Next week I’ll be on the road and probably not working on mailings. Oct 14 I’ll be at the University Galway, speaking on video game preservation as part of an excellent academic / industry panel on games & law (join us if you can!). Then I’m off to Nottingham for the Mayhem Film Festival: four days of horror, sci-fi and cult movies. See you in two weeks, if not in Galway or Notts! - Matt
Law
LAION wins copyright infringement lawsuit in German court (TechnoLlama, 28 Sept)
“The case was brought by German photographer Robert Kneschke, who found that some of his photographs had been included in the LAION dataset. He requested the images to be removed, but LAION argued that they had no images, only links to where the images could be found online. Kneschke argued that the process of collecting the dataset had included making copies of the images to extract information, and that this amounted to copyright infringement…
The court argued that while LAION had been used by commercial organisations, the dataset itself had been released to the public free of charge, and no evidence was presented that any commercial body had control over its operations. Therefore, the dataset is non-commercial and for scientific research. So LAION’s actions are covered by section 60d of the German Copyright Act (Art 3 DSM), and consequently there is no copyright infringement. Case dismissed.”
The German LAION decision: A problematic understanding of the scope of the TDM copyright exceptions and the transition from TDM to AI training (IPKitten, 7 Oct)
“A fundamental aspect of the decision that deserves greater attention is that the analysis of the court is incomplete. As such, it may not represent good guidance for either concerned stakeholders or other courts in Europe faced with questions of unlicensed TDM and subsequent AI training.
Specifically (and likely because of how the plaintiff photographer pleaded the case), the court failed to consider that the TDM exception for scientific research would not cover all of LAION’s activities as described in the judgment itself”
Reconstructing the copyright idea/expression dichotomy for video games
Jia Wang, Queen Mary Journal of IP 14:3 (2024)
“Video game players do not just engage in ready-made gameplay but also actively take part in the construction of these experiences: they bring their desires, anticipations and previous experiences with them, and interpret and reflect their experience of gameplay in that light. Video games pose two challenges for a copyright assessment. First, should a game be assessed as an entity or broken down into its composite elements? Second, should copyright be granted to the gameplay which guides players’ behaviours and shapes their ludic experience of a game?”
EU copyright law roundup – third trimester of 2024 (Kluwer Copyright Blog, 2 Oct)
“In this edition, we update you on what has happened between July and September 2024 in EU copyright law – all the way from the CJEU, through Advocate General (AG) Opinions, to important policy developments. It has been generally a quiet trimester during the summer with things heating up in September with two new preliminary references.
You can read the previous roundups here.”
Collective Management of Copyrights and Human Rights in an Age of Technological Automation (1 Oct 2023)
Laurence R. Helfer and Giulia Priora
“the analysis reveals how a human rights framework supports numerous functions performed by CMOs. However, significant conflicts may arise from certain practices and policies of CMOs concerning, for example, mandatory membership, promotion of national culture, and automated rights management systems. The chapter showcases how a human rights framework provides guidance to states and non-state actors to prevent or at least mitigate these conflicts and to inform future legal developments reforms to modernize the legal rules on in this area.”
Publishing
Mixed views over 'largest independent bookshop' (BBC, 4 Oct)
“The new shop, set to open in autumn 2025 and spread across multiple floors, promises “spectacular views of the west front of York Minster” and could offer 75,000 titles on its shelves.”
Black British Book festival founder criticises lack of diversity in publishing (Guardian, 2 Oct)
“Selina Brown, a self-published children’s author, founded the Black British Book festival in 2021 owing to the struggles she and other black authors faced in pursuing and sustaining a career in the publishing industry.
