Copyright news (29 May)
Last notice to re-subscribe, IGC treaty on TK & genetic resources, injunctions explored, AI advises adding glue to pasta
Important notice: following this week, the Copyright Newsletter may no longer be sent to IFLA’s mailing lists. This includes the CLM & FAIFE public and committee lists on which this newsletter originated.
If you are subscribed to those lists, please subscribe to THIS newsletter directly at the link below if you have not already done so. Whether you continue to read or this is where we part ways, thank you sincerely for your readership! - Matt
Also note: last week I was in Lisbon at Creative Commons’ Open Culture roundtable. Many excellent discussions were had on responsibly ‘opening’ institutional collections online and off, as well as working toward a UNESCO recommendation. More to follow.
As a result, this week’s message is longer than usual will be ‘clipped’ in email. Should you desire more news, click the header to see the whole post on Substack! - Matt
Events
Open Access Made Easy: How to Open Your Collections for Greater and Better Sharing (Connecticut League of Museums / CC)
18 June, noon
“Join us for a session developed by Creative Commons to learn about the open culture movement, the benefits of sharing your collections widely, and how your institution can “go open” responsibly.”
Law
WIPO TREATY ON GENETIC RESOURCES AND ASSOCIATED TRADITIONAL KNOWLEDGE HARMONIZES DISCLOSURE AND REMEDIES (InfoJustice, 27 May)
“The World Intellectual Property Organization adopted a landmark treaty mandating that members require disclosure of genetic resources (GR) and associated traditional knowledge (TK) in patent applications and limiting remedies for non-compliance.[1] The outcome may provide the ground rules for more countries to adopt disclosure rules and for companies to comply with them more regularly. Enough countries have signed the treaty that it could go into effect if and when most of them ratify.”
The Post-DSM Copyright Report: Article 17 (Communia, 13 May)
“This is the final blog post in our series on trends in national copyright policy following the DSM implementation. With the national processes finalised in all but one Member State, we have analysed the transpositions to understand the impact of our proposals… Article 17 changed the liability rules for most for-profit content sharing platforms (“online content sharing services providers” or “OCSSPs”), which are now considered to be directly liable for copyright infringing content uploaded by their users and made publicly available on their platforms.”
Documentary Filmmaking Community Files Amicus Brief in Important Fair Use Case Involving Tiger King (UCI IP Arts & Tech, 13 May)
“The International Documentary Association, Film Independent, Kartemquin Films, Women in Film, and the University Film and Video Association asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, sitting in Denver, to reconsider a concerning ruling that threatens to undermine many fair use practices that documentary filmmakers rely on every day…The case at issue, Whyte Monkee Prods., LLC v. Netflix, Inc., involves use of roughly one minute of footage in the documentary series Tiger King. A three-judge panel of the appeals court held that the use was not “transformative””
Policy paper #19 on e-lending (Communia, 27 May)
“Libraries hold important collections of – generally copyright-protected – works, the vast majority of which are not commercially available in digital form. Digitising and making available these works through e-lending allows libraries to empower communities to access and explore these works remotely.”
You can't take it with you, but you can't leave it for someone else either: Valve says you aren't allowed to bequeath a Steam account in a will (PCGamer, 26 May)
“"Unfortunately, Steam accounts and games are non-transferable," the support rep explained. "Steam Support can't provide someone else with access to the account or merge its access to another account.
"I regret to inform you that your Steam account cannot be transferred via a will.”
Lina Khan’s noncompete crackdown could leave most doctors and nurses out in the cold (Fortune, 27 May)
“Many physicians and nurses are happy about the Federal Trade Commission’s new rule banning the use of noncompete agreements in employment contracts. But they are disappointed that it may not protect those who work for nonprofit hospitals and health care facilities, which provide most of the nation’s care and employ the largest number of medical professionals.”
Injunction junction, what’s the function?
I really fell down the rabbit hole on the Lucy Letby case last week, which I experienced this as a conflict between the five or six Americans who read long-form journalism and some angry Brits highly invested in legal procedure. What interested me was two countries seemingly living in different informational landscapes, and a legal-cultural taboo on publicly questioning the outcome of a trial. In America, the press is seen to keep the courts honest (or at least document their myriad mistakes); in Britain, the sanctity of justice is seen to need protection FROM the press.
