Speaker: Prof. Robert Brauneis (George Washington University)
Chair: Prof. Christophe Geiger (Director of ILEO, Luiss Guido Carli)
Date and Time: November 28, 2024, 2:00–3:30 PM.
Classroom 18 – Via Parenzo
https://luiss.webex.com/luiss/j.php?MTID=m9629bc5850e3c2daeec718b61f38e8f8

 
Please register and confirm your attendance at ileo@luiss.it (required for external visitors to enter the Luiss premises)

Abstract

Human authors typically end up paying some amount, directly or indirectly, for most of the copyrighted works they learn from. Should it be different when humans use copyrighted works to train generative AI models? In this talk, Prof. Brauneis will consider the arguments that generative AI training should not require copyright licensing because it amounts to a “nonexpressive use” that is outside the scope of copyright protection, or because training is like reading, viewing, or listening—activities that do not implicate the exclusive rights of copyright. These arguments raise some of the most fundamental questions about the purpose of copyright: is it to protect the entertainment value of works, or also their educational value? They also touch on basic issues regarding the structure of copyright's exclusive rights and the comparison between human “reading” and computer “ingestion.” 

About the Speaker

Robert Brauneis is the Michael J. McKeon Professor of Intellectual Property Law at The George Washington University Law School and Co-Director of the GW Center for Law and Technology.   After earning his Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, he served as a law clerk to Judge Stephen G. Breyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit (later a U.S. Supreme Court Justice) and to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter.  He is the co-author of a leading casebook on copyright law and of numerous articles on copyright, trademark, and constitutional law. Professor Brauneis is a member of the Project Board of the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center. He has served as a Trustee of the Copyright Society of the USA and was the inaugural Abraham L. Kaminstein Scholar in Residence at the United States Copyright Office.