Is This What We Want? Musicians Respond to Proposed Copyright Reforms in the UK
By Georgia Renard | Associate
On 26 February 2025, over 1,000 musicians and musical groups – including Hans Zimmer, Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, New Order, The Clash, Jamiroquai, and Damon Albarn – collectively released a silent album protesting recently proposed reforms to UK copyright law ostensibly aimed at making Britain a more attractive landing place for AI companies.
The proposed reforms come as the government has signalled that the UK, which already leads Europe for AI investment, is looking to become an “AI Superpower” by taking a “pro-growth and pro-innovation” approach to AI regulation.1
The Status Quo
As it currently stands, UK copyright law dictates that original literary, dramatic, musical, and artistic works are protected by copyright upon creation. The authors of these works become the copyright holders or owners and have certain exclusive rights relating to the copying, distribution, publishing, and adaptation of their work. This reflects international standards set out in, for example, the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works and is largely analogous to copyright law as it operates in Australia.
However, the advent of AI technology in a largely underprepared legislative and regulatory environment has meant that existing copyright frameworks have struggled to address the legal issues that are proliferating around the relationship between AI and copyright. This has been compounded by a lack of transparency from AI developers around what exactly their AI models are being trained on, which together have made it extremely difficult for right holders to enforce their rights and ensure that they are being lawfully renumerated for the use of their work.
The Proposed Amendment
In order to address the ongoing legal uncertainty around the application of copyright law to the training of AI models, the UK government has proposed an exception to copyright law for “text and data mining” that is similar to provisions implemented by the European Union in 2019.2 This would specifically cater to AI developers looking to train their AI models in the UK and give them ostensibly carte blanche access to a corpus of hitherto copyright-protected content, thereby making the UK a more attractive operational jurisdiction for AI companies.
For its part, the UK Government has asserted that these reforms will also help address the difficulties right holders are having in controlling the use of their works by AI developers and obtaining renumeration when their works are used. Under the proposed reforms, copyright holders would be able to reserve their rights and “opt-out” of their work being used under the “text and data mining” exception.
By putting the onus on copyright holders to “opt-out” through this rights reservation mechanism, these reforms – if accepted – would potentially mark a reversal of long-entrenched copyright principles which automatically vest rights of exploitation in copyright owners exclusively. That is, a “text and data mining” exception to copyright protection would also automatically vest a right of exploitation in AI developers for “text and data mining” purposes, unless copyright owners take positive steps to reserve their rights in this regard.
Given the difficulties many right holders have had in enforcing their existing copyright in the face of opaque text and data mining practices to date, it is unclear if “reserved” right holders will have any more success in this regard. The lack of transparency around what AI models are trained on will also make it difficult to ensure that AI developers are honouring opt-outs for the large-scale training of generative AI models. Additionally, it is unclear whether this “opt-out” mechanism will function unilaterally or if right holders will need to opt-out from the individual policies of each and every AI developer training their models in the UK.
The silent album released on Tuesday this week – entitled “Is This What We Want?” – features 12 tracks, the names of which together read “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies.” According to the accompanying website, isthiswhatwewant.com, “the album consists of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, representing the impact we expect the government’s proposals would have on musician’s livelihoods.”
Consultations around the proposed amendment – as well as other issues including transparency, technical standards, contracts and licensing, the personality rights of individual creators, and the copyright status of AI-generated works – closed on 25 February 2025.
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References:
[1] Reuters. (2025). UK PM Starmer to outline plan to make Britain world leader in AI. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-pm-starmer-outline-plan-make-britain-world-leader-ai-2025-01-12/
[2] Intellectual Property Office. (2024). Copyright and Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved from https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/copyright-and-artificial-intelligence/copyright-and-artificial-intelligence
