Information
Information Literacy and Misinformation (Information Literacy, 28 Aug)
”Conspiracy theories, misinformation, and disinformation are not new phenomena. What makes them prevalent in our society is that they circulate widely on social media. While sometimes sharing inaccurate information is unintentional, a small number of people (known as bad actors) deliberately intend to mislead people and perpetuate the spread of misinformation. Indeed, in his presentation at LILAC 2023, Michael Flierl pointed out misinformation spreads much more quickly on social media than the truth. Citing an article by Meserole from 2018 on the spread of misinformation on Twitter, Flierl argued bad news has and always will sell!”
Wikimedians’ Vision for the Global Digital Compact: Community-Based, Open, and Inclusive (Wikimedia, 23 April)
“Today, the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that hosts Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, along with 12 Wikimedia affiliates, independent organizations that support Wikimedia volunteers, published an open letter that calls on United Nations (UN) Member States to include three key commitments in the Global Digital Compact: a process led by UN Member States that aims to establish principles and commitments that can help harness the immense potential benefits of digital technologies. Our open letter seeks to ensure that online public interest projects such as Wikipedia, and the people who create them, continue to thrive in our shared digital future.”
Why Those Big Pop Culture Accounts Are Lying to You About Beyoncé, Britney Spears, and More (Slate, 1 Sept)
“Although X’s creator monetization standards stipulate that users are forbidden from misleading people to engage with their content, this hasn’t stopped a growing market of pop culture news and nostalgia accounts from fudging and falsifying their posts for a payout”
Publishing
Thirty Years of Legal Research: An Empirical Analysis of Outputs Submitted to RAE and REF (1990‐2021) (Modern Law Review, 14 Aug)
“By analysing these 30,028 outputs, and by using various methods of ranking journals and publishers, we are able to provide insights into the beliefs and prejudices of institutions and individual researchers regarding the publication of legal research over a 30-year period.”
Academic Publishers Threatened By Open-Access Expansion (Inside Higher Ed, 29 Aug)
“Currently, the academic publishing industry’s business model relies largely on an author’s willingness to submit work for free—or even pay to publish it—and the publisher’s ability to turn around and sell that research to academic libraries through expensive journal subscriptions. Libraries at doctoral-granting institutions spend about 80 percent of their materials budgets on such subscriptions, according to data from the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), which supports expanding open access of federally funded research and the federal purpose license.”
Major publishers sue Florida over ‘unconstitutional’ school book ban (Guardian, 30 Aug)
“Six major book publishers have teamed up to sue the US state of Florida over an “unconstitutional” law that has seen hundreds of titles purged from school libraries following rightwing challenges.”
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ sweeps Japan after a 50-year delay (El Pais, 31 Aug)
“The Japanese paperback edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) has become the publishing phenomenon of the summer, selling some 290,000 copies in eight weeks… almost the same as the total number of three hardcover versions printed in the past 52 years.”
Preservation
‘It could disappear for ever’: Anger over sale of George Orwell archive (Guardian, 17 Aug)
“the treasure trove that is the extensive archive of correspondence and contracts amassed by Orwell’s original publisher, Victor Gollancz, could be scattered to the winds in what has been described as an act of “cultural vandalism”.
Crucial correspondence involving the Nineteen Eighty-Four author and Observer correspondent is being offered for sale on the open market, following a decision in 2018 by the publisher’s parent company to sell the archive because the warehouse was closing.”
Rijksmuseum acquires highlight of Maria Sibylla Merian’s oeuvre (Rjiksmuseum, 28 Aug)
“The Rijksmuseum has acquired a first edition of Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium, her illustrated natural history of Suriname. Published in 1705, it is Merian’s masterpiece and a high point of Dutch book production in the 18th century. German-born artist and naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717) had an exceptional eye for the beauty of insects, which she captured in detailed drawings. She was the first person to record the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly in its natural habitat.”
