Coffey’s testimony offers multiple suggestions for policymakers, including:

• Recognizing that unauthorized use of publishers’ expressive content for commercial GAI training and development is likely to compete with and harm publisher businesses in a manner that infringes copyright;
• Creating transparency requirements to require the recordkeeping and disclosure of unauthorized training uses of material that is protected by copyright, by technical protection measures, or governed by contractual terms prohibiting scraping; and
• Adopting legislation to remedy existing market imbalances that prevent publishers from engaging in fair negotiations for the use of their content against dominant platforms.

“Tech platforms have gotten away with using publishers’ content without appropriate compensation for years,” Coffey said. Unaddressed, this issue has been getting worse, and now AI intensifies the threat that the biggest tech platforms offer to the survival of publishers. All throughout the world, laws mandating tech companies to compensate news publishers are being proposed and passed. The JCPA should be passed by the US in order to prevent it from slipping behind other nations and to guarantee that publishers can keep producing the vital, high-caliber journalism that we all rely on. Acting now is imperative before it’s too late.