Big Tech has won a major victory in the battle for data and copyright. The impact of the web on business, publication, and future is profound.
Two recent US court decisions in favour of artificially using millions of books for AI training have tweaked this near-realistic legal consensus. Companies like Google, Meta, Openai, Microsoft may not have to pay for the text, images, or videos they consume to power AI tools.
This is a big victory for Big Tech and the new AI economy. But it could overturn the web and the creators who keep it vibrant. If AI can repackage all digital knowledge in milliseconds, the value of the written word, and perhaps other content, can be plunged. For now, the judge appears to have not been forced by the US Copyright Office claim that this new flood of content will undermine the market for the original material. For now, fair use appears to protect the AI giant.
Running one of the biggest networks on the web, CloudFlare is shifting the paradigm from opt-out to opt-in, pushing back new tools for AI to pay for crawls. It is boarded by the Atlantic, Ziff Davis and publishers including time.
These rulings could drive deeper change. With content scraping shackles turned off, authors may rethink how and where to share their knowledge online. Bloomberg holds news articles within the terminal. Tech blogger Ben Thompson uses his newsletter to stay firmly behind the paywall. Microsoft's new “signal” magazine? Printing only.
In a world where AI bots roam freely, the most valuable ideas can go offline or dark. It may be that a new era of rarity, privacy and perhaps paper has just begun.