The short version: 13 May the New Yorker released a 13,000-word, well-researched article arguing that the murder cases against Letby was highly flawed because [redacted and/or cut for space]. Within the law and our remit, however, I’d like to discuss how injunctions may come into play in information quality. I’m not shouting ‘free speech’ on principle, but rather calling for analysis of if injunctions serve the interests of justice and public discussion.
The New Yorker article - and other reporting - is subject to an injunction in the UK so as not to “undermine confidence in the justice system” as the government seeks to retry one attempted murder charge in a case that previously ended in a hung jury. Letby is currently serving 14 whole-life orders and was denied appeal May 25 (Quoth Reuters helpfully: “No further details can be given for legal reasons”). The case was previously covered by the British press in highly florid language, and it remains legal to refer to Letby as a “serial killer”.
With respect to Letby, the current state of play, and the New Yorker:
I get the concept that shielding a trial from the (oft sensationalistic) press helps ensure fairness. However, the outcome of this trial will not affect the defendant’s existing 14 life sentences. It is difficult to see how copious existing BABY KILLER headlines DO NOT prejudice a jury while a reasoned, careful questioning of the evidence might.
The injunctions in Letby’s earlier trial seem to have contributed to the British press, across the political spectrum, never giving serious thought to her innocence. By the time detailed commentary could be published, her guilt was taken as fact. Notable exception: Private Eye, which was also injuncted into silence. Court transcripts are very expensive to obtain, further discouraging responsible reporting. Non-professional reporting also suffered from a dearth of sources and the vitriol of editors: compare Wikipedia’s account of the evidence to the New Yorker’s.
Law and professional norms seem to discourage legal professionals from commenting on the specifics of the cases or critically evaluating points of process. You can even be threatened with jail for filing an amicus brief!
The result, collectively, appears to be a vacuum of informed public commentary, as the arcane working of the court system become equated with fact. On the first point: the most detailed, well-researched article (the New Yorker article) on a contentious public issue goes against the general public story - and is blocked from timely public consideration as more inflamed passions stew. I am, however, more concerned about the second point: that few British outlets, during the legal publication window, attempted a comparable piece. And the third point seems to limit understanding and critical windows into the system itself.
Moreover, this all does not seem to serve the stated purpose of encouraging “confidence in the justice system” to those with questions.
Anyway, on what is for the purposes of UK law an unrelated note, properly funding and staffing public institutions might improve quality of service. Charging staff for non-existent crimes may eventually get noticed and lead to public outcry.
Alternatively, I propose a solution modeled on America’s post-9/11 airport response: create a bottomless pit named "Exceedingly Rare Crimes Unit" down which authorities can flush unlimited money and civil liberties. Everyone else gets longer lines and more paperwork. From here forward, you won’t be able to set foot in your GP without waiting in a very long queue for a public search, flashing your passport six times, declaring patriotism and non-murderous intent, and documenting every interaction in triplicate. - Matt
“Impossible to approach the reporting the way I normally would”: How Rachel Aviv wrote that New Yorker story on Lucy Letby (Nieman Journalism Lab,
“In her piece, Aviv concludes “there has been almost no room for critical reflection” about the case in England. A leading medical journal removed a comment from a doctor who warned against a “fixed view of certainty that justice has been done” in the Letby case “for legal reasons” while leaving “at least six” other editorials and comments “which did not question Letby’s guilt” on the site, Aviv reported. Other people have received notes from police threatening consequences including imprisonment over online posts and links shared on Twitter…
[Aviv]: In the U.K., it is extraordinarily expensive to obtain transcripts — a transcription of one day in court costs roughly $100, and it requires the judge’s approval. It took about half a year to get the judge’s approval. I was told that even appeals lawyers tend not to request their clients’ full transcripts, because of the cost.”
Why the New Yorker blocked UK website readers from its Lucy Letby story – an expert explains (The Conversation, 17 May)
“This is not an assault on open justice; quite the opposite – the aim is to ensure Letby receives a fair trial, as is her right under the Human Rights Act. Then, once the trial ends and the restriction is lifted, the New Yorker article will be available to everyone"
By all means ban the Lucy Letby article—but cherish the spirit behind it (Prospect, 18 May)
“Mullin tracked down the men who were really responsible for the atrocity and, nine years after the Birmingham Six had been locked up, published a book which argued there had been a miscarriage of justice. It earned him a headline in the Sun: “Loony MP backs bomb gang.”
