The basic trade-off inherent in copyright is a simple one. On the one hand, increasing
copyright yields benefits by stimulating the creation of new works but, on the other hand, it reduces access to existing works (the welfare ‘deadweight’ loss). Choosing the optimal term, that is the length of protection, presents these two countervailing forces particularly starkly.

Unfortunately this “research” is merely the subjective opinion of a “open data activist” who, to my knowledge, has not created anything, and is based on a flawed and entitled premise that the world is owed “access” to the creations of artists. I invite you to use your own brain, and reach your own conclusions:

• If I write a song from my own mind, what entitles you or anyone else to access of that song?
• If you paint a painting and hang it up on the wall of your bedroom, does that entitle me to have access to it in any way?

The answers to these questions are obvious.

There is no need to optimize copyright laws to balance the the rights of creators with the accessibility of media, because copyright exists simply to protect creators to own and control their own creations, which other people are in no way entitled to. “Access” isn’t a factor, or at least it shouldn’t be within the lifetime of the original creator.

“The AI + open data combo is incredibly powerful—but it must be democratic, ethical, and human-centered.” - Rufus Pollock, CKAN Monthly Live #33, July 6th 2025

It “must be” democratic? ethical? human-centered?

Guess what? It’s none of those things… And the only way to even begin to force it to be any of those things is creating robust copyright laws that protect creators from exploitation of the technology-controlling elite oligarchs who have monopolized money, power, and the means of production (if you can even call generously generative AI “production”, instead of mere theft.)

So again, I’ll ask you, “what have you made in your life that leads you to think copyright should be limited to 15 years?”

The answer for someone like Rufus Pollock seems to be “I’ve created nothing, I just want access to other people’s things”, probably only so that he and other highly privileged tech bros can further engineer a society where they can use people’s data for their own benefit.

We don’t need some 20 year old joke of a research paper from Cambridge to judge what we are seeing with our own eyes right here and now. If you need a concrete example of where forced “open data” (as in, “we’ve pirated every song ever and hosted them on Anna’s Archive so big tech can use them to train a model to rip off musicians who are already working 2-3 jobs to make ends meet”) has failed, it has been the abuse and exploitation of copyrighted works on the part of generative AI companies in a system that has only served to make the rich richer and the poor, including the creative class, poorer.

Pollock isn’t entitled to “access” to the things I create, nor is Altman entitled to train his over-valued company’s for-profit product off of them. Fuck that.

The increasingly broke creative proletariat are being ripped the fuck off by the disgustingly wealthy techno-oligarch bourgeoisie, all because generative AI training seems to barely be a gray area in existing copyright laws–showing once and for all that giving these people even a single inch of “access” to our work will end in nothing but rampant exploitation.