Storytelling, Copyright, and President George Washington
Reflecting on our intellectual property rights in the age of AI
Most of our storytelling has no connection to the concept of copyright. We tell stories all day long; in casual conversations or in business meetings, as well as sending emails or posting on social media.
And we do so without ever considering intellectual property rights. But that paradigm shifts when our goal becomes crafting stories we plan to publish, such as novels, short stories, plays, poetry, etc. We consider such works to be products of our creativity, and the last thing we want is some carpetbagging pirate to steal our work.
So when I heard that 235 years ago, on May 31, 1790, President George Washington signed into law the first U.S. copyright act, I was intrigued. You see, I didn’t realize that intellectual property was such a big deal so long ago. Silly me. I guess I should have paid more attention in history class.
As it turns out, in colonial America there was no protection for an author’s works. Publishers could freely reprint any book without compensating the original author, which, to be blunt, sucks. The question arose, “How could America develop its own intellectual traditions, its own literature, and its own scientific contributions, if the financial incentive for Americans to write and publish didn’t exist?”
The U.S. Constitution
Turns out, The Founders were well aware of that situation, so they included the issue when writing the U.S. Constitution.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the US Constitution: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
The First Congress implemented the copyright provision of the US Constitution in 1790. The Copyright Act of 1790, An Act for the Encouragement of Learning, by Securing the Copies of Maps, Charts, and Books to the Authors and Proprietors of Such Copies, was modeled on the Statute of Anne (1710). It granted American authors the right to print, re-print, or publish their work for a period of 14 years and to renew for another fourteen. The law was meant to provide an incentive to authors, artists, and scientists to create original works by providing creators with a monopoly. At the same time, the monopoly was limited in order to stimulate creativity and the advancement of “science and the useful arts” through wide public access to works in the “public domain.” Major revisions to the act were implemented in 1831, 1870, 1909, and 1976. ~ Association of Research Libraries
I won’t get into all the changes that have occurred over the past 235 years, as I’m most interested in today, and the fact that AI companies have been feeding their LLMs the entirety of human creativity, including a boatload (sorry for using a technical term) of material that is protected by copyright. Claiming “fair use” to explain the theft, these companies don’t feel a need to compensate anyone for anything.
Just my humble opinion, of course, as I’m not an IP expert/attorney/pundit, but based on what I’ve read to date, these LLMs have been consuming endless volumes of:
books
academic papers
magazine articles
news articles
blog posts (I’ve seen articles from my website show up in AI output)
photographs
illustrations
digital artworks
videos
music
I’m sure you’ve all come across articles about the lawsuits currently in the courts.
The legal battles surrounding AI training practices center on whether using copyrighted materials constitutes fair use under U.S. law (17 U.S.C. §107) or violates creators’ exclusive reproduction rights.
Legal Posturing
Plaintiffs’ Position: Training constitutes mass infringement by creating unauthorized copies during data ingestion. Outputs act as derivative works, violating market value.
Defense Position: Training is transformative analysis protected by fair use, analogous to human learning. Outputs don’t replicate protected expression.
If you want to dig deeper, here’s a recent article on the controversy…
Copyright Office Weighs In on AI Training and Fair Use
May 15, 2025, Skadden Publication / AI Insights
by Stuart D. Levi, Mana Ghaemmaghami, MacKinzie M. Neal
Back to you…
So on the one hand, I’m offering my thanks to the founders who had the foresight to implement copyright protection, but I’m pretty sure that if they were here today the current state of affairs would not please them.
Two questions for you.
First, have you found any of your copyrighted works referenced in an AI response?
Second, your thoughts on LLMs using copyrighted material without compensation?
And since these articles are fueled by copious amounts of hot java, you can always…
