All four cases circle a central question around who controls digital content. We are no longer in an era where content is just content that humans read, and so in an age where AI and large-scale reuse are possible, who controls digital content is a question that needs to be answered.
OCLC’s fight over library metadata could change what libraries can and can not do with catalog records, which is even more important since we already know that AI companies are crawling them. Is it possible that we will be on the hook for AI companies’ actions if OCLC wins? The New York Times’s pushback against scraping for AI training raises questions about whether journalism will remain sustainable if machines can freely reuse it. And I think maybe even taking things one step further: what does this mean when content no longer results in payment to its creators? Disney’s efforts to guard its characters and creative works highlight how cultural icons are protected in the face of new technologies. *GASP*, someone might have more sway over the courts and intellectual property than Disney, but is this really what we want? Finally, the Doe v. GitHub case illustrates how open-source code can be reused without credit or compensation to its maintainers, which could, quite honestly, deter developers from creating or sustaining much of the technology that underpins the modern internet. Taken together, these cases are about how the information we rely on for our livelihood is controlled. The outcomes will shape what content is freely available, what gets locked down, and how innovation can (or can’t) move forward.