Reading list
Shortform reading
This is an incomplete list of the shortform reading (and listening and watching) I’ve been doing lately.
Wikimedia Foundation Tries to Save Itself From Oblivion by Brokering AI Copyright Deal
Call it the Great Copyright Compromise.
You Can Remove DRM From Your Digital Books, but It's Probably Illegal
"Say I tell you that you have my permission to move a book I wrote (and am thus the copyright holder for) from your Kindle to another device. If the Kindle book has DRM, you're still not allowed to move it. The fact that I am the copyright holder has no impact on whether Amazon—a company that didn't create or invest in my book—can prevent you from moving that book outside of its walled garden...In fact, if I supply you with a tool to remove DRM (like some versions of Calibre), then I commit a felony and Amazon can have me sent to prison for five years for giving you a tool to move my book from the Kindle app to a rival app like Kobo," [Cory Doctorow] wrote.
Beyond Copyright: Tailoring Responses to Generative AI & The Future of Creativity
Generative AI presents an opportunity to modernize policies that undergird creative industries, say Betsy Masiello & Derek Slater.
Taylor Swift: Singer, Songwriter, Copyright Innovator
In other words, as soon as a creator finds a way to take back control from intermediaries that have routinely derived excessive profits from the labor of others, the copyright world fights back with new legal straitjackets to stop other artists daring to do the same. That’s yet another reason for creators to retain full control of their works, and to shun traditional intermediaries that try to impose one-sided and unfair contracts.
Combining lending with digital technology is tricky to do within the constraints of copyright. But it’s important to still be able to lend, especially for libraries. With a system called Controlled Digital Lending, libraries like the Internet Archive (IA) made digital booklending work within the constraints of copyright, but publishers still want to shut it down. It’s a particularly ghoulish example of companies rejecting copyright and instead pursuing their endless appetite for profit at the expense of everything worthwhile about the industry.
#copyright · #hachette-v.-internet-archive · #internet-archive · #libraries · #open-access
Neither the devil you know nor the devil you don't
Here's the problem: establishing that AI training requires a copyright license will not stop AI from being used to erode the wages and working conditions of creative workers. The companies suing over AI training are also notorious exploiters of creative workers, union-busters and wage-stealers.
Silicon Valley's unlikely ally to defend generative AI
Anti-copyright activists fought the film and music industries. Now they're fighting artists who want to stop generative AI.
#artificial-intelligence · #copyright · #differing-perspectives
Fair Use: Training Generative AI - Creative Commons
As Creative Commons has argued elsewhere, and others agree, I believe that this type of use should be protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine. In this blog post I will discuss what fair use is, what purpose it serves, and why I believe that using copyrighted works to train generative AI models should be permitted under this law.
Can't say we didn't warn everyone. Last summer we pointed out that Sarah Silverman and a bunch of other authors suing AI companies for copyright infringement seemed to only demonstrate that they didn't understand how copyright works.