The festival, which organisers claim is the only one of its kind in Europe, is expected to attract about 4,000 people on Saturday at the Barbican Centre in London”
‘Substandard and unworthy’: why it’s time to banish bad-mannered reviews (Nature, 23 Sept)
“[Laura Feetham-Walker, IOPP’s reviewer-engagement manager]: It’s an editor’s job to sift out unprofessional comments in reviews. IOPP policy, in line with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics, a non-profit organization in Eastleigh, UK, is for the editor to ‘rescind’ problematic reviews and ask the reviewer to revise and resubmit them. If the reviewer declines, then the editor might make minor amendments to remove any problematic comments. But editors are under time pressure and deal with many peer-review reports every day, so some inappropriate comments slip through the net. We need to define unprofessional reviewing, to make it easier to track and to filter such comments out.”
Open
CC Legal Tools Recognized as Digital Public Goods (Creative Commons, 8 Oct)
“We’re proud to announce Creative Commons’ Legal Tools have been reviewed and accepted into the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) DPG Registry. The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative, endorsed by the United Nations Secretary-General, that is working to accelerate the attainment of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in low- and middle-income countries. DPGA does this by facilitating the discovery, development, use of, and investment in digital public goods (DPGs) in order to create a more equitable world.”
Hub for HBKU open access research to be hosted on QNL’s Manara - Qatar Research Repository (HBKU, 7 Oct)
“Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) Library has partnered with Qatar National Library (QNL) to launch the HBKU Repository hub on QNL’s Manara - Qatar Research Repository platform. This new platform will give the Qatari public the chance to explore more than 3000 open-access works created within HBKU’s integrated, cutting-edge teaching and research environment.”
The ‘pin’ for Adobe’s Content Credentials looks a lot like the CC icon (Elliot Bledsoe, 4 Oct)
It really does… Matt
Preservation
The Sinister Reason Why Instagram Keeps Erasing Your Memories (Slate, 6 Oct)
“Instagram and Snapchat were just two of the many platforms that had pledged to help forgetful, regretful netizens save their nominally temporary posts as long-lasting memories. The 2010s saw a Silicon Valley hype cycle for cloud-computing capacity, with Google, Verizon, and Microsoft following Amazon Web Services’ lead in establishing custom, hardware-intensive data-storage systems and inviting established companies, novel startups, government departments, and ordinary users to entrust them with their data—sometimes for free but, in many premium cases, for hefty fees…
we’re all actively incentivized and encouraged to make our communication and social infrastructure not just our dumping grounds but also our permanent archives, through straightforward ease of use.”
Looking at original art brings out more emotion than reproduced works; a study shows (NL Times, 7 Oct)
“Looking at original art evokes ten times more emotion than seeing reproductions, even if they are shown in the best museum-like conditions…
During the study, ten people were first given a wearable EEG cap and an eye-tracker to wear before they walked through the Mauritshuis and looked at real artworks. Later, they were shown a number of reproductions of the works in the same way.”
They missed the chance to make a sensationalist headline like Science Proves Walter Benjamin Right: Art Has an Aura- Matt
Museum Elevator Technician Accidentally Throws Out Alexandre Lavet Artwork (ArtNet, 2 Oct)
At first glance, Alexandre Lavet’s All the good times we spent together by (2016) appear to be a pair of empty beer cans, drunk and discarded, one slightly crushed. But closer inspection reveals that these weren’t regular beer cans—and Lavet is no readymade artist.
Instead, he meticulously hand painted the cans, creating two perfect replicas of cans of Jupiler beer….
Fortunately, the museum was able to find the artwork in the rubbish bin”
The Indigenous Ally: Museum Practitioner Toolkit (Jenn Edginton / Sites of Conscience)
“This toolkit is designed to be a series of reflective exercises. It will challenge the user to think critically about the settler colonial museums they currently work in or want to work in, and look at how to make the changes needed to move into a place of allyship.”
Digital literacy and community-led data governance for intangible cultural heritage practitioners in Burkina Faso (Project statement)
“This project seeks to promote sustainable economic and social development in Burkina Faso by working with intangible cultural heritage practitioners to develop digital/AI literacy skills supporting responsible use of technology for cultural heritage data governance.”
