Of course, talking about “the Left” is a very broad brush. So, as an example, I’ll give Jacobin.com . If you search for “copyright”, you will find that they have published a number of wonky articles critical of copyright pre AI-hype, just as one would expect. In recent years the tone changes. In the context of AI, you find an article just regurgitating lines by capital owners. Reporting on the legal troubles of the Internet Archive, the issue gets a both sides treatment.
In contrast, the Internet Archive - or libraries in general, as well as other organizations devoted to free information - have not pivoted to the right. But these are not left-leaning, as such.
How the rise of AI has affected the financial interests of traditional capitalists is obvious. What’s not obvious is why left-leaning spaces support these interests.
What gives?
(I’m sure many will feel that I completely misunderstand this. If you want to CMV you could explain what the endgame is supposed to be. How will it help the general public to grant more privileges to owners of intellectual property?)
Copyright exists to protect creators. However, copyright laws are abused by large corporations.
I am not a regular reader of Jacobin, especially not stories about copyright, but if I had to guess, their main concern is the stifling of culture caused by corporate-driven copyright legislation and attacks on the public domain, moating companies from competition and having to find new material (how many Spiderman movies have come out since 2000?)
Worse, (perhaps according to Jacobin) OpenAI, a large corporation with lots of money, is freely using copyrighted material to train its models, thus profiting on someone else’s work.
I think that these takes square quite nicely