Creative industry - Make It Fair: big-tech bandits are holding thoughtful expression at gunpoint

Try it yourself: challenge yourself to sit down and research, for hours, days, weeks, months and sometimes years something that you believe merits 750 words of well-structured, articulate, precisely spelt and carefully hung together words that bring to life your thoughts in a stimulating, rhythmic way. Something that takes an age to make and moments to devour, leaving a lasting impression on any given reader. It really isn’t as easy to write well as some might have you believe. It is even more difficult to persevere with painstaking research and recording.

For those reasons, almost all of our brilliant columnists and contributors are published only in the newspaper itself, and behind our paywall; they can only be read by those who believe toil + talent = valuable. It is, if you like, your way of saying: ‘I see how hard these people are working; how brilliant they are at what they do; how fortunate we are to have them.’ It is also, critically, your way of ensuring they do not wander off and do something else, withering on the vine. For, if there were no rewards, no remuneration, no acknowledgement nor appreciation for their efforts, there will be no incentive; bread would have to be put on the table by other means.

Which is why I found myself once again irked to the point of writing about something: theft. Having taken a week off last week to be with my wife and our boys over the school Easter holidays, I returned to pick up and enjoy, as I do daily, the opinion pages of The Yorkshire Post. One contribution, by Andrew Vine, - HERE - left me as worried as it did fuming.

Headline: AI stole my work: the wholesale theft of intellectual property is dark and sinister. Andrew Vine is a paid contributor. Paid by you, incidentally. You who feel his work is worth supporting. Andrew, forgive the repetition of this word but it bears repeating, toiled over two books in particular: Last of the Summer Wine - The Story of the World’s Longest-Running Comedy Series and A Very Strange Way to Go to War. Both can be found on Amazon for around £9, a fair price for work done by a creative individual who cares deeply about what he does.

Or, alternatively, you can find it online for free, being peddled by digital pirates who think nothing of ransacking years - those books took Andrew two years to write - of personal sacrifice. Infuriating, is the word Andrew uses to describe how it made him feel to learn that someone could steal his work, books that in a modest way help him to pay his bills, and dish it out for naff all. You could liken it to shoplifting, or to robbing a bank, but that doesn’t go far enough because his work is now permanently available for nothing. A more fitting analogy would be for said shop to be forced against its will to give away groceries for nothing ... forever, the outcome of which would, of course, be ruinous. And, guess what, it will be ruinous too for the creative industry if lawmakers don’t put a hole in the hull of the big tech pirates - modern-day highwaymen, holding up carriages of intellectual loot; a phalanx of immoral, unethical, unscrupulous bandits, helping themselves to other people’s property, threatening the very roots of arts and culture. For, if the returns for the wares on your production line are destined for the pockets of pilfering pirates, what motivation is there to run that line?

Plays will no longer be written; music no longer composed; stories no longer imagined; research no longer done. Before our very eyes, the nutrients that feed our rich, diverse, wonderful cultures are being stolen, not by AI, as the headline to Andrew’s piece states, but by greedy, faceless individuals using technology to hold thoughtful expression at gunpoint.

Write to your MP. Write to the Prime Minister. Urgently. Because before you know it, there will be no joy left at all.

James

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