Content about copyright

Graduation Speaker Plagiarizes Speech, Returns Honorary Degree - Plagiarism Today (plagiarismtoday.com)

commencement plagiarism is unique in that it victimizes the audience twice: first, by lying to them and second, by overshadowing them.

I get the first part, but the second seems like an exaggeration. I mean, no one remembers anything about my accomplishments as a graduate in the audience at the Spring, 1992 commencement ceremony at The Ohio State University. Surely, though, they remember that Bernadine Healy, Director of NIH, delivered the commencement address.

tags: copyright commencement ohiostate

posted by matt in Thursday, May 22, 2025

Associated Press finds 'no definitive evidence' to change credit for famous Vietnam War photo (apnews.com)

The AP concluded that it was “possible” Ut took the photo, but it was unable to be proven conclusively due to the passage of time, absence of key evidence, limitations of technology and the deaths of several key people involved.

At the same time, AP found no proof that Nguyen took the photo, the report said.

I’d love to watch this documentary on the authorship of the famous Napalm Girl photo, but I can’t find it on any streaming service.

tags: photography copyright

posted by matt in Thursday, May 8, 2025

A.I., Art, and Copyright: The Human Element That Makes All the Difference | Copyright (loc.gov)

Specifically, their comments centered first on human authorship and AI’s impact on human creativity. Second, labor effects—they fear that rapidly generated AI content could overwhelm human-authored works in the marketplace. Third, they want control and compensation for the use of both their personas and copyright-protected works. Fourth, they recognize innovation aspects—that AI can assist the creative process and even enable performances by deceased artists. Finally, regarding licensing, they consider what type should be preferred: voluntary, collective, or compulsory. In short, should they have to opt in or opt out?

The Library of Congress received and considered more than 10,000 comments from the public for its report on AI and copyright for Congress. The comments largely fell into the categories listed in the quote. Hopefully Congress approaches the issue with the same level of attention as the LoC.

tags: law copyright ai

posted by matt in Sunday, May 4, 2025

US Copyright Office Grants DMCA Exemption for Ice Cream Machines (extremetech.com)

…restaurant owners and independent repair professionals will be able to bypass the software locks that keep kitchen machinery offline until the "right" repair services get involved. This should lower prices and speed up repairs in such situations.

Your move, McDonald’s. If downtime on ice cream machines doesn’t drop drastically as a result of this exemption, it will likely melt away in three years when the Library of Congress considers its renewal.

tags: law copyright food

posted by matt in Saturday, October 26, 2024

Perplexity blasts media as ‘adversarial’ in response to copyright lawsuit (theverge.com)

Perplexity, in its response today, argues that news organizations like News Corp that have filed lawsuits against AI companies “prefer to live in a world where publicly reported facts are owned by corporations, and no one can do anything with those publicly reported facts without paying a toll.”

The difference between facts and facts, as reported by…is the key here. Media companies don’t own facts. They do, however, own the intellectual property rights that protect their reporting of the facts. The question the law needs to answer is whether AI training on their reporting of the facts violates those rights or not. It’s not clear cut, and courts will wrestle with this question for years.

And, yes, it’s a lawsuit…which is adversarial by nature.

tags: law copyright ai

posted by matt in Thursday, October 24, 2024

Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff (thebookseller.com)

This is great to see, but I’m not sure it does much to prevent AI companies from training on newly published books. I can’t imagine they’re scanning printed books for or buying ebooks to plug into model training. Maybe they’re scraping copies available on rogue sites, which would already be a copyright infringement.

It certainly feels good, though.

The new wording states: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems”, and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted.

tags: ai copyright law

posted by matt in Saturday, October 19, 2024

Happy New Year, and Happy Public Domain Day! 2024 is a big one on the copyright front. Steamboat Willie, which I’ve always viewed as sort of an adolescent version of Mickey Mouse, is officially in the public domain as of today.

Copyright expiration pushes works into the public domain every January 1st, but this one certainly lands with a thud.

I’m sure we’ll see all sorts of interesting adaptations of Steamboat Willie in 2024. Should be fun to watch!

tags: copyright

postposted by matt in Monday, January 1, 2024

Super Mario Bros. Movie Uploaded to Twitter for Hours, Now Pulled (gizmodo.com)

[C]hecking their account, they’re not only tweeting like nothing’s happened, they’ve just started to upload Bee Movie onto their account. And honestly, that may just be the most Twitter thing to happen out of this whole ordeal.

Twitter took down the boosts with the Mario Bros movie, but apparently didn't lock or limit the poster's account, allowing them to post another movie. I checked the account right after reading this article and, sure enough, the two most recent tweets included The Bee Movie, split into two parts.

Apparently lack of consequences for copyright infringement is another perk of a Twitter Blue subscription.

tags: twitter copyright infringement

posted by matt in Sunday, April 30, 2023