Copyright news (9 April)
The usual weekly round-up of info & funding available & axed
Events
BOOK TALK: MUSIC COPYRIGHT, CREATIVITY, AND CULTURE (Authors Alliance)
Join us for a book talk with Jennifer Jenkins, author of Music Copyright, Creativity, and Culture, exploring how copyright shapes the music we love – from historical influences to modern challenges. James Boyle will facilitate our discussion.
April 10th at 2pm ET / 11am PT
REGISTER HERE
Roundtable on negotiating text for a WIPO Broadcast Treaty, April 3, 2025 (KEI, 2 Apr)
KEI will host an informal roundtable on the WIPO broadcast treaty text that will be discussed at the WIPO SCCR 46 meeting from April 7 to April 11, 2025. The Roundtable discussion is over Zoom, beginning at 9:30 AM. The meeting documents are available from WIPO here: https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/details.jsp?meeting_id=86568, including the current negotiating text, here: https://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/doc_details.jsp?doc_id=641471
Open
The Public Interest Corpus Update – Boston Edition (Public Interest Corpus)
On March 3, librarians, authors, publishers, and technologists gathered at Northeastern University Library in Boston to contribute to a startup plan for The Public Interest Corpus. The Public Interest Corpus is focused on supporting the creation of high-quality AI training data from memory organizations (e.g., libraries, archives, museums) and their partners (e.g., publishers) that advance the public interest. For too long, access to high-quality training data has been limited to the world’s most well-resourced organizations pushing others toward data of lesser quality, comprehensiveness, and unsettled legality. Over the course of our day together, event participants made strong contributions to the development of The Public Interest Corpus startup plan.
How crawlers impact the operations of the Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia, 1 Apr)
While undergoing a migration of our systems, we noticed that only a fraction of the expensive traffic hitting our core datacenters was behaving how web browsers would usually do, interpreting javascript code. When we took a closer look, we found out that at least 65% of this resource-consuming traffic we get for the website is coming from bots, a disproportionate amount given the overall pageviews from bots are about 35% of the total. This high usage is also causing constant disruption for our Site Reliability team, who has to block overwhelming traffic from such crawlers before it causes issues for our readers.
Wikimedia is not alone with this challenge. As noted in our 2025 global trends report, technology companies are racing to scrape websites for human-created and verified information. Content publishers, open source projects, and websites of all kinds report similar issues.
Wikipedia of the Unknown (Slate, 6 Apr)
What is the etymology of curmudgeon? What caused Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s death at age 35? Why do many fungi species generate electrical activity? The website Wikenigma, an “encyclopedia of unknowns,” won’t provide answers to these conundrums, and that’s the whole point. In an age of unprecedented access to information, Wikenigma relishes in highlighting the unexplainable across the sciences, history, language, philosophy, and psychology…
Gardiner explained to me over email that as a curator, he tries to avoid “ ‘unfalsifiable’ floaty concepts like the famous ‘Does God Have a Beard?’ question.” Instead, he thinks, the best entries are “the ones which most people would (quite reasonably) assume are not unknown. For example, I don’t think many people would guess that no one knows exactly how any of the currently used general anaesthetics work. Or why humans yawn, or why we tend to like flowers or music.”
Museums and the Enclosure of the Public Domain in the Digital Age (Douglas McCarthy [Engramma], Mar)
The digital enclosure of cultural heritage mirrors the historical Enclosure Movement, with similarly profound consequences. While museums face legitimate funding challenges in maintaining their collections and operations, many in the cultural heritage sector, including myself, believe that relying on licensing fees for public domain images is not a sustainable or ethical long-term solution. In fact, I have argued that such restrictive licensing practices often generate negligible revenue, while open access policies can drive significant financial and mission-based benefits for institutions (McCarthy 2024). My research suggests that many museum image libraries operate at a loss. Furthermore, open access can lead to increased visibility, wider reach, new opportunities for collaboration and enhanced public engagement, ultimately helping museums to better fulfill their core mission.
