Whenever I have presented about artificial intelligence in the last few years, I often get asked the question of whether training an AI with data can infringe copyright. Take for example Bot Dylan, a machine learning project that has been trained using 23,000 folk songs. Does the music it produces Read more…
Last week we talked about the agreed text of the new copyright directive, particularly the problems presented by Article 13. Perhaps what is lost in all of the discussion is precisely why such a toxic proposal is being discussed and where does it come from. It is impossible to understand Read more…
And so it has come to this, the great copyright battle of our time. After a troubled process that has spanned various stages of development, we finally have a proposed compromise text on the Digital Single Market Directive, the latest part of a future directive overhauling copyright for the digital Read more…
It’s a dance as old as (digital) time. When faced with a challenge, politicians will look for a scapegoat in which to assign the blame of a complex issue, and propose allegedly easy solutions to fix impossible problems. Terrorist attack? End encryption. Rise in populism? End fake news. Violent crime Read more…
Costa Rican news outlets have been reporting a tragic story of a kidnapping that has a very interesting cryptocurrency twist. 12 people have been arrested in Costa Rica and Spain in connection with the kidnapping (and suspected murder) of American entrepreneur William Sean Creighton, who disappeared in September 2018 and Read more…
A few months ago something interesting happened. I’m currently on sabbatical, so my days are spent in a combination of reading, researching, writing, and procrastinating by watching YouTube videos. I came across a very interesting video from a user called Vsauce (aka Michael Stevens) on how the Earth moves. I Read more…
Habitual readers may have noticed that I have been obsessed with artificial intelligence copyright for quite a while, almost as long as I have been interested in simian authorship. For anyone interested in revisiting some of the arguments, I have written an article on this topic. The subject has exploded Read more…
On September 12 the European Parliament decided to ignore expert advice and adopted a version of the new Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DSM) that contains troublesome issues, which have been discussed extensively in this blog and many other places. The Parliament took three particularly troublesome actions Read more…
This is a short post to bring together a few resources about the important vote taking place at the European Parliament on the proposed Copyright in the Digital Market Directive. I’ve written about the issues I have with the proposed new publisher right (Article 11) here: “this is a misguided Read more…
[Spoiler Alert] “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation”, Alisdair Gray. These words are an integral part of Walkaway, the novel by Cory Doctorow, where he has decided to do something very rare, instead of showing us a dystopia, he paints a utopia, Read more…