Creative Industries
Behind the Scenes: The Realities Facing UK Audiovisual Performers (CREATe, 2 Oct)
“This Highlights Report is a companion to the ‘UK Audiovisual Performers: A survey of earnings and contracts’ report….The power imbalance between performers and production companies is a significant issue affecting the working conditions of audiovisual performers in the UK. This disparity is exacerbated by the increasing competition within the industry, where a constant influx of aspiring performers creates an environment of vulnerability for actors. The oversupply of talent means that performers often feel pressured to accept unfavourable conditions, knowing that there will always be someone else ready to take their place.”
Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’: Cinematography Community Criticizes “Distasteful” Decision To Premiere Western At Camerimage (Deadline, 7 Oct)
Hutchins, a native of neighboring Ukraine, was a regular at the cinematography-focused event. The screening, however, has proved controversial with many of Hutchins’ former peers, who are questioning whether it is appropriate for Camerimage to serve as a launchpad for the controversial Alec Baldwin western [in which the actor accidentally shot and killed Hutchins on set] …
Others, however, have cautioned against push back noting that Hutchins’ former mentor and ASC president Stephen Lighthill will take part in a panel session at the festival following the screening of Rust.”
Toxic Fandom: How Hollywood Is Battling Fans Who Are ‘Just Out for Blood’ — From Social Media Boot Camps to Superfan Focus Groups (Variety, 3 Oct)
““The Acolyte” was the latest high-profile target of “toxic fandom,” the catchall term for when fan criticism curdles from good-faith dissatisfaction into a relentlessly negative, often bigoted online campaign against either the project or its stars or creative leaders…
In addition to standard focus group testing, studios will assemble a specialized cluster of superfans to assess possible marketing materials for a major franchise project.
“They’re very vocal,” says the studio exec. “They will just tell us, ‘If you do that, fans are going to retaliate.’”
Freedom of Information
The Legal Impact: Campus Protests and Free Speech (Franklin Pierce School of Law, 23 Sept)
“On the latest episode of The Legal Impact, we explore First Amendment rights of free speech and free assembly in light of anti-war demonstrations last spring on college campuses around the country. Our guest is Seth Oranburg, professor at UNH-Franklin Pierce School of Law. He describes common misconceptions around what these rights really mean, and gives examples of universities he believes got it right–and wrong.”
Book banning activists target Little Free Libraries in Utah (Axios, 4 Oct)
“State Rep. Sahara Hayes (D-Salt Lake City) recently announced on Instagram that she planned to celebrate national Banned Books Week by placing titles that are banned in a Utah school inside Little Free Libraries.
That led to accusations that she was distributing "explicit content" to children in violation of Utah laws.”
AI
It’s Time to Stop Taking Sam Altman at His Word (Atlantic, 4 Oct)
“CEO Sam Altman published an online manifesto titled “The Intelligence Age.” In it, he declares that the AI revolution is on the verge of unleashing boundless prosperity and radically improving human life…
his approach is textbook Silicon Valley mythmaking. In these narratives, humankind is forever on the cusp of a technological breakthrough that will transform society for the better. The hard technical problems have basically been solved—all that’s left now are the details, which will surely be worked out through market competition and old-fashioned entrepreneurship. Spend billions now; make trillions later! This was the story of the dot-com boom in the 1990s, and of nanotechnology in the 2000s. It was the story of cryptocurrency and robotics in the 2010s. The technologies never quite work out like the Altmans of the world promise, but the stories keep regulators and regular people sidelined while the entrepreneurs, engineers, and investors build empires.”
How AI could monitor brain health and find dementia sooner (Washington Post, 24 Sept)
““The readout could be as simple as a traffic light system — green for healthy activity, yellow for something to keep an eye on and red for when it’s time to consult a health care professional,” said David T. Jones, who directs the Neurology AI Program at the Mayo Clinic. “You would be able to monitor your brain health the same way you now can monitor your heart rate and blood pressure. We’re not there yet, but that is the future.””
