The Bookseller - Editor's Letter - The party crashers

From our point of view, the lessons from Napster were gleaned more than a decade ago. When publishers were threatened with online piracy, their adoption of e-reader technology, led by Amazon, Microsoft and Sony, helped establish a legitimate trading environment for published content distributed digitally. When Amazon accelerated the format shift with its low pricing, they moved to restrict the retailer's ability to undercut print prices. Their approach to audio has so far been similar, adopting a form of subscription that listeners are drawn to, but on a restricted basis.

The advent of artificial intelligence brings a fresh challenge, however. As far as this change goes, we are back in the Napster phase. We can see the contours, but can't quite yet see where it leads. Last month a number of authors - and others - launched an open letter opposing the use of their material unfettered in the development of AI that might undermine their value. "The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted," it read, following a similar pattern to past open letters, which I hope leads to some redress.