The search tool created by The Atlantic has revealed to the general public what professional creators have been fighting in court for some time now: the big AI companies have taken billions of copyrighted works without authors’ knowledge, permission, or payment.
Every day, all types of creators discover that their works are in datasets used to train generative AI models. Even worse, the datasets are shown to be “libraries” full of pirated material. In response, many creators are joining class-action lawsuits and exploring services for licensing their works for legitimate AI training. But before you do either of these things—or both—is your work registered with the U.S. Copyright Office?
Plaintiffs in class-action suits have been removed from copyright claims because the works at issue were not registered; and as for licensing, those deals are based on your ability to enforce your copyright rights. In the U.S., only registration provides the full range of legal remedies for copyright infringement. As such, before creators add their names and works to databases designed for licensing, we strongly recommend securing rights with registration.
You can submit one work (e.g., a book, one poem, one blog post, etc.) written by one author in about one minute with the RightsClick registration tool. If you have a larger portfolio, you may want to consider the RightsClick copyright management suite for more tools and functionality.
Learn more about registration in general and how RightsClick makes it easy and quick!
