AI, PIRACY, AND THE DEATH OF OWNERSHIP

Аннотация

The rise of artificial intelligence is forcing a reckoning with the
very foundations of intellectual property law. For centuries, copyright and patent
regimes have relied on the premise of scarcity: that works are original, finite, and
owned by identifiable creators. Yet AI systems undermine these assumptions by
generating infinite outputs at negligible cost, blurring authorship, and accelerating
global access to culture. This article situates the debate historically, showing how
piracy—from 19th-century American publishers pirating Dickens to cassette tape
sharing in the 1980s—has often been a driver of cultural dissemination rather than
mere criminality. Today, in places like Uzbekistan, the reliance on “pirated”
knowledge is not deviance but necessity, enabling students, entrepreneurs, and
creators to participate in global knowledge economies. By analyzing contemporary
legal disputes around AI training data, the EU AI Act, and U.S. copyright
litigation, the paper argues that ownership is being outpaced by technological
reality. Three futures are explored: subscription-based access models, reputation
economies built on trust and attention, and open-source commons as global
infrastructure. Ultimately, the Global South may transition into this post-ownership
world more rapidly than the West, where legal and corporate systems remain
anchored to outdated notions of exclusivity