Surging to the forefront of digital rights advocacy, a coalition of prominent artists, writers, and musicians confronted the Prime Minister yesterday during a heated three-hour summit at Downing Street, demanding immediate reforms to what they described as “fundamentally broken” copyright legislation.
The delegation, representing over 15,000 creative professionals across the UK, presented a thorough manifesto highlighting the disproportionate burden creators face in policing platforms for copyright infringements.
Central to their demands was a call for platforms to bear greater responsibility in detecting and removing unauthorized content.
Platforms must shoulder the burden of identifying and eliminating unlicensed material without creator intervention.
“We spend countless hours filing takedown notices instead of creating,” explained novelist Margaret Thurman, who reported finding over 200 unauthorized copies of her works online last year.
The group advocated for AI-powered detection tools as a mandatory requirement for digital platforms, backed by meaningful financial penalties for non-compliance.
The summit occurred amid increasing tension over AI’s role in creative industries, particularly following the landmark ruling in Thaler v. Perlmutter (2023), which reinforced that works created solely by artificial intelligence cannot receive copyright protection.
Several attendees expressed concern about the ambiguity surrounding what constitutes sufficient human input for copyright eligibility in AI-assisted works.
The delegation emphasized the need for creators to document their creative processes, as only works with substantial creative choices by humans may qualify for copyright protection.
The creators also challenged the current copyright term length—life plus 70 years—as excessive and detrimental to public domain access.
Award-winning composer Julian Marsh suggested a reduced term of life plus 50 years with active renewal requirements, arguing this would “balance creator compensation with cultural availability.”
Musicians in the delegation specifically highlighted the importance of registering with performance rights organizations to ensure proper collection of royalties when their works are used publicly.
The meeting coincided with projections of increased litigation in 2025, with over 40 major lawsuits expected against AI companies regarding training datasets.
Fair use boundaries remain particularly contentious, with creators seeking statutory safe harbors to define permissible transformative uses clearly.
The delegation also highlighted widespread issues with opaque royalty practices, leaving many artists unaware of their actual earnings from digital platforms and streaming services.
Several performers advocated for the exploration of sync deals as an alternative revenue stream that could provide significant income while maintaining creative control.
The Prime Minister committed to establishing a cross-departmental task force by March 2025 to address these concerns, acknowledging that copyright law alone cannot solve the labor-management disputes arising from AI adoption.
“Today marks the beginning, not the conclusion, of this essential conversation,” the PM stated as the meeting concluded.
