Investigating Attitudes towards Automated Copyright Recognition Technologies

Abstract

The introduction of automated content recognition technologies (copyright bots) has had a palpable impact on the creativity of artists, mainly in copyright-intensive industries like the film and music industry, which depend on the online distribution of their products. Based on our semi-structured interviews with professional musicians who routinely use sampled materials in their own work as well as one with a representative from an international record label and one from a global company that develops content recognition technology, we present the attitudes of artists towards automated copyright recognition technologies and how they deal with them in their creative practice. Our findings serve for discussion of optimal or right legal regulation which should be based on the informed understanding of social expectations by the addressees of the regulation.