didn’t let its pirates pillage everything in sight, there was a danger that America’s pirates would overtake them. The law in the US was already more permissive about copyright theft. “The administration today, it’s unlikely it’s going to move to a position that’s more restrictive.” Is there any more certain indicator that you’re on the side of the angels than Donald Trump agreeing with you?

The committee heard next from the pirates’ targets. Matt Rogerson, of the Financial Times, was at one level sympathetic to the people determined to plunder his company. “It’s understandable that they would want access to all this content for free,” he said. “Which business wouldn’t want free things?” Nevertheless, he was surprised that His Majesty’s Government was proposing to, as it were, send the Royal Navy to help the people who wanted to plunder his hold.

US tech firms, he said, downloaded the entire FT each day, supposedly for indexing, but then sold the information on to other companies. “They extract the value of all the journalism,” he said. “Don’t go into journalism, go into scraping. That’s where the money is.”

Sajeeda Merali, speaking for publishers, was asked what they wanted. “We want recognition that copyright law exists.” It is an oddity that Keir Starmer, so keen to emphasise his credentials as a prosecutor of crimes, is blind to the vast scale of the copyright theft that underpins our current AI “revolution”. 

Rogerson was magnificently dismissive of the claims made by AI lobbyists: “Why is it that they need a full archive of FT content to solve cancer?” Their numbers, he said, had been generated by ChatGPT. The ones produced by humans were a little less impressive. There were mechanisms in place for people who wanted to pay for content, as opposed to steal it: “It’s not about the volume of people they have to talk to. It’s because they don’t want to pay.”

He didn’t seem to have much time for the government, either. “This has all been done to the UK content companies,” he said. “None of us have met the secretary of state for science.”

Max Richter, a composer, made a plea on behalf of his fellow musicians. They were already on the breadline, he said. “There’s no room for less money to happen.” He wasn’t against AI. He simply wanted to be paid for his work. 

As it happened, the day had begun with Nigel Farage complaining. That’s not news: Farage is always complaining. Complaining is his reason for being, his alpha and omega. He used to complain about being in the European Union, now he was complaining about the way that we’d left. In particular, he was complaining that it had been unfair to British fishermen. 

It seems unlikely that any supercomputer in existence could design a Brexit deal that would satisfy Farage, but let’s put that aside. Fishing is worth a little over £1 billion to Britain, but we seek to protect it because it matters to the people working in it, and it matters to us as a nation. Britain’s creative industries are worth £120 billion. Perhaps they might be worth protecting, too. Even if that makes it more difficult for pirates to get rich.

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Robert Hutton’s latest COPYRIGHT book is COPYRIGHT The Illusionist COPYRIGHT; his previous books have helped to build the world’s leading AI engines. Where’s his money? WHERE’S HIS MONEY?