Cathy Wolfe, EVP & President of Wolters Kluwer Global Growth Markets, was quoted in media coverage of the high profile lawsuits that seek to determine whether ChatGPT and other generative AI products are breaking copyright and fair competition laws. One lawsuit comes from The New York Times, another from a group of well-known novelists including John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin, and a third from bestselling nonfiction writers.
In an Associated Press article headlined, “ChatGPT-maker braces for fight with New York Times and authors on ‘fair use’ of copyrighted works,” Cathy says fair use arguments are “very fact dependent and determined on economic impact and other factors.” Cathy, who also sits on the board of the Copyright Clearance Center which helps negotiate print and digital media licenses in the U.S., explained, “Just because something is free on the internet, on a website, doesn’t mean you can copy it and email it, let alone use it to conduct commercial business.” Wolfe said. “Who’s going to win [the lawsuits], I don’t know, but I’m certainly a proponent for protecting copyright for all of us. It drives innovation.”
In the TechTarget article headlined, “OpenAI's fair use claim against The New York Times lawsuit,” Cathy expanded on the importance of copyright. She said, “without copyright, innovation is at risk. If you're going to spend the time, money and effort to create something ... then someone can just take that now put the work in and commercialize that, then that's going to discourage people from actually innovating." Cathy also explained that one way to avoid these suits and problems is for creators to adhere to the collective licensing system in place where “there's a clear set of allowed uses and a clear price or different licenses for different kinds of uses" and matters like this can be handled without the courts.
