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?)
The world overall has changed.
Copyright used to be one of the main threats to a free and open Internet that empowered people to communicate freely, to a digital society overall.
Now the “digital society” is very much something that’s been realized and isn’t going away any time soon, meanwhile there are other threats to the free and open Internet from all sides of the political spectrum, such as: age verification laws, attempts to censor “hate” and “misinformation”, bans on specific platforms (TikTok) etc. etc. etc. This has distracted people from copyright, everybody seems to have now accepted the fact that copyright will mainly be enforced by DRM and if the DRM is broken, there’s no effective way to stop the spread of information.