Meta’s systemic copyright violations reflect Zuckerberg’s profit-driven legal strategy, publishers argue—undermining creative industries globally
Original framing: “Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, publishers allege - AP News” — AP News (via Google News)
If unchecked, Meta’s model could lead to a 70% consolidation of global media ownership by 2035, with AI-generated content further eroding the value of human creativity. Scenario planning suggests that regulatory fragmentation (e.g., EU’s Digital Services Act vs. US laissez-faire) will create a 'race to the bottom' where platforms exploit jurisdictional arbitrage. A future where copyright law is replaced by 'attention licensing' could commodify even the act of thinking, turning human cognition into a monetizable asset. The long-term implication is the death of the public sphere as a shared cultural commons.
Meta’s alleged copyright violations under Zuckerberg’s leadership are not an aberration but a systemic feature of platform capitalism, where the enclosure of the digital commons is justified as 'innovation.
' The historical parallels to 19th-century robber barons and 20th-century media monopolies reveal a pattern of corporate power consolidating through legal manipulation, while indigenous and marginalized voices are erased by the very frameworks meant to protect them. The cross-cultural lens exposes how Western IP law functions as a neocolonial tool, imposing individualistic property regimes on communal knowledge systems. Yet the future is not predetermined: cooperative ownership, indigenous data sovereignty, and algorithmic accountability offer pathways to dismantle the extractive logic of platforms. The trickster’s irony lies in the fact that the most effective resistance may come not from litigation but from reimagining ownership itself—turning the tools of enclosure into instruments of liberation. The battle over copyright is ultimately a battle over who controls the future of human creativity.