Law
Judge Boudin’s Copyright Legacy (Disruptive Competition Project, 1 April)
he then explored permitting Borland’s use under the fair use doctrine. He reasoned that Borland’s use should be permitted because Borland was “merely trying to give former Lotus users an option to exploit their own prior investment in learning or in macros.” He believed that the fair use doctrine could be “adapted” to allow “new purposes” such as preventing user lock-in.
That is precisely what the Supreme Court did in Google; it adapted fair use to prevent user and programmer lock-in.
Research & Higher Ed
Massive, Unarchivable Datasets of Cancer, Covid, and Alzheimer's Research Could Be Lost Forever (404, 4 Apr)
“The problem with archiving this data is that we can’t,” Lisa Chinn, Head of Research Data Services at the University of Chicago, told 404 Media. Unlike other government datasets or web pages, downloading or otherwise archiving NIH data often requires a Data Use Agreement between a researcher institution and the agency, and those agreements are carefully administered through a disclosure risk review process.
Cultural groups across U.S. told that federal humanities grants are terminated (NPR, 3 April)
Among the thousands of groups affected by the sudden cessation of funds are state humanities councils, museums, historic sites, archives, libraries, educators and media outlets in all 50 states.
Action Alert: NEH Targeted by DOGE (Federation of State Humanities Councils, 2 Apr)
On April 4, the Federation learned—through our contacts and reporting by NPR—that 145 NEH staff members (80% of the agency) have been placed on administrative leave by a team from DOGE. We are working closely with our member councils to monitor the situation and address this threat to public humanities.
What Rural Universities Stand to Lose Under Trump’s DEI, Higher Education Cuts (ProPublica, 27 Mar)
Schools like SIU, located in a region that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump, may not be the primary targets of his threatened funding cuts, but they — along with the communities they serve — stand to lose the most.
There are nearly 500 regional public universities across the U.S., serving around 5 million students — about half of all undergraduates enrolled in public universities, according to the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges at Appalachian State University…
Many students at SIU come from families that are poor, or barely middle class, and depend on scholarships and mentorship to succeed. Paul Frazier, SIU’s vice chancellor for anti-racism, diversity, equity and inclusion, said the way DEI has been politicized ignores what it actually does: “Poor doesn’t have a color.”
The Competition to Get Into Law School Is Brutal This Year (WSJ, 15 Mar)
A weakening white-collar job market and a contentious political climate are fueling interest in law school, leading to one of the most competitive years for would-be law students in recent memory.
The number of applicants to the nation’s nearly 200 law schools is up 20.5% compared with last year. Georgetown University Law Center alone received 14,000 applications to fill 650 spots, while the University of Michigan Law School now has more applications than at any point in its 166 years of existence.
What’s in a Chinese name: scientists fight for identity when forced to use Latin alphabet (South China Morning Post, 30 Mar)
To make identification easier, a team based in Vienna and led by a Chinese researcher is working to address the challenges of accurately identifying people from their pinyin names.
NWO Research Data Management policy revision started (Open Science NL, 28 Feb)
Reasons which made the RDM policy revision timely are:
-More researchers now understand the importance of RDM and receive better support, thanks to funders, publishers, institutions, and professional services…
Not an Enlightened Age (LARB, 30 Mar)
Review: Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age by Peter Harrison. Cambridge University Press, 2024. 488 pages.
Sustaining the intellectual foundations of modern naturalism, Harrison argues, requires an assumption of the universality of what are, in fact, contingent and culturally unique historical categories (belief and the supernatural). It also requires a progressive view of history that “lends legitimacy to the unique historical turn that the secular West has taken.” That progressive view of history is far more fragile than we previously imagined—as is the larger mythos within which it is set.
Publishing
Scandal-hit creative writing website NaNoWriMo to close after 20 years (Guardian, 2 Apr)
NaNoWriMo – an abbreviation of National Novel Writing Month – fostered an online community of participants aiming to write 50,000 words of fiction in November…interim executive director Kilby Blades explained that it had to close due to ongoing financial problems, which were compounded by reputational damage.
