I think, A new chapter is about to begin. It seems that in the future, many IPs will become democratized — in other words, they will become public assets.
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If we enter a world where anyone can create a new Mario game and there are thousands of them released on the public web it would be impossible for the rights holders to do anything, and it would be a PR bad move to go after individuals doing it for fun.
Bad PR? The entire copyright enforcement industry has had bad PR pretty much since easy copying enabled grassroots piracy - i.e. since before computers even. It never stopped them. What are you going to do about it? Vote? But all the mainstream parties are onboard with the copyright lobby.
The fact that copyright law is easy to violate and hard to enforce doesn't stop Nintendo from burning millions of dollars on legal fees to engage in life-ruining enforcement actions against randos making fangames.
"Democratization" with respect to copyright law would be changing the law to put Mario in the public domain, either by:
- Reducing term lengths to make Mario literally public domain. It's unclear whether or not such an act would survive the Takings Clause of the US Constitution. Perhaps you could get around that by just saying you can't enforce copyrights older than 20 years even though they nominally exist. Which brings us to...
- Adding legal exceptions to copyright to protect fans making fan games. Unlikely, since in the US we have common law, which means our exceptions have to be legislated from the judicial bench, and judges are extremely leery of 'fair use' arguments that basically say 'it is very inconvenient for me to get permission to use the thing'.
- Creating some kind of social copyright system that "just handles" royalty payments. This is probably the most literal interpretation of 'democratize'. I know of few extant systems for this, though - like, technically ASCAP is this, but NOBODY would ever hold up ASCAP as an example of how to do licensing right. Furthermore without legal backing, Nintendo can just hold out and retain traditional "my way or the highway" licensing rights.
- Outright abolishing copyright and telling artists to fend for themselves. This is the kind of solution that would herald either a total system collapse or extreme authoritarianism. It's like the local furniture guy selling sofas at 99% off because the Mafia is liquidating his gambling debts. Sure, I like free shit, but I also know that furniture guy is getting a pair of cement shoes tonight.
None of these are what AI companies talk about. Adding an exception just for AI training isn't democratizing IP, because you can't democratize AI training. AI is hideously memory-hungry and the accelerators you need to make it work are also expensive. I'm not even factoring in the power budget. They want to replace IP with something worse. The world they want is one where there are three to five foundation models, all owned and controlled by huge tech megacorps, and anyone who doesn't agree with them gets cut off.