Lucy Letby and Comparative Law (UK Law Weekly, 20 May)
“Unfortunately, when it comes to comparative law, there is often a certain jingoism that takes hold. What should be an academic exercise that examines the advantages and disadvantages of a given legal system can often just turn into ‘our system is better than yours’.”
There’s an article I shouldn’t tell you about – is contempt law in a losing battle with reality? (Guardian, 21 May)
“it now takes an average of more than 300 days from the time of charge to the completion of a case, and if an arrest is publicly known the contempt clock starts even earlier. Last year, astonishingly, the attorney general, Victoria Prentis, even warned that coverage of allegations against Russell Brand could amount to contempt even though no arrest had taken place…
there is a kind of self-censorship at play. Because the law doesn’t set out exactly what is or isn’t allowed – it will vary in each case – but relies on interpretation of that broad definition, a “substantial risk of serious prejudice”, many news organisations will be squeamish about those judgments when the penalty for getting it wrong might be an unlimited fine, the collapse of a trial and even, theoretically, the imprisonment of the editor. That is the definition of a chilling effect.”
AI
Google Search Is Now a Giant Hallucination (Gizmodo, 24 May)
“The AI is hallucinating answers to several user queries, creating a less-than-trustworthy experience across Google’s flagship product. In the last week, Gizmodo received AI overviews from Google that reference glue-topped pizza and suggest Barack Obama was Muslim.
The hallucinations are concerning, but not entirely surprising. Like we’ve seen before with AI chatbots, this technology seems to confuse satire with journalism – several of the incorrect AI overviews we found seem to reference The Onion.”
We have to stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem (Verge, 15 May)
“One Google ex-researcher claimed it could be fixed within the next year (though he lamented that outcome), and Microsoft has a tool for some of its users that’s supposed to help detect them. Google’s head of Search, Liz Reid, told The Verge it’s aware of the challenge, too. “There’s a balance between creativity and factuality” with any language model, she told my colleague David Pierce. “We’re really going to skew it toward the factuality side.””
Artificial intelligence technology behind ChatGPT was built in Iowa — with a lot of water (AP, 9 Sept)
“In a paper due to be published later this year, Ren’s team estimates ChatGPT gulps up 500 milliliters of water (close to what’s in a 16-ounce water bottle) every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions.”
So, this is the part of America where I’m from. Fun fact: until recent rains and other severe storms, it was in drought for several years! - Matt
Books are Big AI’s Achilles Heel (Authors Alliance, 13 May)
“A library-led training data set of books would diversify and strengthen the development of AI. Digitized research libraries are more than large enough, and of substantially higher quality, to offer a compelling alternative to existing scattershot data sets. These institutions and initiatives have already worked through many of the most challenging copyright issues, at least for how fair use applies to nonprofit research uses such as computational analysis. Whether fair use also applies to commercial AI, or models built from iffy sources like Books3, remains to be seen.”
Kabir et al, CHI ‘24
“Our analysis shows that 52% of ChatGPT answers contain incorrect information and 77% are verbose.”
The Three-Faced Interface (Brett Scott, 26 May)
“Our fear at this new technology goes beyond our jobs being at risk. AI is a way to make corporate interfaces ever more invasive and dominating. That’s why every tech company is pushing us to use it, like digital meth dealers. Here, we’ve integrated your new AI assistant into every interface box that your career depends on. There’s no opt-out.”
AI-assisted writing is quietly booming in academic journals. Here’s why that’s OK (Conversation, 12 May)
“The most serious problem with AI is the risk of introducing unnoticed errors, leading to sloppy scholarship. Instead of banning AI, we should try to ensure that mistaken, implausible or biased claims cannot make it onto the academic record.”
‘I feel betrayed’: Schumer’s much-awaited AI road map gets panned by watchdogs (Fast Company, 15 May)
“Other groups, including the AI Now Institute, Accountable Tech, and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, have also criticized the road map’s lack of attention to AI harms…. While the road map lacks detail about many of the issues AI watchdogs worry about, it’s hyper-specific about the steps the Senate should take to pump more money into AI research and development.”
