Welcome to the fourth issue of the HLK Newsletter
tracking the AI legal landscape. In this issue, we are taking
a look back at peer-to-peer sharing, a massive industry brought
swiftly to heel by copyright law and update you on discussions
regarding the AI Act, US Executive Orders and reflect on what
– if anything- we learnt from the AI safety summit at
Bletchley Park.
The trials of Napster: a model for generative AI?
On a late summer's day, right at the start of a brand-new
millennium, Silicon Valley got some very bad news.
Back then, the Internet still seemed young and limitless,
zinging off in a thousand directions, alive with unimagined
possibilities. Google was 2, Amazon mostly sold books and broadband
was a word very few people even understood. Against this
background, a boom in sharing was taking place. Called 'peer-to-peer' sharing, it felt like lending
a friend a book or an album. Of course, things were changing from
the physical to the digital, so it
