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As you might expect, the protests were creative, but were strange. Support more than 1,000 artists, including Annie Linux and Kate Bush, this week’s release to Silent album contains nothing more than the background studio noise. The album is called 47 minutes Is this what we want? It contains 12 tracks entitled: The. British. government. He should. no. Legitimacy. music. theft. to. benefit. Amnesty International. Companies.

As a musical experience, album – Available on Spotify – It is not very recommended. Personally, I am the best John Cage 4’33 ”, which is a three -time composition in which the orchestra does not play, mainly because it is shorter.

But this silent protest is part of a global revolution by creative artists and content companies against unauthorized use of their work by large technology companies. In the United States, the authors Syndicate and 17 individual authors, including Judy Piccolt and Jonathan Franz. A more traditional American follow -up A form of protest by prosecuting Openai and Microsoft to violate copyright, claim “Wide stealing.” The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association also protested the “sharp intelligence in the media”.

These conflicts are a classic example of what is happening when new technologies surpassed written laws for a previous era. When intellectual property laws were enacted, no one could imagine one day when huge companies make the entire internet as training data on childbirth intelligence models and then a convincing simulation of poems, pictures, music and videos arose. But the principle that no one should benefit from the other intellectual property Without approval, it should still be applicable.

As in many other countries, the British government is currently struggling to reorganize it Principle and practice And modernizing the laws of intellectual property of the era of artificial intelligence. As protests appear, this is not easy. Creative industries of decisive importance to the British economy. According to government figures, they contributed 124 billion pounds in the total value added to the economy in 2023, or about 5 percent of the total. On the other hand, the government is desperate to put the UK as a friend of AI, behind the United States and China.

The UK government is afraid to deviate from the Trump administration on technical policy and also wants to distance the European Union’s intrusive regulations. Last month, the government The work of artificial intelligence opportunities has been published The statement that the current uncertainty about intellectual property must be resolved urgently. It has been widely consulted but has “fair use” exemptions, which will be welcomed Amnesty International Companies.

What is partially ignored in this debate is the extent of the desperate AI companies obtaining new content created by man to develop their models-and to pay them if they can do this easily and strongly. “We need to find new economic models where creators can obtain new revenue flows,” Samani’s CEO, Openai, admitted in December.

As it happens, many startups try such economic models, including Prorata.ai, Tollbit, and Human Native.ai. Prorata is developing a answering engine that pays a share of the income of the Artificial Intelligence Company for the content of the content whenever their work appears in its responses. Tollbit from AI BOTS and Data Data Sade enables its content and thus reducing legal uncertainty. Human Native creates a two -sided market that allows artificial intelligence creators to license data from content.

Just as the infiltrators shortened music from the registration companies in the early first decade of the twentieth century-before the industry developed and enabled consumers to push the music over the Internet-so the creative industries are witnessing their “NAPSter”, says James Smith, co-founder of Human Native. Some of these creative companies already highlighting individual content license deals with artificial intelligence companies: Excel Springer, News Corp and FT signed agreements with Openai during Agence France-Press suffered with Mistral. The original person aims to automate that process on a large scale. “We want to be the infrastructure to enable the data trade on the Internet,” says Smith.

The largest difference between the NAPSter era, and today, is that the pirates are no longer small groups of infiltrators, but they are giant companies with pressure on the muscles. Reformed legislation may be necessary to force their hands. But emerging market mechanisms are evolving, which can provide mutual solutions. If the artificial intelligence companies do not bite this carrot that it deserves to be subjected to a large stick.

john.thornhill@ft.com