EFF: “Technical standards like fire and electrical codes developed by private organizations but incorporated into public law can be freely disseminated without any liability for copyright infringement, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. Tuesday’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upholds the idea that… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Copyright
The Pirate Preservationists
Reason – When keeping cultural archives safe means stepping outside the law “…Countless companies specialize in finding forgotten music, often released by regional or local labels that went out of business long ago, and repackaging it for modern listeners. Countless crate-diggers do essentially the same thing, but they post their finds on blogs, on YouTube… Continue Reading
The Battle Over Books3 Could Change AI Forever
Wired: “…Books3 started as a passion project by a Midwestern guy going through a weird time. “I poured my soul into the work,” he says. He saw it as aligned with the open source movement, a way to democratize access to the kind of data sets OpenAI was already using. Some of his collaborators went… Continue Reading
AI Litigation Database
“This database presents information about ongoing and completed litigation involving artificial intelligence, including machine learning. It covers cases from complaint forward – as soon as we learn of them – whether or not they generate published decisions. It is intended to be broad in scope, covering everything from algorithms used in hiring and credit and… Continue Reading
The effect of copyright on the digitisation and availability of visual artworks
Centre for Economic Policy Research: “There is an ongoing debate on the need for protection of creative works to ensure availability and distribution. This column exploits a change in copyright protection in the US to examine how copyright affects the digitisation and distribution of artworks over the internet. The authors find a strong increase in… Continue Reading
US Copyright Office opens inquiry into laws needed to rein in genAI
“The agency move is part of an ongoing effort to gather public feedback on why AI can sometimes flagrantly use copyrighted materials to produce content. The agency plans to hand over its findings to Congress. The US Copyright Office is seeking public input on copyright law and policy issues raised by generative AI and is… Continue Reading
Google DeepMind has launched a watermarking tool for AI-generated images
MIT Technology Review: It’s the first Big Tech firm to publicly launch one, after a group of them pledged to develop them at the White House in July. The tool, called SynthID, will initially be available only to users of Google’s AI image generator Imagen, which is hosted on Google Cloud’s machine learning platform Vertex.… Continue Reading
AI Can’t Read Books. It’s Reviewing Them Anyway
Wired (free to read): “ChatGPT-powered avatars recently gushed over a new book—unconvincingly. But if AI develops actual opinions, authors might be in for a shock…a PR release I received last week. The subject line: “AI book reviewers?” The press release touted “the first book to ever be reviewed by AI avatars.” I’ve written book reviews,… Continue Reading
Reclaiming Control: The Internet Archive Empowers People. Gatekeepers Keep Suing
Tech Dirt: “…About a year and a half later, the Internet Archive was sued for providing books in this manner to the public. The suit was triggered by a short-lived, well meaning program that made books available to students during a dark part of the pandemic by lifting certain restrictions on how many people at… Continue Reading
The Authors Whose Pirated Books Are Powering Generative AI
The Atlantic [free link]: “One of the most troubling issues around generative AI is simple: It’s being made in secret. To produce humanlike answers to questions, systems such as ChatGPT process huge quantities of written material. But few people outside of companies such as Meta and OpenAI know the full extent of the texts these… Continue Reading
AI-Created Art Isn’t Copyrightable, Judge Says in Ruling That Could Give Hollywood Studios Pause
Hollywood Reporter: “More than 100 days into the writers strike, fears have kept mounting over the possibility of studios deploying generative artificial intelligence to completely pen scripts. But intellectual property law has long said that copyrights are only granted to works created by humans, and that doesn’t look like it’s changing anytime soon. A federal… Continue Reading
Google says AI systems should be able to mine publishers’ work unless companies opt out
The Guardian – “The tech company’s latest proposal about generative AI turns copyright law on its head, and could especially hurt smaller content creators, say experts. Google says AI systems should be able to mine publishers’ work unless companies opt out. The tech company’s latest proposal about generative AI turns copyright law on its head,… Continue Reading