Video Games & Film
Video Game Art Gallery Show (That Doesn't Exist) (Kieran Nolan, Vimeo, 4 April)
Video game movies have grown up by aiming young (AVClub, 3 Apr)
There hasn’t really been a big, violent game-turned-movie hit since the Resident Evil series ended… So the Minecraft film comes at a boom time for kid-friendly game adaptations—as well as a strange moment in children’s entertainment in general, where Generation Alpha is growing up free from the lingering vestiges of older mass media. Older folks might describe YouTube as a repository for everything: music videos (or, shudder, “visuals”), brand-new movie trailers, decades-old shows uncompiled on disc (and sometimes the vintage ads that go along with them), whatever ephemera you’re into. The younger crowd would more likely describe everything as fodder for YouTube: bits and pieces of content assembled in a single convenient channel-flipping (or, now, screen-swiping) location.
Why People Are Clapping and Talking During ‘Minecraft’ (ScreenCrush, 5 Apr)
Jack Black said the phrase “Chicken jockey!” and half the audience said it with him, then erupted into cheers and whoops. It was like the real Jack Black had just walked into the room or something. They were elated; the rest of us were very confused.
The reason behind the curious phenomenon, like so many things these days: TikTok. Several compilations of kids yelling along with Minecraft have gone viral on the social media app.
Microsoft has created an AI-generated version of Quake (Verge, 5 Apr)
The Quake II level is very basic and includes blurry enemies and interactions, and Microsoft is limiting the amount of time you can even play this tech demo.
Polish Film Association spends more on alcohol than on scholarships for young filmmakers (PolskiRadio, 3 Apr)
"Jacek Bromski treated the SFP like a cash cow. From January 2020 to February 2024, he collected over 3.7 million PLN. According to ministry auditors, these costs were not disclosed in the association's internal regulations," Gazeta Wyborcza wrote.
The rights to one of the greatest PC games of all time languished in the vault of a Midwestern insurance firm… (PCGamer, 6 Apr)
"I looked them up and sent an email to their general counsel, which is just listed on the website: 'Hey, you guys still have the rights to System Shock.' And they wrote me back almost immediately, but they asked me if I wanted to do System Shock 3. I might have, like, a couple thousand to my name, and I'm in Guatemala, so I wasn't really in the best position to start a triple-A project, but I pitched the idea of re-releasing the original games."
The administration
US Institute of Peace lays off staff after dramatic standoff with DOGE (Politico, 29 Mar)
Foote said 50 to 80 overseas employees have been “essentially marooned” as the Department of Government Efficiency appeared to have cut travel, payment and communications mechanisms…
The institute, an independent nonprofit funded by Congress, promotes conflict resolution mechanisms and advances peace around the world. It has a nearly $80 million endowment and a building designated for its headquarters in Washington.
Public health under Trump 2.0: the first 50 days (Lancet, 2 April)
Jan 20, 2025, US President Donald Trump took charge of the Oval Office and began by signing an array of executive orders spanning from withdrawal from WHO and the Paris Climate Agreement to freezing trillions of US$ worth of federal funding and a ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes…
These past 50 days saw an array of decisions and proposed or paused policies that undermine science and expertise, weaken protection for vulnerable populations, risk worsening health inequities, and threaten public health across the USA and abroad.
US embassies to contractors worldwide: Cancel any diversity programs or risk going unpaid (CNN, 1 Apr)
US embassies have sent letters to contractors in their host countries demanding they certify that they do not run any diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs that violate President Donald Trump’s executive order against race- and sex-based preferences.
Waltz’s team set up at least 20 Signal group chats for crises across the world (Politico, 2 Apr)
National security adviser Mike Waltz’s team regularly set up chats on Signal to coordinate official work on issues including Ukraine, China, Gaza, Middle East policy, Africa and Europe, according to four people who have been personally added to Signal chats.
