I don’t find Cliff’s notes to be similar at all. They represent standalone short-form content written by authors that is a purchasable option alongside more in-depth options written by other (or at times the same) authors.

If Cliff’s notes were actually just AI summaries of specific books generated by an unrelated entity and presented in a way that allowed the reader to avoid purchasing the underlying content, that’d be a very different scenario.

In the linked example, YouTube is essentially doing the latter. The product launched in this thread sits in a greyer area I think, but still raises some questions about content ownership and how creators will react to these new kinds of tools and modes of consumption.

Whether or not it’s strictly legal is a different conversation than whether or not creators feel comfortable with these emerging options.

> Once its out there, they lose control of how people interact with it.

Sure. But they also have every right to choose to put it behind a paywall if new tools change the calculus that originally made publishing it publicly make sense.