"On the way home, I screenshot and crop a news article and share it to one of my WhatsApp groups. In another group, a family member has posted an AI-generated video (forwarded many times) of Donald Trump getting his head shaved by Xi Jinping while Joe Biden laughs in the background. I watch the mindless slop on my phone as I walk along the main road, instinctively gripping my phone a little tighter as I do so."
"Perhaps we should start on the internet, where technology has essentially legitimised and embedded stealing into our shared digital culture. Aggregator websites, viral meme accounts, screenshots, copy and paste, the abundance and ubiquity of the feed: all these serve to blur the relationship between the creator and creation, sweeping up our ideas, thoughts and pictures into a common buffet. It feels frictionless, victimless, even empowering."
Everyday digital behaviour and platform design have normalized appropriation and copying, creating a pervasive sense of entitlement and impunity. Small acts such as screenshotting, sharing viral memes, and reposting articles blur the line between creator and communal content. Physical measures against theft coexist with online aggregation, forwarding, and meme culture that treat creative output as a common buffet. Generative AI models trained on scraped copyrighted material extend these practices into automated creation, exploiting abundant feeds where virality is rewarded and penalties are minimal. The result is reduced clarity around ownership and rising ethical and legal dilemmas over reuse and misappropriation.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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