Ministers are turning to an arcane parliamentary procedure to block an amendment to the data bill that would require artificial intelligence companies to disclose their use of copyright-protected content.
The government is planning to strip the transparency amendment, which was backed by peers in the bill’s reading in the House of Lords last week, out of the draft text by invoking financial privilege, meaning that there is no budget available for new regulations, during a Commons debate on Wednesday afternoon.
The amendment, which would require tech companies to reveal which copyrighted material is used in their models, was tabled by the crossbench peer Beeban Kidron and was passed by 272 votes to 125 in a House of Lords debate last week.
Kidron said: “Across the creative and business community, across parliament, people are gobsmacked that the government is playing parliamentary chess with their livelihoods.
“Using parliamentary privilege is a way of not confronting the issue, which is urgent, for rights holders and the economy. The house is on fire and the government are playing croquet in the garden.
“This is not a serious response, and we are horribly disappointed that a party that promised to put creativity into the DNA of the country – now in power – has turned its back. It will hurt them, it will hurt the country and it is already hurting creative industries who are witnessing their work being stolen at industrial scale.”
Kidron intends to respond to the government’s block by tabling a rephrased amendment before the bill’s return to the Lords next week, setting the scene for another confrontation. This could include removing the reference to regulation, or omitting a timeframe for it to be implemented.
One industry insider said that “introducing moderate, proportionate transparency obligations” such as the Kidron amendments were necessary to protect creators’ work from “wholesale abuse and theft by AI”.
He said: “This is a workable and pragmatic solution, which does not bind the government’s hand on copyright, but would help facilitate a properly functioning licensing market for high-quality content.
“Yet instead of listening to the overwhelming view from the House of Lords and addressing legitimate concerns by engaging on the issues, the government seems intent on using arcane parliamentary tricks to stand in the way of progress.”
Last week, hundreds of artists and organisations including Paul McCartney, Jeanette Winterson, Dua Lipa and the Royal Shakespeare Company urged the prime minister not to “give our work away at the behest of a handful of powerful overseas tech companies”.
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The government’s copyright proposals are the subject of a consultation due to report back this year, but opponents of the plans have used the data bill as a vehicle for registering their disapproval.
The main government proposal is to let AI firms use copyright-protected work to build their models without permission, unless the copyright holders opt out – a solution that critics say is unworkable.
The government insists, however, that the creative and tech sectors are being held back and this needs to be resolved through new legislation. It has already tabled one concession in the data bill, by committing to an economic impact assessment of its proposals.