AI chatbots are intruding into online communities where people are trying to connect with other humans (Conversation, 20 May)
“A parent asked a question in a private Facebook group in April 2024: Does anyone with a child who is both gifted and disabled have any experience with New York City public schools? The parent received a seemingly helpful answer that laid out some characteristics of a specific school, beginning with the context that “I have a child who is also 2e,” meaning twice exceptional… That child does not exist and neither do the camera or air conditioner. The answers came from an artificial intelligence chatbot.”
OpenAI’s Long-Term AI Risk Team Has Disbanded (Wired, 17 May)
“In July last year, OpenAI announced the formation of a new research team that would prepare for the advent of supersmart artificial intelligence capable of outwitting and overpowering its creators. Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s chief scientist and one of the company’s cofounders, was named as the colead of this new team. OpenAI said the team would receive 20 percent of its computing power.
Now OpenAI’s “superalignment team” is no more, the company confirms. That comes after the departures of several researchers involved, Tuesday’s news that Sutskever was leaving the company, and the resignation of the team’s other colead. The group’s work will be absorbed into OpenAI’s other research efforts.”
Scarlett Johansson Says OpenAI Tried to Ink a Voice Deal, Was Rebuffed, Then Mimicked Voice Anyway (Hollywood Reporter, 20 May)
““He told me that he felt that by my voicing the system, I could bridge the gap between tech companies and creatives and help consumers to feel comfortable with the seismic shift concerning humans and AI. He said he felt that my voice would be comforting to people,” Johansson shared in a statement. “After much consideration and for personal reasons, I declined the offer. Nine months later, my friends, family and the general public all noted how much the newest system named ‘Sky’ sounded like me.””
How can AI be used to increase diversity in the cultural and creative industries? (Will Darler, 19 May)
“Reassuringly, research from Accenture shows that the next generation of workers believe generative AI will have a positive impact on diversity as 53% of young women think it will enhance their career prospects, and 33% of Gen-Z respondents credited the technology for influencing their choice to work in the creative industries.”
Film & Streaming
Netflix Is Broken Beyond Repair. This Streaming Platform Shows a Better Way. (Slate, 25 May)
“the Criterion Channel is more experimental, diverse, and irreverent. In March’s Razzies collection, they highlighted the Ben Affleck–Jennifer Lopez crime drama released at the height of Bennifer, Gigli (2003), and Paul Verhoeven’s still-controversial erotic thriller Showgirls (1995). The channel has embraced programming that has struggled to find traction on other streamers, like shorts and documentaries, and has continuously highlighted female directors and directors from other underrepresented backgrounds….
The comfort of knowing there will always be a great film that I didn’t have to pick reminds me of when I first started to love movies, back when I was living alone in my mid-20s and constantly watching over-the-air television.”
‘It felt like a historic moment’: the Hollywood strikes one year on (Guardian, 18 May)
“Even before the strikes, every studio was reassessing its streaming strategy. Most are downsizing after several years of rampant spending, cutting staff and striving for profitability. Series production dipped last year after reaching an all-time high in 2022, when 599 original series were made… Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, Sag-Aftra’s national executive director and chief negotiator, believes it got the best possible deal in what remains uncharted territory…”It would have been entirely possible for us to be behind the curve on AI but we were not. We spent years studying it before this negotiation.”
What The Jinx’s Sequel Might Have Been (Slate, 26 May)
“pursuing Durst’s conviction in a form that lacks the restraints of law or the accountability of journalism felt ethically murky. Perhaps it takes one billionaire’s son to catch another, but you never get the sense anyone involved with the project considered the ramifications of using documentary as a means to land a person behind bars. It’s one thing for a filmmaker to set their sights on freeing the innocent; Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line and Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Paradise Lost trilogy are peaks of the form. But it’s more troubling for them to work in concert with power, no matter how just or noble the end might seem. It doesn’t matter if documentarians take insignificant liberties with the facts, like scrambling the timeline of Durst’s climatic interview in the first part of The Jinx, until their work turns prosecutorial, at which point they’re taking on the functions of the state without being subject to any of its restraints.”
Preservation
When Online Content Disappears (Pew, 16 May)
“Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today, compared with 8% of pages that existed in 2023… 23% of news webpages contain at least one broken link, as do 21% of webpages from government sites.”
Cannes 2024: The Second Act, Abel Gance's Napoleon (RogerEbert, 14 May)
“The silent epic was a long-gestating restoration of "Abel Gance's Napoleon," reconstituted to a seven-hour version that is said to have gone unseen since 1927. (Cannes-goers had to settle for just part one; the two parts are scheduled to show together in Paris in July.)”
