During Copyright Week, various groups discuss crucial copyright principles to foster creativity and innovation. Historical tensions between copyright holders and new technologies—like search engines, photocopiers, and now generative AI—highlight ongoing debates over fair use. Courts have consistently ruled that copying for analysis, indexing, and learning falls under fair use, crucial for maintaining a free and open internet. This principle extends to AI training, where analyzing patterns in existing works produces transformative outputs without displacing the originals. Recent rulings, such as in Bartz v. Anthropic, affirm that AI training constitutes a transformative use, countering speculative market harm. Expanding copyright to control knowledge analysis could hinder machine learning practices vital for research, disproportionately benefiting large companies while sidelining smaller innovators. Thus, fair use remains essential to safeguard creativity and expression against unnecessary restrictions, reinforcing that learning from existing works is foundational for free expression and innovation.
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