Trump says Small Business Administration will take over Department of Education’s student loan portfolio (CNN, 21 Mar)
President Donald Trump said Friday that the Small Business Administration will absorb the Department of Education’s massive student loan portfolio as he seeks to dismantle the agency and shift more power over education to the states.
Supreme Court allows Trump to terminate teacher training grants as part of anti-DEI policy (NBC, 4 Apr)
The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the Trump administration to terminate Education Department grants for teacher training that officials deemed to violate their new policy opposing diversity, equity and inclusion efforts… About $65 million in grant payments are outstanding.
National Park Service removes references to Harriet Tubman from ‘Underground Railroad’ webpage (CNN, 7 Apr)
The new page [on the Underground Railroad] does not mention slavery until the third paragraph, and cuts a reference to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 entirely. Previously, the article started with a description of enslaved peoples’ efforts to free themselves and the organization of the Underground Railroad after the Fugitive Slave Act, the article now starts with two paragraphs that emphasize the “American ideals of liberty and freedom.”
Freedom of Information
Center for Public Integrity Is Shutting Down (Columbia Journalism Review, 31 Mar)
The Center for Public Integrity, a thirty-six-year-old nonprofit newsroom in Washington, DC, that won acclaim for its investigations but has endured financial and organizational turmoil for much of the past decade, has ceased publishing and is in talks to turn over its archives to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), an anti-corruption watchdog group.
John Oliver faces defamation lawsuit from US healthcare medical director (Guardian, 2 April)
The quote in question, which occurs around 21 minutes into the episode’s 28 minute-long main segment, refers to the story of Louis Facenda Jr, a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy whose in-home care program was disrupted following cuts to Iowa’s Medicaid services.
AI
The Style Returns: Some notes on ChatGPT and Studio Ghibli (TechnoLlama, 30 Mar)
Perhaps one thing that has bothered me, and that is common in most copyright AI conversations, is that the discussion immediately defaults to the USA…
Furthermore, I think that there is a very real practical problem with filing an infringement lawsuits of this nature, in what I have called the “Pikachu Paradox“. I believe that the more prevalent a work is in the training data, the less likely it is to be enforced by the rightsholder, the reason for this is that the very prevalence in the training data would act as a counterfactual to any damage that the copyright holder would claim, as the reason for this prevalence is the fact that the property can be found all over the Internet. There is a reason why the Studio Ghibli content is so easy to reproduce, and it is because it is to be found all over the Web, screenshot after screenshot in forums, gifs on social media, etc. We are the infringers. We are the ones providing the inputs. There are three decades of Ghibli content to be found online.
Nirogini Thambaiya, Kanchana Kariyawasam & Chamila Talagala - International Review of Law, Computers & Technology
This article analyses the challenges posed by AI works to the traditional principles established in Australian copyright law, including the notions of human authorship and originality, ownership and material form.
3rd draft of the GPAI Code of Practice: copyright transparency is unwanted, and it shows (Communia, 4 April)
On March 11 2025, the Chairs and the Vice-Chairs of the General Purpose AI Code of Practice presented the third draft of the Code (download as a PDF file)…
From a users rights’ perspective, the third draft of the Code contains significant improvements. The most notable change is the deletion of the model-level measures targeting output similarity…
Despite the above-mentioned improvements, the new draft text continues to fall short of expectations when it comes to introducing adequate measures to protect the rightholders’ opt-out rights.
Reciprocity in the Age of AI (Creative Commons, 2 Apr)
A lot has changed in the past few years, and it is high time for Creative Commons (CC) to be louder about our values. Underpinning our recently released strategic plan is a renewed call for reciprocity…
with the mainstream emergence of generative AI, that social agreement has come into question and come under threat, with knock-on consequences for the greater commons. Current approaches to building commercial foundation models lack reciprocity. No one shares photos of ptarmigans to get rich, no one contributes to articles about Huldufólk seeking fame. It is about sharing knowledge. But when that shared knowledge is opaquely ingested, credit is not given, and the crawlers ramp up server activity (and fees) to the degree where the human experience is degraded, folks are demotivated to continue contributing.
