1,000 Artists Release 'Silent' Album To Protest UK Copyright Sell-Out To AI

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The U.K. government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region through changes to copyright law that would allow developers to train AI models on artists' content on the internet -- without permission or payment -- unless creators proactively 'opt out.' Not everyone is marching to the same beat, though. On Monday, a group of 1,000 musicians released a 'silent album,' protesting the planned changes. The album -- titled 'Is This What We Want?' -- features tracks from Kate Bush, Imogen Heap, and contemporary classical composers Max Richter and Thomas Hewitt Jones, among others. It also features co-writing credits from hundreds more, including big names like Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn, Billy Ocean, The Clash, Mystery Jets, Yusuf / Cat Stevens, Riz Ahmed, Tori Amos, and Hans Zimmer.

But this is not Band Aid part 2. And it's not a collection of music. Instead, the artists have put together recordings of empty studios and performance spaces -- a symbolic representation of what they believe will be the impact of the planned copyright law changes. 'You can hear my cats moving around,' is how Hewitt Jones described his contribution to the album. 'I have two cats in my studio who bother me all day when I'm working.' To put an even more blunt point on it, the titles of the 12 tracks that make up the album spell out a message: 'The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies.' The solution, say the artists, is to produce work in other markets where there might be better protections for it. Hewitt Jones -- who threw a working keyboard into a harbor in Kent at an in-person protest not long ago (he fished it out, broken, afterwards) -- said he's considering markets like Switzerland for distributing his music in the future.

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