Music creators and organisations from across the UK’s creative industries have called on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to explain why he has failed to stand up for the human rights of British creators in the context of AI.
While the AI grievances of British creators are ultimately rooted in copyright law, a new open letter hones in on human rights and international law – to which Starmer’s government has made an “unqualified commitment” – and which, it says, are being “flouted en masse by predominantly overseas tech companies”.
Timed to concede with Donald Trump’s controversial visit to the UK, because many of those “overseas tech companies” are based in the US, the letter is signed by Becky Hill, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jessie Ware, Neil Tennant, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Robbie Williams, Sam Smith, Skin, Robert Smith and Sting, among many other musicians and creators working in other artforms.
Explaining his support for the letter, The Cure’s Robert Smith states, “The UK government should not be valuing corporate interests above the rights of its citizens. It should not be giving away our cultural heritage and our creative future to Silicon Valley”.
He then adds, “It should instead be standing up to the big tech AI companies that continue to ignore the many long-established laws of copyright. Artists and creators must retain control over their own work; any eroding of this basic right is simply wrong”.
The letter itself acknowledges that the government undertook a formal consultation on copyright and AI earlier this year, and continues to consult stakeholders in the creative and AI industries, with the plan to propose changes to the law at some point in the next year. That may involve amending copyright law, in ways that favour either AI companies or the creative industries.
However, it then argues, as it currently stands many AI companies are infringing UK copyrights at a massive scale by copying existing copyright protected works as they train generative AI models without getting permission from creators or copyright owners.
And, it insists, the government should be standing up for creators and rights owners, for example by forcing transparency obligations onto AI companies that would make it easier for rightsholders to enforce their rights through the courts. Such as the transparency obligations that were proposed in the House Of Lords earlier this year and then blocked by the government.
The letter then points to the international human rights law that the creators reckon is being breached by the copyright infringing AI companies. That includes the 1966 International Covenant On Economic, Social And Cultural Rights, which says “everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is author”.
Meanwhile, the European Convention On Human Rights states that the government must ensure that “no one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest”, and that principle should extend to intellectual property.
The letter goes on, “The first duty of any government is to protect its citizens, not to promote corporate interests, particularly where they are primarily based abroad. The failure to do so – apparently driven largely by conflicted advisors and inadequate understanding of the matter by ministers – risks yet more breaches of international conventions and human rights on a greater scale than is already occurring”.
To that end, when Starmer has finished navigating Trump’s controversial visit, and dealing with the flurry of recent controversies surrounding his government, not to mention all the current in-fighting within the Labour Party, he should “set out the government’s justification for actively ignoring the rights of UK copyright holders since the general election”.
Music organisations that also signed the open letter to Starmer include BPI, ISM, FAC, UK Music and the Music Publishers Association, plus collecting societies PRS and PPL.
