Presentation by Caterina Sganga, Associate Professor of Comparative Private Law, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy at the 6th Summer Academy on Cultural and Creative Industries and Local Development "Disrupting tradition: How digital technology is changing the cultural and creative processes", 18-20 Sept. 2023 ONLINE and 27-29 Sept. 2023 ONSITE (Trento, Italy). More info: https://oe.cd/sacci Visit our website: www.oecd.org/cfe Follow us on Twitter: @OECD_local

1. RETHINKING DIGITAL COPYRIGHT LAWS
TO SUPPORT CREATIVITY, ACCESS TO
KNOWLEDGE AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY
Caterina Sganga
6th Summer Academy on Cultural and Creative Industries and Local Development
Trento / online – 20 September 2023

2. The H2020 reCreating Europe
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under grant agreement No 870626

3. 5 research pillars
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and
innovation programme under grant agreement No 870626

4. 1) Perspective of creators and performing artists on Digitization,
Copyright and the Digital Single market
2) The Growing Role of AI machines as Producers of Literary and
Artistic Works: Challenges to Human Authorship
• Analyze the protection of outputs generated by or with the assistance of artificial
intelligence (AI) systems, tools or techniques (AI outputs) under EU copyright and
related rights law;
• Examine the attribution of authorship and ownership to (natural and legal) persons
involved in the creation or production of AI outputs, including through the empirical
study of practices of AI companies and developers;
• Proposing interpretative guidelines and policy recommendations on increasing legal
certainty regarding the protection
3) AI technologies: ownership of training data as AI inputs
Authors, performers and AI (WP3)

5. • Bidirectional focus
– Challenges raised by copyright to use of Ai in creative industries
– Impact of AI on creative productions
• Aim
– Contribute to ongoing debate at the EU level on whether and how to amend
IP laws to respond to challenges and opportunities created by AI for creative
industries
• Methods
– Desk research to map regulatory framework
– Participatory research tools with stakeholders to develop case studies and
formulate best practices and policy recommendations
Focus, methods, goals

6. • Analysis of different types of AI products and development stages in
various creative fields
• Whether and to which extent such AI applications can be protected?
• Based on stakeholders’ needs, what is the preferred regulatory option?
• Two main issues
– AI productions as something that can be protected by copyright – is this
desirable as incentives
– Use of protected works by AI to generate further creations – do we want to
prevent it or not? If so, how to enforce?
Key points of the research

7. • TECHNICAL PROBLEM
– Current copyright systems conceived around author as human being
• AI-generated vs AI-aided creations → discrimination? At which stage?
– A work to be protected should be original and carry personal touch of creator → this
requires human intervention
– Approach spread worldwide, confirmed by courts and copyright offices
• POLICY PROBLEM
– What do we want to incentivize and why?
– Shall we change our way of conceptualizing notion and stages of creative
contributions?
– Where do we set the bar and what do we take into account?
– See European Parliament Resolution on AI & Intellectual Property, 2020
AI creations protected by ©?

8. • Do we want to cover it with exception for transformative uses?
• Shall we provide private levies? How to enforce?
• Is AI output a derivative work worth protection?
• 4 scenarios
– AI developers and users are the same person
– AI user as the author
– AI developer as the author
– AI user and developers as joint users
• Two approaches
– AIS as self-sufficient generators of copyrightable content
– Ais as tools meant to assist human creators (co-creators)
Use of © works by AI

9. • Clarification of originality threshold
• Change of paradigm within copyright law: clearer stance on normative
inspirations
• Definition of policy proxies to be used to select normativfe choices
– Valorization of human creativity
– Grade of incentive to innovate vs under-investment?
– Identification of proxy human authors for various case scenarios as cheapest cost
avoider
– Overall policy impact of giving to AI same rights of human authors (employment,
public security, cultural diversity etc)
Policy recommendations

10. Thank you for your
attention!
Caterina Sganga
Associate Professor of Comparative Private Law
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna
Piazza Martiri della Libertà 33
56127 Pisa, IT
caterina.sganga@santannapisa.it