In early February, I attended the UNESCO  Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) meeting of the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. You can read a little more on the Convention here. https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/convention-protection-and-promotion-diversity-cultural-expressions.

As part of the convention, they specifically recognise “the fundamental role of civil society in protecting and promoting the diversity of cultural expressions (and) encourage the active participation of civil society in their efforts to achieve the objectives of this Convention.” The International Affiliation of Writers Guilds is recognised as a Civil Society Organisation, and so we were able to attend and make interventions.

One of the key issues being discussed at this meeting was how we protect and promote cultural diversity in the digital era. This meeting was also taking place in Paris at the same time as the Paris AI summit was grabbing headlines. We took the opportunity to urge the IGC to support the idea of a global copyright database in order to protect writers’ work from copyright theft by AI developers.

I’d like to share with you the text of what we said on your behalf (and on behalf of all screenwriters) Naturally, the bureaucratic wheels of democracy move slowly, but this is a message we will keep repeating as often as is necessary. 

My name is Jennifer Davidson. I am Chair of the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds. representing some 65,000 writers worldwide. I’m also a screenwriter, so speak here too knowing first hand exactly what is at stake. This is my first time to attend this important meeting – and I’m mindful of the history of UNESCO, and its role as a firebreak against fascism. This convention is needed now more than ever.

We thank the Chair and the Secretariat and the expert group for all their hard work and thoughtful recommendations on behalf of artists.

While these recommendations go through the correct processes, can we, in the interim, work together on the immediate problem of creative works being used for training without permission or compensation and facilitate immediate dialogue among all rightsholders to develop an equitable and transparent licensing ecosystem?

Such a database should allow us to either reserve rights or agree to them being licenced. It will also be imperative for rightsholders in the global south to know what rates and terms their peers in the north are receiving so that they too can receive fair treatment and remuneration. It’s important that all artists have tools to protect their work. Not every country or creative discipline has a CMO and they should not be left out. We’d urge this database to be a recommendation, or commitment, and perhaps something the UN’s ITU standardisation bureau, or the AI for Good Foundation, can assist with. 

We urge you to support the establishment of a global database and to uphold the principle of the uniqueness of human creativity in an era when AI companies take advantage, for free, of our valuable work and insult culture by calling it data. The IAWG may be prepared to support such an initiative with human, and possibly financial, resources. Thank you.