There’s nothing museums like more than having a BIG entrance that is CLEARLY THE ENTRANCE and which you absolutely cannot use to enter the museum any more
British Museum Recovers Nearly Half of Its 1,500 Missing Objects (Artnet, 20 May)
“Some were listed on eBay by the seller Sultan1966, including a piece of Roman jewelry reportedly worth £50,000 ($60,000) that was offered for a starting price of £40 ($48).
The museum has also announced that its recovery program is currently investigating new leads that may help it relocate approximately 100 more objects”
Something something joke about the rest of the world finding half its missing objects at the British Museum - Matt
We'll Miss You: Pioneering instant messaging program ICQ is finally shutting down after nearly 30 years (PCGamer, 25 May)
“At one point ICQ had more than 100 million registered users”
Education
Do smartphones really cause mental illness among adolescents? Ten problems with Jonathan Haidt’s book (LSE, 15 May)
“Researchers who focus on the complex relationships between various technologies and adolescents’ wellbeing have no evidence that engagement with digital technology is resulting in worse impacts on adolescents’ mental health problems over time. There is only a little evidence for the negative effects of digital screen engagement on adolescent wellbeing.”
Music
Justice Department Files Antitrust Lawsuit Seeking To Break Up Live Nation-Ticketmaster; “Baseless” PR Stunt, Company Responds – Update (Deadline, 23 May)
“the Justice Department sued Live Nation–Ticketmaster today, claiming that the ticketing and concert events giant is stifling competition and driving up prices for consumers.
In response, the self-described “largest live entertainment company in the world” accused the feds of going for a PR hit over the facts of the live music industry.”
The Ugly Truth Behind Ticketmaster’s Lawsuit (Slate, 24 May)
“The feds’ case against Live Nation isn’t really about all the bullshit that Ticketmaster puts fans through when they want to take in a concert. To be clear, it has plenty of time for that. But this lawsuit fits with a recent Justice Department tradition of not just going after anti-competitive businesses but doing so on behalf of a much more sprawling group of stakeholders than just consumers. The message of the lawsuit is that, yes, music fans get a bad deal because of Ticketmaster’s dominance in the ticketing space, but Live Nation’s most corrosive impact is on the events world as a whole, poison not just to fans but to venues, artists, and promoters too. And the only tonic, according to the feds, is to stop letting Live Nation be so many things at once.”
Publishing
Amazon is filled with garbage ebooks. Here’s how they get made. (Vox, 16 April)
“Here is almost certainly what was going on: “Kara Swisher book” started trending on the Kindle storefront as buzz built up for Swisher’s book. Keyword scrapers that exist for the sole purpose of finding such search terms delivered the phrase “Kara Swisher book” to the so-called biographer, who used a combination of AI and crimes-against-humanity-level cheap ghostwriters to generate a series of books they could plausibly title and sell using her name. ..
All of this means that to buy the book you want — to buy Kara Swisher’s Burn Book instead of Kara Swisher Book: How She Became Silicon Valley’s Most Influential Journalist — you have to know what you’re looking for and pay a modicum of attention to your purchase.”
For further viewing, see this Folding Ideas video where the creator follows online advice to make a scam book, and watches as the money (does not) roll in. - Matt
Wiley's 'fake science' scandal is just the latest chapter in a broader crisis of trust universities must address (ABC, 20 May)
“This industry, estimated to be worth $45 billion, is underpinned by giant licks of taxpayer money — including from Australia, which spends $2 billion a year on medical research alone….
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Wiley has now pulled more than 11,300 papers and shuttered 19 journals. In the midst of it all, Wiley's chief executive Brian Napack was moved on.
The Hindawi scandal offers a window into a thriving black market worth tens of millions of dollars which trades in fake science, corrupted research and bogus authorship.”
Libraries are under siege (Editor & Publisher, 23 May)
“The ALA tracks what they call “adverse legislation” — bills they define as, if passed, they would restrict public libraries from providing “diverse materials, resources and programming to their communities.” Their tracker indicated an “unprecedented” number of bills introduced in 2024 across 24 U.S. states. Overall, the tracker says 102 laws are making their way through state legislatures that would limit material available in library research databases, as well as access to books on their shelves that relate to Critical Race Theory (CRT) or LGBTQIA+ issues.”