Hacking Generative AI for Fun and Profit (Wired, 2 Oct)
“Notable pitches from the journalism hackathon included using multimodal language models to track political posts on TikTok, to auto-generate freedom of information requests and appeals, or to summarize video clips of local court hearings to help with local news coverage.
In the end, the group decided to build a tool that would help reporters covering AI identify potentially interesting papers posted to the Arxiv, a popular server for research paper preprints.”
I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT (Time, 30 Sept)
“In one activity, my students drafted a paragraph in class, fed their work to ChatGPT with a revision prompt, and then compared the output with their original writing. However, these types of comparative analyses failed because most of my students were not developed enough as writers to analyze the subtleties of meaning or evaluate style. “It makes my writing look fancy,” one PhD student protested when I pointed to weaknesses in AI-revised text.”
TikTok's owner is scraping the web 25 times faster than OpenAI (MSN, 5 Oct)
“Bytespider is scraping web data about 25 times faster than OpenAI’s web scraper, GPTbot, Sam Crowther, CEO of Kasada, told Fortune. Compared with Anthropic’s ClaudeBot, Bytespider is 3,000 faster.
Like OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s bots, Bytespider ignores instructions from robots.txt, a non-legally binding line of code that tells web scrapers which data it can and cannot access on a website, Fortune reported.”
Tech
23andMe is on the brink. What happens to all its DNA data? (NPR, 3 Oct)
“As 23andMe struggles for survival, customers like Wiles have one pressing question: What is the company’s plan for all the data it has collected since it was founded in 2006?…
the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, also known as HIPAA, does not apply to 23andMe since it is a company outside of the health care realm.”
Catch Me(chanic) if You Can: the hunt for IP to protect video game mechanics (Lewis Silken, 26 Sept)
“as our summary above illustrates, the most valuable IP in a video game is not necessarily that which is immediately visible to the player. The video game source code, of course, is protected by copyright. Rights may also subsist at the level of mechanics and gameplay, despite the potential challenges, and even if the majority of disputes in this area tend to focus on the infringement of visible IP such as artistic works and design rights protecting characters, other in-game objects and user interfaces.”
Cards Against Humanity sues SpaceX, alleging trespassing near Texas border (Washington Post, 21 Sept)
“Cards Against Humanity bought the property in 2017 as a part of a stunt aimed at impeding then-President Donald Trump’s plans to build a wall along the southern border. About 150,000 people donated $15 to its crowdsourcing campaign to purchase the “pristine” vacant land, the lawsuit filed in the Cameron County District Court on Thursday said.
But for at least six months, SpaceX has “treated the Property as its own,” the lawsuit says, accusing SpaceX and/or its contractors of trespassing and, without permission, clearing the land of vegetation, laying down gravel, bringing in generators, and using it to park vehicles and store construction materials.”
Worlds Without End (Public Domain Review)
“At the end of the 19th century, inspired by radical advances in technology, physicists asserted the reality of invisible worlds — an idea through which they sought to address not only psychic phenomena such as telepathy, but also spiritual questions around the soul and immortality. Philip Ball explores this fascinating history, and how in this turn to the unseen in the face of mystery there exists a parallel to quantum physics today.”
Ideas about science and the supernatural have historically influenced each other. See also Jeffrey Sconce’s Haunted Media (2000, Duke UP). - Matt
US Politics
Okla. is buying schools 55,000 Bibles. Specs match the $60 Trump Bible. (Washington Post, 4 Oct)
“The state of Oklahoma wants to buy 55,000 classroom Bibles, and the request for proposals includes some specific requirements: The books must include the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents. They may not include commentary. They must be leather-bound, or at least use “leather-like” material.
The Bible is the best-selling book in the world, but very few — and maybe just one — will meet these requirements. It’s backed by former president Donald Trump and retails for $60.”
Who says there’s no money in publishing public domain material? - Matt