Fact Sheets
For questions about our fact sheets, contact DPE at info@dpeaflcio.org.
Creative Professionals Depend on Strong Copyright Protections
Many union members earn collectively bargained pay and contributions to their health insurance and pension plans from the sale and licensing of content they help create. Although these professionals typically don't hold the copyrights themselves, the unauthorized use of that content threatens their economic security and more than five million jobs in the creative sector.
Legitimate sales and licensing fund creative professionals' livelihoods and retirement
Through authorized sales and streams of creative works, union members earn compensation and benefits that sustain middle-class careers. In 2023, for instance, nearly $3 billion in residuals were received by creative professionals represented by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), Directors Guild of America (DGA), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), and Writers Guild of America East (WGAE).
Unauthorized use of creative works effectively steals earnings from everyday workers in the form of lost residuals, reduced contributions to health and pension funds, and fewer future work opportunities as this revenue also funds the projects of tomorrow.
Section 512 already lets the world’s largest companies profit off unlicensed creative work
Congress enacted Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in 1998, in the Internet's infancy. Today, due to a string of ill-conceived court decisions and advancements in technology, Section 512’s safe harbor enables the largest companies in the world to build businesses that profit from unlicensed copyrighted works, while rightsholders are left playing takedown whack-a-mole, and the creative professionals behind those works see nothing.
Broad "text and data mining" exceptions would write uncompensated use into copyright law at industrial scale
Tech companies worldwide are lobbying for broad copyright exceptions, including “text and data mining” (TDM) carve-outs that would let tech companies use troves of films, television shows, songs, news articles, and images to train AI systems without consent, compensation, or credit. Broad TDM exceptions would mean union creative professionals and journalists are subsidizing tech industry profits. Every work ingested without a license is lost revenue that never reaches workers: lost pay, lost health and pension contributions, and less revenue to invest in the future projects that create union jobs. Worse, creative professionals and journalists would then have to compete for work against AI outputs generated from their own uncompensated labor.
Policymakers must reform Section 512 and reject broad copyright exceptions. Using copyrighted works, including for AI training, requires consent, compensation, and credit.
Questions? Contact DPE Assistant to the President/Legislative Director Michael Wasser, mwasser@dpeaflcio.org.