The Netherlands’ Rjiksmuseum has a great open policy. You can see digitsations of Merian’s pictures at the link above and build new work upon them! - Matt
Ashamed. Embarrassed’: Jerry Lewis’s infamous Holocaust clown film that never was (Guardian, 30 Aug)
“The story behind the notorious production is told in From Darkness to Light, a new documentary directed by Eric Friedler and Michael Lurie and premiering at the Venice film festival, which promises to at last get to grips with the mysterious story of why The Day the Clown Cried was never shown in cinemas…
For a while, it looked as if the documentary itself would stall. Its main interviewees – Lewis and Betty Blue director Jean-Jacques Beineix, who as a young man worked as Lewis’s assistant – died before it was completed. Friedler was determined to ensure Scorsese, who revived Lewis’s career in The King of Comedy (1982), was part of the film.”
From Darkness to Light review – Jerry Lewis’ infamous Holocaust film rescued from oblivion (Guardian, 1 Sept)
“We like to imagine that the greatest film follies are extravaganzas of bad taste, too wild and crazy for public consumption. The truth here, I suspect, is less exciting because, on the evidence of the clips the film-makers have unearthed and restored, The Day the Clown Cried is just awful. It’s leaden and lugubrious. The actors speak like automatons…
Lurie and Friedler’s handling of the material sometimes feels perfunctory, but the tale they tell is purely fascinating. Lewis looks so stricken by the ordeal that he risks confusing himself with Helmut. It’s as if, in failing to complete and release his film, he was somehow doomed to keep it with him forever”
Copyright law
How Mickey Mouse entered the Public Domain in 2024 – but not in Germany (Communia, 2 Sept)
“the Agreement between the German Reich and the United States of America on the Reciprocal Protection of Copyrights, an international treaty dating back to 1892… still in force today… guarantees American authors so-called “national treatment” under German copyright law. This means that the copyright term for their works within Germany is calculated using (only) the local formula, disregarding the Rule of the Shorter Term stipulated by the Berne Convention. And because the composer of the then ground-breaking new film score, Wilfred Jackson, only died in 1988, Steamboat Willlie will remain protected under German copyright law until the end of 2058”
"I'm feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic": The story of Oasis (IPKat, 1 Sept)
“it is my view that the difference between ‘parody’, ‘caricature’ and ‘pastiche’ refers to a different field of application of these concepts, not a broader scope of ‘pastiche’ vis-à-vis ‘parody’ or ‘caricature’. ‘Parody’, ‘caricature’ and ‘pastiche’ are ways through which one’s own freedom of expression may be exercised by entering into a ‘dialogue’ with an earlier work or protected subject-matter and / or the ideas conveyed therein.”
My favorite Oasis copyright kerfuffle is when they relegated “Step Out” to a B-side on discovering it was too close to Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight (Everything’s Alright).” - Matt
Film, TV and Art
Studios are cracking down on some of the internet’s most popular pirating sites (Verge, 29 Aug)
“Today, ACE — a coalition of over 50 major entertainment companies and production studios, including Amazon, Disney, and Warner Bros. — took partial credit for the shuttering of Fmovies, a popular network of streaming sites hosting pirated films and television shows…
Whereas studio-owned streamers have gotten into the habit of disappearing their content or splitting it up amongst themselves in ways that make it both difficult and expensive to track down, piracy sites have essentially been big buckets users could dip into to find what they wanted with ease.”
“The suit charges that it was audacious and illegal for WBTV, Wells, Wyle and Gemmill to engage in a protracted negotiation with the estate on an ER sequel, only to set up a show shortly after talks broke down, with similar concept and the same creative participants…
“The Pitt is ER. It’s not like ER, it’s not kind of ER, it’s not sort of ER. It is ER complete with the same executive producer, writer, star, production companies, studio and network as the planned ER reboot,” per the suit.”
