Scrape, scrape, scrape away
“The new Labour government’s proposals to reform copyright law to support AI development would require rights holders to take pro-active steps to protect their works from web scraping and data mining for the purposes of AI training, effectively diminishing their rights, with no new proposals for obtaining redress.”
The UK government has today (17 December 2024) published its consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, open for response until 25 February 2025, which proposes to reform U.K. copyright law to “deliver a solution that achieves” the government’s objectives of simultaneously supporting the creative industries and the “development of world-leading AI models in the U.K. by ensuring wide and lawful access to high-quality data” through a “competitive” regime to “encourage AI developers to train their models in the UK”.
The government proposes an exception to permit data mining for any purpose (not merely for text and data analysis for non-commercial research as currently permitted by section 29A Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) where there is lawful access to the relevant copyright work, but with a carve out such that the exception could not be relied upon where the rights holder had reserved their rights through an agreed mechanism or an effective, accessible, machine-readable format (by blocking generative AI web crawlers using robots.txt, for example, or associated metadata or even third party registries). The carve out for rights reservation through an agreed mechanism out would effectively preserve the rights of copyright holders in the creative industries whose works are registered with collective licensing schemes such as PPL PRS.
The consultation queries whether creators and performers have sufficient control to be able to exercise their rights in relation to AI, or whether these are in practice routinely assigned.
While the consultation focuses significantly on the impact on the creative industries, the consultation requests input on the implications for other sectors, bodies and individuals, with education being explicitly identified, although professional services and other knowledge-based industries may be similarly impacted.
For AI developers, the consultation proposes additional transparency measures in relation to AI training material subject to legal, commercial and practical or technological constraints.
There is no proposal to amend the existing infringement and liability provisions.
The consultation also addresses international interoperability, the temporary copy exception, the exception for non-commercial data mining, AI output labelling, digital replicas or deepfakes, the interaction with data protection law, personality rights and, emerging issues.
Finally, the consultation addresses whether AI generated works should continue to benefit from the protections contained at section 9(3) Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988 for computer generated work.
For support in understanding how these proposals will affect you, or in preparing a response to the consultation, please contact us.
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