Controversy: Kast’s Government Replicates Boric’s Copyright Law Proposal Amidst Public Outcry

Original article: Polémica: Gobierno de Kast copia al de Boric en proyecto de ley depredador de derechos de autor By Leopoldo Lavín Mujica This week, the debate reignited over the controversial neoliberal legislative package titled «National Reconstruction and Economic and Social Development Law» sent by José Antonio Kast to Congress. Harshly criticized for its regressive nature, overarching ambition, and blatant intention to dismantle social and cultural rights under the guise of efficiency, this proposal has raised significant concerns. Among its various provisions, one has particularly alarmed the cultural, editorial, and academic sectors: the introduction of an exception to copyright that allows Artificial Intelligence systems to reproduce, adapt, and utilize protected works without authorization or compensation to their creators.

However, the true scandal doesn’t solely lie in the radical nature of Kast’s proposal; it is also in the fact that this provision is not original. It is a near-verbatim reproduction of a rule that Gabriel Boric’s government had already promoted in 2024, which was then rejected by the Chamber of Deputies. Crass Ignorance or Deception Camila Vallejo’s involvement in the so-called Progressive Summit in Barcelona, which focused on disinformation, digital platforms, and the necessity to defend democracy from algorithmic power, now sounds less like a political initiative and more like a carefully orchestrated piece of amnesia.

While this international platform condemns the dominance of large tech platforms, information manipulation, and the concentration of technological power, Boric’s own government in Chile advanced a norm that moved exactly in the opposite direction of the democratic safeguard now invoked alongside Kast’s neoliberal package. Kast’s mega-reform, in its article 8, incorporates a new article 71 T into Law 17. 336 on Intellectual Property, establishing an exception to copyright for the automated extraction and analysis of data.

This allows for the reproduction, adaptation, distribution, and public communication of protected works without authorization or remuneration to their holders. The text outlines that it will be ‘lawful, without compensation or obtaining the authorization of the holder,’ to use a legally published work if it is done for the extraction, comparison, classification, or statistical analysis of language, sound, or image data. In simple terms, this permits large Artificial Intelligence systems—many controlled by foreign corporations—to massively utilize protected content without payment, permission, or economic rights acknowledgment for their authors.

Thus, while speeches on informational sovereignty, digital democracy, and cultural defense are made, legislation facilitating the private appropriation of cultural goods by the world’s most concentrated tech platforms was promoted. In Practice: Progressives and Neoliberals When Vallejo speaks of combating disinformation and confronting platform power, she omits that governing also requires confronting the economic model that underpins that power. In this regard, the government’s performance is disappointing: there was no structural reform of media, no substantial strengthening of a public communication system, no serious policy against media concentration, and worse, there was a willingness to weaken the protection of national creators for the benefit of the global Artificial Intelligence industry.

Latin American leftists often rightly denounce the economic colonialism of digital platforms. However, in Chile, under progressive rhetoric, a form of cultural extractivism emerged—transforming local intellectual production into free raw material to feed foreign business models, primarily based in Silicon Valley. This isn’t about defending technological stagnation or denying the importance of Artificial Intelligence.

It raises a much more fundamental question: who wins and who loses when legislation is enacted? If the result is that authors lose rights and large platforms gain accumulation capacity, then we are not looking at a progressive policy but a technocratic version of old neoliberalism. This is why the statements from Barcelona do not convince.

It is not enough to denounce disinformation in international forums while simultaneously promoting a legal framework that strengthens those who concentrate global informational power. It is insufficient to discuss digital democracy while normalizing the free transfer of intellectual work to the new monopolies of Artificial Intelligence. The real question is not what Vallejo said in Barcelona, but why her government defended precisely what it attempted to critique outside of Chile.

Speaking against platforms may be politically advantageous; however, legislating for them reveals something deeper: technological ignorance or simple neoliberal obedience.