Dear Deadline, your headline contains too many words. Please eliminate three. I am not a crackpot. - Matt
Let The Dead Sleep: On “Alien Romulus” and Digital Resurrection (RogerEbert.com, 3 Sept)
“the movie becomes less special as it goes along, embracing a heightened form of Intellectual Property karaoke…
[Redacted]’s family consented to [them being digitally resurrected], plus it’s not Generative AI (the flashpoint of so much controversy at the moment, mainly because Gen AI is an ethical cesspool: a plagiarism machine created by “scraping” living artists’ work without permission or compensation). Rook is a mechanical puppet with a different actor’s voice, layered with a CGI sheen”
Chinese artist detained for 'insulting' Mao sculptures (BBC, 3 Sept)
“Chinese authorities have not responded to the allegations by Gao Qiang, who said about 30 police officers stormed the brothers’ art studio in Sanhe City on 26 August.”
AI
The AI Copyright Hype: Legal Claims That Didn’t Hold Up (Authors Alliance, 3 Sept)
“It is interesting to note that many of the dismissed claims in different AI lawsuits closely mimic one another, such as in Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Andersen v. Stability AI, Tremblay v. OpenAI, and Silverman v. OpenAI. It turns out that the similarities are no coincidence—all these lawsuits are filed by the same law firm. These mass-produced complaints not only contain overbroad claims that are prone to dismissal, they also have overbroad class designations.”
Master List of lawsuits v. AI, ChatGPT, OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, Midjourney & other AI cos. (ChatGPT is Eating the World, last updated 26 Aug)
“We’ve compiled a running list of the lawsuits filed against AI companies, including OpenAI and ChatGPT.”
NFSA Principles for ML and AI (National Film and Sound Archive of Australia
“AI has the potential to unlock our vast collection of digitised and born-digital audiovisual material and help transform the NFSA. By increasing the discoverability and accessibility of the collection, AI can significantly improve the efficiency, accuracy and impact of our archival work. However, as an emerging technology and field of practice, AI also presents new risks and challenges that we must proactively manage. The challenge to responsibly deploying these technologies within a cultural archive is threefold: technical, cultural and legal. The following strategies frame our response to these challenges.”
Grounding AI Policy: Towards Researcher Access to AI Usage Data (Center for Democracy and Technology, 13 Aug)
“The lack of available empirical information about how people use general purpose AI systems makes it extremely challenging to develop evidence-informed policy. Three potential methods can help address this use case information gap, each with its own benefits and challenges:
Data donations…
Transparency reports…
Direct access to data logs”
What is NaNoWriMo's position on Artificial Intelligence (AI)? (National Novel Writing Month, updated 2 Sept)
“We believe that to categorically condemn AI would be to ignore classist and ableist issues surrounding the use of the technology, and that questions around the use of AI tie to questions around privilege. “
NaNoWriMo is in disarray after organizers defend AI writing tools (Verge, 3 Sept)
“NaNoWriMo’s annual creative writing event is the organization’s flagship program that challenges participants to create a 50,000-word manuscript every November…
The post has since been lambasted by writers across platforms like X and Reddit, who, like many creatives, believe that generative AI tools are exploitive and devalue human art.”
Spotify Has a Fake-Band Problem. It’s a Sign of Things to Come. (Slate, 26 Aug)
“If you ask their shareholders, Spotify is in a great place right now. Ask anyone else, and it’s a mess of scams, tone-deaf CEO messaging, and lawsuits. One of the weirdest scams that recently came to light involves (what else) A.I.-generated content.
Here’s the gist: Covers of popular songs were being inserted into large, publicly available playlists, hidden among dozens of other covers by real artists while racking up millions of listens and getting paid.”
Snoopy, Mario, Pikachu, and reproduction in generative AI (TechnoLlama, 18 Aug)
“I think that the popularity of the characters is precisely what gives the first clue as to why no media company has sued a generative AI provider for character infringement… I can imagine a lawsuit from, say, Nintendo against a generative AI tool that would progress to the stage of finding out where the training data sources come from. You are likely to find that most of the images come from Pinterest, Etsy, Facebook, Twitter, DeviantArt, and Reddit, in which case the question would be asked as to why these copies have not been actioned by the claimants. The answer is simple: you don’t sue your fans, but this could prove to be tricky in trying to determine the damage done to the media giants in the first place.”
