We’re taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what’s at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation.
Long before generative AI, copyright holders warned that new technologies for reading and analyzing details would destroy creativity. Internet search engines, they argued, were infringement machines—tools that copied copyrighted works at scale without permission. Like with earlier technologies like the photocopier and the VCR, copyright owners sued.
Courts disagreed. They recognized that copying works to understand, index, and locate information is a classic fair use—and essential for a free and open internet.
Today, the same argument is being recycled against AI. The core question is whether copyright owners should control how others analyze, reuse, and build on existing works.
Fair Use Protects analysis—even When It’s Automated
U.S. courts have long recognized that copying for analysis, indexing, and learning is fair use.This principle didn’t start with artificial intelligence, and it doesn’t vanish just as a machine performs the process.
Copying to understand works, extract information, or make them searchable is transformative and lawful. That’s why search engines can index the web, libraries can create digital indexes, and researchers can analyze data.
