A new ProMarket piece argues that the wave of publisher-AI licensing deals making headlines this year won't solve the underlying rights problem at internet scale. The math of licensing works for a handful of major outlets and rightsholders, but the open web is too vast, fragmented, and orphaned-rights-heavy for bilateral deals to cover meaningfully.
For data companies betting that licensing will normalize into a clean market, the piece is a caution: expect continued reliance on litigation, statutory fixes, or opt-out regimes rather than a licensing market that scales.
The False Hope of Content Licensing at Internet Scale
