Apart from unwillingly handing over its revenue to transnational digital platforms, the journalism industry is also facing challenges from generative artificial intelligence (AI).
These AI tools generate content to replace news media after using a large amount of news content to conduct modularized training, and yet most AI companies do not pay for the rights to use the content they train their models on.
Facing such unfair treatment, news outlets from different countries have started to fight for their rights. Google was fined 250 million euros (US$268 million) in March by French regulators for breaching an agreement to pay media companies for reproducing their content online, and for training on content from publishers and news agencies without notifying them.
This is the latest action from France’s competition watchdog against Google for its disputes over payments to news agencies.
The New York Times has also sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed in a Manhattan federal district court, claims that the firms train AI chatbots using articles published by the paper without its permission.
The New York Times is reportedly claiming billions of dollars in damages. From the paper’s perspective, the companies seek to have a “free ride” on its investment in journalism.
US writers and comedians have also said AI companies use their work to generate content that imitates their style without compensating them despite making profit from it.
News agencies in our country have recently demanded transnational digital platforms pay for their content. They have also started reviewing to what extent their content is used to train AI tools, in what ways they should be compensated and what legal options they could resort to.
What we could learn from these international lawsuits is that individual news outlets should not be left alone when they negotiate with transnational digital platforms. State power should be exercised proportionately in this process to fight for a satisfactory result for news outlets in our country.
Despite having massive resources, transnational digital platforms provide little compensation to media companies. The government should not allow press agencies to be at the mercy of digital platforms.
The government should ensure news outlets are able to maintain sustainable and reasonable revenue by legislating for it — bargaining for their share of revenue should come first. This is the only way to support a democratic society and a healthy media industry.
Dino Wei works in the information technology industry.
Translated by Fion Khan
Why is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not a “happy camper” these days regarding Taiwan? Taiwanese have not become more “CCP friendly” in response to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) use of spies and graft by the United Front Work Department, intimidation conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and the Armed Police/Coast Guard, and endless subversive political warfare measures, including cyber-attacks, economic coercion, and diplomatic isolation. The percentage of Taiwanese that prefer the status quo or prefer moving towards independence continues to rise — 76 percent as of December last year. According to National Chengchi University (NCCU) polling, the Taiwanese
It would be absurd to claim to see a silver lining behind every US President Donald Trump cloud. Those clouds are too many, too dark and too dangerous. All the same, viewed from a domestic political perspective, there is a clear emerging UK upside to Trump’s efforts at crashing the post-Cold War order. It might even get a boost from Thursday’s Washington visit by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. In July last year, when Starmer became prime minister, the Labour Party was rigidly on the defensive about Europe. Brexit was seen as an electorally unstable issue for a party whose priority
US President Donald Trump is systematically dismantling the network of multilateral institutions, organizations and agreements that have helped prevent a third world war for more than 70 years. Yet many governments are twisting themselves into knots trying to downplay his actions, insisting that things are not as they seem and that even if they are, confronting the menace in the White House simply is not an option. Disagreement must be carefully disguised to avoid provoking his wrath. For the British political establishment, the convenient excuse is the need to preserve the UK’s “special relationship” with the US. Following their White House
US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House has brought renewed scrutiny to the Taiwan-US semiconductor relationship with his claim that Taiwan “stole” the US chip business and threats of 100 percent tariffs on foreign-made processors. For Taiwanese and industry leaders, understanding those developments in their full context is crucial while maintaining a clear vision of Taiwan’s role in the global technology ecosystem. The assertion that Taiwan “stole” the US’ semiconductor industry fundamentally misunderstands the evolution of global technology manufacturing. Over the past four decades, Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), has grown through legitimate means
RSS