UK government tries to placate opponents of AI copyright bill (Guardian, 2 Apr)
It is understood that concessions offered to MPs and peers this week include an economic impact assessment, with a report that could address issues such as how AI developers access data to train their models and transparency around use of copyright-protected works.
Copyright exemption plans for AI are "nothing less than vandalism" say UK architects and designers (Dezeen, 1 Apr)
Leading UK architects and designers including David Chipperfield, Jasper Morrison and Amanda Levete have opposed government plans to allow artificial intelligence companies to train their models on copyrighted work without consent.
A letter signed by 38 big names in the industry accuses technology secretary Peter Kyle of "running roughshod over one of our most productive and precious sectors".
OpenAI, Google reject UK’s AI copyright plan (Politico, 3 April)
In its response, Google said rights holders can already effectively exercise “choice and control” to prevent web crawlers from scraping content online, but suggested those who opt out of AI training would not necessarily have a right to remuneration if they still appeared in a model’s training data.
Trump’s new tariff math looks a lot like ChatGPT’s (The Verge, 3 April)
Trump slapped a 10 percent baseline tariff on all imports into the US, including from uninhabited islands, plus absurdly high rates on specific countries, supposedly based on “tariffs charged to the USA” — which didn’t match up to other, non-cardboard-sign-based estimates. Stock markets have plummeted and consumers are facing down sharp price hikes on potentially almost everything they buy.
Where did these numbers come from? Apparently, an oversimplified calculation that several major AI chatbots happen to recommend.
Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI (The Atlantic, 20 Mar)
Editor’s note: This search tool is part of The Atlantic’s investigation into the Library Genesis data set. You can read an analysis about LibGen and its contents here. Find The Atlantic’s search tool for movie and television writing used to train AI here.
Microsoft employee disrupts 50th anniversary and calls AI boss ‘war profiteer’ (Verge, 12 Apr)
“The Israeli military uses Microsoft Azure to compile information gathered through mass surveillance, which it transcribes and translates, including phone calls, texts and audio messages, according to an Israeli intelligence officer who works with the systems. That data can then be cross-checked with Israel’s in-house targeting systems.”
Preservation
Using AI to create a 'conversational archive' at the National Sound and Film Archive (NSFA) (via LinkedIn, 27 Mar)
There are 100,000s of works made up of millions of components that could be used to tell an infinite number of stories…
Two pilot projects clearly showed the greatest promise: internally developed and managed mass transcription; and conversational search tools using a managed graph database of human and machine-generated data, which we now call Graph Assisted Find or Graph AF.
The Met May Have Millions in Stolen Art. It’s Not Waiting to Be Asked to Return It. (WSJ, 16 Mar)
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in late February, an increasingly familiar scene played out: A museum was restituting a work of art… in this case, the Met itself launched the inquiry into the sculpture’s origin.
Tech
These 2 companies create on-demand TV for people living with dementia (Vermont Public, 2 April)
It took several years to research, fundraise and develop, but Schrier and a cofounder launched Zinnia TV in 2022.
It’s a streaming service with hundreds of slow-paced, plot-free videos, meant to be enjoyed in the moment, alone or with someone else. There are no confusing characters to keep track of and no jarring commercials.
Unshittification: 3 tech companies that recently made my life… better (Ars Technica, 3 Apr)
it was a surprise and delight when, on March 25, Universal Audio saw the light and announced that "by popular demand" it was shifting to local machine or iLok [DRM] USB authorizations. The cloud option was gone, and a company rep even admitted that cloud monitoring "requires a constant Internet and server connection. [In other words], more resources."… For touring musicians and all other people that often work in an offline environment this is awesome!" wrote one commenter."