Copyright Data Improvement for AI Licensing The Role of Content Moderation and Text and Data Mining Rules

To enable European authors, performers and creative industries to benefit from licensing opportunities in the field of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI) training, it is important to establish a comprehensive metadata infrastructure that ensures the visibility and accessibility of European work repertoires in digital and algorithmic environments and facilitates rights clearance. Copyright norms can encourage rightholders to constantly provide updated metadata in a standardised form. Rules that already require the transmission of work-related information can be transformed into data improvement instruments that contribute to the evolution of accurate, harmonised, and interoperable metadata. The notification of work-related information under Article 17 of the 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market and the opt-out mechanism relating to text and data mining under Article 4 of the same Directive can serve as examples of regulatory frameworks that already require the communication of metadata. These rules offer starting points to generate an even broader spectrum of descriptive and ownership data. If information stemming from these metadata engines is pooled in a central European copyright data repository, the accumulation of copyright data could lead to a metadata reservoir that is capable of enhancing licensing and remuneration opportunities in digital and algorithmic contexts.