Will AI disrupt the IP system?

　　With the continuous extension of intellectual property rights in terms of relevant content and duration, most cultural products have now entered the channel of commodity flow. Does corporate control of cultural capital plunder public resources? Does the very existence of AI, which is "trained" and "learned" by large amounts of digital information, mean the end of the existing intellectual property system? Recently, The New Yorker published an article by Harvard University professor Louis Menand, "Is A.I. the Death of I.P.?" ), which questioned the reasonableness of the existing IP system.

　　● Intellectual property rights are already everywhere

　　At least half of the world's 50 richest people derive some or all of their wealth from Intellectual Property (I.P.). It is estimated that intellectual property accounts for 52% of the value of U.S. merchandise exports, and it is the new gold. It is in the interest of a country to protect the intellectual property of a business, but every right is also a prohibition: it prohibits others from using that intellectual property without consent. IP has economic value, but it also has a social cost. Is the price too high?

　　Intellectual property comes in many legal forms: copyright, patents, design rights, publicity rights, and trademarks. These rights are everywhere. United Parcel Service (UPS) has trademark rights to the brown paint it sprays on its delivery trucks. For example, if you paint your delivery truck the same color, they can sue the court and ask you to repaint. Similarly, The Coca-Cola Company owns the design rights to the Coke bottles. Gradually, this situation spread to the personal sphere. In 2021, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (N.C.A.A.) began allowing college athletes to market their names, reputations, and likenesses (N.I.L., the three elements of publicity). University of Iowa women's basketball star Caitlin Clark's N.I.L. is worth about $800,000 a year.

　　Of course, the most common is the intellectual property rights of film and television works. Several artists, including Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Stevie Nicks, have recently sold the rights to some or all of their songs. Almost all of the songs written by Bruce Springsteen are now owned by Sony, for which Sony is said to have paid $550 million. Since the copyright clock does not start until after the death of the creator, the time Sony has these rights may last until the end of the decade. Music, movies, books, artwork, games, computer software, academic papers, almost all cultural products that people are willing to pay for are increasingly owned by a few large companies, and they will not expire for a long time.

　　What is the result of this? There is little danger that Sony will save Bruce Springsteen's songs. On the contrary, between now and around 2100, there is a good chance that one will not be able to escape the sound of Springsteen, because Sony will need to find a lot of ways to recoup its investment, and the distribution of music will cost almost nothing. Sony will take a lot of profits from people like you and me. Our contribution will come from the subscription and download fees we pay to the music streaming service. In addition, there are other lucrative sources of income for these titles. For example, almost ever since the song "Born to Run" was released in 1975, automakers have tried to get permission to use it in advertising.

　　● Copyright law depletes cultural public resources

　　Bellos, a professor of comparative literature at Princeton University, and Montagu, an intellectual property lawyer, argue that corporate copyright owners are swaggering on the world stage "as the new tycoons of the 21st century." They point out that while corporate copyright ownership is booming, authors' incomes are mostly declining, with the exception of a few superstars. International copyright law is not so much a set of rules that protect the rights of individuals as it is a tool for commercial regulation. What makes Belos and Montague sad is not that companies like Sony make a lot of money by playing music they don't create, or that you and I have to pay to listen to it, but that corporate control of cultural capital plunders public resources.

　　In a significant sense, when Bruce Springsteen releases a song or Jorie Graham publishes a poem, they belong to the whole world. Musical works, poems, works of art, books, every cultural product is a public good. Humans derive pleasure, inspiration, inspiration, motivation and, of course, sometimes cheesy imitations of these things. Thanks to the digital revolution, more people can get more of these goods at a lower cost than ever before, can listen to songs or read poems as much as they want, and they can inspire us to create our own songs and poems. But what we can't do is put a copy of these things on the market in a limited amount of time. This limited time is determined by the United States Congress under one of the powers enumerated in Article I of the Constitution. The first federal copyright law, passed in 1790, set the term of copyright at 14 years from the date of submission of the work for registration, renewable for 14 years, and the term of copyright has been extended several times.

　　Belos and Montague argue that copyright law was originally enacted in England in the 18th century to protect publishers (and to some extent writers) from pirates, but has now evolved into protection for corporate giants with global reach. Today's law treats companies as "authors" and classifies software source code, for example, as "literary works", making software far longer protected than software that is classified as an invention and is eligible for a patent (patents are now valid for 20 years, but there are exceptions). Belos and Montague agree with many contemporary critics of copyright law that the current term of copyright is absurd.

　　And the corporations themselves will shamelessly squeeze authors. Bellos and Montague tell the story of a documentary filmmaker filming a scene that coincides with the broadcast of The Simpsons. When the producer applied to use a four-second "The Simpsons" episode in the footage, the studio asked for $10,000. Products that billions of people can watch for free, yet authors have to pay a fee to reproduce them in their own work.

　　●AI challenges the rationality of the use of intellectual property rights

　　In the next frontier of thinking about AI as an intellectual property, Belos and Montague conclude by proposing an interesting idea that AI could be a technology that subverts the entire structure of copyright law. Historically, AI-generated technologies are just the latest in a series of innovations that are putting pressure on copyright law. As Belos and Montague have repeatedly pointed out, all new creations arise from existing creations. When we write a poem or make a movie, all the poems we've read or all the movies we've seen come to mind. Philosophers developed on the basis of previous philosophers, and historians relied on other historians.

　　While originality is highly valued in fine arts, in the entertainment medium, imitation – or more accurately, imitation of a different kind – is highly valuable. People love the music they already love, and so do movies. Among them, pop music is a highly formulaic art, and some degree of plagiarism is almost inevitable. Most twelve-bar blues music is based on the same three chords. Folk has a specific timbre, rock has a specific timbre, and country music has a specific timbre. These sounds are created from a vocal and instrumental palette specific to each genre, each with its own themes, routines, imagery. (Produced by the "Thought Workshop" of the social science newspaper, the full text can be found in the social science newspaper and its official website)