Copyright Office rules AI-generated works ineligible for copyright protection
The US Copyright Office has determined that only human authorship qualifies for copyright, rejecting media industry claims that investment alone warrants protection.
What to know
- The Copyright Office has ruled that only human-authored works qualify for copyright protection, excluding AI-generated content—a position grounded in established legal doctrine but contrary to media industry expectations.
- The ruling reflects a fundamental divide: copyright law protects creative acts, not labor or investment, a principle codified in the "sweat of the brow" doctrine and reinforced by decades of case law.
- Media executives reject this standard, treating copyright as a property right designed to protect financial investment rather than creativity—a clash that will shape how AI-generated works are regulated.
US Copyright Office Regulatory agency issuing copyright guidance
Cory Doctorow Analyst and writerMedia executives Industry stakeholders
How it unfolded 1 development · click the chart to see its coverage articlesposts
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Media industry rejects human-authorship standard as shocking departure from their understanding
The Copyright Office's position, uncontroversial in legal circles, contradicts how media executives view copyright as a property right protecting investment rather than creativity. The gap reflects fundamentally different philosophies: law treats copyright as rewarding creative acts alone, while industry treats it as protecting financial investment.
“For media bosses, copyright is a pseudo-property right, designed and operated to protect their bottom line. The point of copyright isn't to incentivize creativity, but rather investment.”
— Cory Doctorow -
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It's not often that I find myself on the same side as the US Copyright Office. In fact, this is the first time in 25 years I've found myself cheering on the office's official actions as good for art *and* free expression, on the side of creative workers over our bosses. - If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share…
2 more of the top 3 · 15 posts in this stretch
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The article is just restating US copyright law for people who don't know it. The title indicates a recent change in policy, and there hasn't been one.Now, this is US law. Much of the world does have "sweat of the brow" copyright. But the US does not. See "Feist vs. Rural Telephone". There must be human creativity because the US constitution reads…
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I'm gonna paint this sentence by @ pluralistic on the side of my house (or maybe just quote it in an essay or something): "You can spend a month iteratively refining your prompt, consuming all your town's water along with 200,000 gallons of diesel and that prompt will be yours for your life plus 70 years, but the image it generates is in the…
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background
Copyright Office establishes human authorship as requirement for copyright eligibility — The US Copyright Office released guidance stating that copyright law exists to incentivize human acts of creative expression, meaning only works of human authorship are eligible for copyright protection. This position reflects established legal doctrine—the "sweat of the brow" principle—which protects creativity, not labor or investment.
What people are saying 11 voices from 2 sites · best of 15 · verbatim
- Nov 1
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When it comes to AI, the Copyright Office is restoring copyright to its proper status, as something you have to work to get: Formalities (31 Oct 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow https:// pluralistic.net/2026/10/31/bur n-berne/
- Oct 31
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Important essay by Cory Doctorow on copyright and how it applies (or doesn't) to works partially or entirely created by "AI" https:// pluralistic.net/2026/10/31/bur n-berne/#unvictored
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> Useful objects are not copyrightableIt cannot be this clean cut or Google v Oracle would have been trivial to decide.A telephone directory can be copyright protected, too. The facts within it cannot. Exactly like recipes. A particular presentation of a recipe is absolutely copyright protected. But this doesn’t mean no one can publish the same…
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I'm confused by the framing that copyright protecting creative expression and not hard work is something that would come as a shock to media bosses. If you're in the business of buying up creative stories and paying for the hard work necessary to sell them to a large audience, then being able to automate the expensive part is good news. Imagine…
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> Basically, we're about to recreate formalities, but managed by the private sector. To the extent that companies use AI in their work, they are going to have to track every pixel and every word and every note that is output by an AI system, and which parts were added or edited by humans after creation.> That means that companies that want to…
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I’m surprised that Doctorow has such a poor understanding of US copyright law. “Sweat of the brow” does not exist here. It is not “fundamental to a correct legal understanding of copyright.” You can argue it should be, but it isn’t. All that matters is human authorship, and LLMs aren’t humans.
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> The CO has taken the (entirely correct) position that copyright law exists to incentivize human acts of creative expression.The US Constitution grants Congress the power to grant copyrights "to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts." Creative expression that is not useful therefore is not constitutionally copyrightable.But that…
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> The simplest, most reliable way to ensure the works you invest in are fully and entirely eligible for copyright is to just use humans for the whole project. Declare a "no-AI policy," and hire human artists to produce the works you hope to sell. Monitor their activity to ensure they're not using AI. Keep good records.That seems true.But also…
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I don't quite get it. Can Pixar copyright its GPU-rendered films or can it only copyright the human-created models?How will the USPTO draw a legal distinction between AI-generated and GPU-generated?
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Today's threads (a thread) Inside: Formalities; and more! Archived at: https:// pluralistic.net/2026/10/31/bur n-berne/ # Pluralistic 1/
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The ins-and-outs of copyright in the age of AI: "Now, as much as I like the idea that we've arrived at a copyright law that insists that a company can only get exclusive rights to its products by paying human artists to make them from end-to-end, I don't think that's likely to be the way it shakes out, but that doesn't mean that this is a wash for…