Comment by Tom Weldon

– The principle that rightsholders should decide when, how and where their work is used and be fairly compensated for that holds good and does not need to be reversed in the way the government’s preferred Option 3 envisages i.e. with the automatic right for AI developers to use copyright work to data mine for commercial purposes unless the rightsholders opt out/reserve their rights. – “Opt out” doesn’t currently work technically or practically. For example, the EU DSM Directive exception and opt out was designed for content extraction not content creation, and in practice it has proved unworkable in the context of data mining by AI companies. As a result, content has been and continues to be scraped at scale, including from pirate sites, and used to train AI models without permission or payment. Unverified source (2025)