Startup Alarmed When Its AI Starts Rickrolling Clients (Futurism, 24 Aug)
“In a screen-recording of the incident, Crivello further demonstrates that the AI assistant did indeed provide the customer with a link to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video, which is exactly how memers for the better part of the last two decades have trolled each other.”
The AI-Copyright Trap (Carys J. Craig: SSRN, 15 July)
“As AI tools proliferate, policy makers are increasingly being called upon to protect creators and the cultural industries from the extractive, exploitative, and even existential threats posed by generative AI. In their haste to act, however, they risk running headlong into the Copyright Trap: the mistaken conviction that copyright law is the best tool to support human creators and culture in our new technological reality (when in fact it is likely to do more harm than good).”
Tech
Why the Arrest of Telegram’s CEO Should Worry Everyone. Yes, Including You. (Slate, 28 Aug)
“Other reactions were more uncertain, due to the vague nature of the case. The New York Times’ Zeynep Tufekci urged caution before calling Durov’s arrest a “free speech infringement,” as did Stanford Cyber Policy Center expert Daphne Keller. Techdirt’s Mike Masnick noted that the French press release had not “calmed the concerns that this is overreach, but nothing has made it clear that it definitely is overreach either.” A legal counselor for the digital-rights watchdog Access Now tweeted that even though Telegram has historically been terrible about protecting its users and abiding by regulations, the French government’s actions could still set a troubling precedent for government overreach.
Telegram rehashes some old Internet regulation debates (TechnoLlama, 29 Aug)
“Proponents of cyber-control argue that state regulation of the Internet is necessary to ensure national security, protect public order, and uphold societal values. From this perspective, the Internet, like any other space, requires oversight to prevent and address crimes such as terrorism, cyberbullying, hate speech, and the spread of misinformation….
On the other side of the debate is cyber-libertarianism, which champions minimal state intervention in the digital realm. Cyber-libertarians view the Internet as a bastion of free expression, innovation, and individual empowerment. They argue that excessive government regulation stifles creativity, restricts access to information, and infringes on fundamental rights, particularly the right to free speech.”
Musk’s Twitter investors have lost billions in value (Washington Post, 1 Sept)
“Figures released Friday show that Fidelity now values that stake about 72 percent lower than when Musk took over X, taking its overall portion of the company from a valuation of around $316 million to $88 million.”
Cybertruck Catches Fire After Running Into Fire Hydrant and Getting Wet (Futurism, 28 Aug)
“A Tesla Cybertruck burst into flames after crashing into a fire hydrant outside a Bass Pro Shop in Harlingen, Texas — and getting doused in copious amounts of water, igniting the battery.”
Press Injunctions and the Lucy Letby trial
I discussed the Letby case in the May 16 and May 29 newsletters shortly after the New Yorker published a thoroughly researched article questioning the evidence used to convict the British nurse of seven counts of murder and seven more of attempted murder.
At the time the New Yorker article was published, a press injunction restricted media coverage within the UK. Ostensibly to protect the accused against ‘bias’, the injunctions restricted critical evaluation of the trial process or evidence - and in effect, shut out any public defense of Letby following her conviction while a single count was being re-tried. Thus did the British press, across the political spectrum, spend years calling Letby variations on ‘baby killer’ while being unable to discuss the serious flaws in the statistics at the core of the prosecution’s case.
In July reporting restrictions lifted. Now criticisms of the trial’s use of stats and other evidence are being aired in the UK press (see below), including in publications that until recently were baying for blood. If this reporting had been encouraged years ago, it could have informed the public discussion and given fairer weight to factors for and against conviction. Anyone want to take up the cause of press injunction reform?
Lucy Letby Inquiry Won’t Weigh Key Question: Is the ‘Killer Nurse’ Innocent? (New York Times, 29 Aug)
The Lucy Letby case (Duncan Law, 2 Sept)
Lucy Letby: Questions grow in debate on killer's convictions (BBC, 29 Aug)
The trial of Lucy Letby has shocked British statisticians (Economist, 22 Aug)
The Lessons of the Lucy Letby Case (Parts 1 & 2) (Private Eye)
Lucy Letby inquiry should be postponed or changed, experts say (Guardian, 27 Aug)