It is hard to imagine the world without the Web. Collectively, we routinely access billions of Web pages without thinking about it. But we often take it for granted that the material we want to access will be there, both now and in the future. We all hit the dreaded “404 not found” error from Read more about We are losing vast swathes of our digital past, and copyright stops us saving it[…]
One of the arguments sometimes made in defence of copyright is that without it, creators would be unable to compete with the hordes of copycats that would spring up as soon as their works became popular. Copyright is needed, supporters say, to prevent less innovative creators from producing works that are closely based on new, Read more about First-mover advantage found in the arts shows copyright isn’t necessary to protect innovative creativity[…]
The Japanese government is pushing ahead with a plan to make Japan’s publicly funded research output free to read. From a report: In June, the science ministry will assign funding to universities to build the infrastructure needed to make research papers free to read on a national scale. The move follows the ministry’s announcement in Read more about Japan’s Push To Make All Research Open Access is Taking Shape[…]
Delta, an emulator that can play Nintendo games, had to change its logo after Adobe threatened legal action. You’d think it would face trouble from Nintendo, seeing as it has been going after emulators these days, but no. It’s Adobe who’s going after the developer, which told TechCrunch that it first received an email from Read more about Adobe threatens to sue Nintendo emulator Delta for its look-alike logo[…]
A year ago, Walled Culture wrote about an extremely important case that was being considered by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), the EU’s top court. The central question was whether the judges considered that copyright was more important than privacy. The bad news is that the CJEU has just decided that Read more about Top EU court says there is no right to online anonymity, because copyright is more important[…]
Microsoft (MSFT.O) must pay patent owner IPA Technologies $242 million, a federal jury in Delaware said on Friday after determining that Microsoft’s Cortana virtual-assistant software infringed an IPA patent. The jury agreed with IPA after a week-long trial that Microsoft’s voice-recognition technology violates IPA’s patent rights in computer-communications software. IPA is a subsidiary of patent-licensing Read more about Patent troll hits Microsoft with $242 million US verdict in Cortana lawsuit[…]
Nintendo sent a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) notice for over 8,000 GitHub repositories hosting code from the Yuzu Switch emulator, which the Zelda maker previously described as enabling “piracy at a colossal scale.” The sweeping takedown comes two months after Yuzu’s creators quickly settled a lawsuit with Nintendo and its notoriously trigger-happy legal team Read more about Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8,000 emulator-related DMCA takedowns[…]
In a world where copyright law has run amok, even creating a silly parody song now requires a massive legal disclaimer to avoid getting sued. That’s the absurd reality we live in, as highlighted by the brilliant musical parody project “There I Ruined It.” Musician Dustin Ballard creates hilarious videos, some of which reimagine popular Read more about When You Need To Post A Lengthy Legal Disclaimer With Your Parody Song, You Know Copyright Is Broken[…]
Walled Culture has been warning about the financialisation and securitisation of music for two years now. Those obscure but important developments mean that the owners of copyrights are increasingly detached from the creative production process. They regard music as just another asset, like gold, petroleum or property, to be exploited to the maximum. A Guest Read more about How private equity has used copyright to cannibalise the past at the expense of the future[…]
OpenAI and Google trained their AI models on text transcribed from YouTube videos, potentially violating creators’ copyrights, according to The New York Times. Note – the New York Times is embroiled in copyright lawsuits over AI, where they clearly show they don’t understand that an AI reading content is the same as a person reading Read more about OpenAI and Google train AIs on transcriptions of YouTube videos – YouTube and NYTimes desperately try to profit somehow without doing anything except lawsuit[…]
Tropic Haze, the popular Yuzu Nintendo Switch emulator developer, appears to have agreed to settle Nintendo’s lawsuit against it. Less than a week after Nintendo filed the legal action, accusing the emulator’s creators of “piracy at a colossal scale,” a joint final judgment and permanent injunction filed Tuesday says Tropic Haze has agreed to pay Read more about Makers of Switch emulator Yuzu crushed quickly by Nintendo[…]
As spotted by Linux benchmarking outfit Phoronix, AMD is having problems releasing certain versions of open-source drivers it’s developed for its GPUs – because, according to the Ryzen processor designer, the HDMI Forum won’t allow the code to be released as open source. Specifically, we’re talking about AMD’s FOSS drivers for HDMI 2.1 here. For Read more about HDMI Forum blocks AMD open sourcing drivers due to 2.1[…]
A US judge has dismissed some of the claims made by writers in a copyright infringement lawsuit against OpenAI, though gave the wordsmiths another chance to amend their complaint. The case – Paul Tremblay et al vs OpenAI – kicked off in 2023 when novelists Paul Tremblay, Christopher Golden, and Richard Kadrey, and writer-comedian-actress Sarah Read more about US judge dismisses authors’ ridiculous copyright claim against OpenAI[…]
When it comes to copyright suits or conflicts that never should have existed, one of the most common misunderstandings that births them is not understanding the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law. Even to most laypeople, once you explain it, it’s quite simple. You can copyright a specific expression of something, such as literature, recorded music, Read more about Palworld Is a Great Example Of The Idea/Expression Dichotomy | Techdirt[…]
A year ago, I noted that many of Walled Culture’s illustrations were being produced using generative AI. During that time, AI has developed rapidly. For example, in the field of images, OpenAI has introduced DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT: When prompted with an idea, ChatGPT will automatically generate tailored, detailed prompts for DALL·E 3 that bring your idea to life. Read more about Generative AI Will Be A Huge Boon For The Public Domain, Unless Copyright Blocks It[…]
This week the NY Times somehow broke the story of… well, the NY Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft. I wonder who tipped them off. Anyhoo, the lawsuit in many ways is similar to some of the over a dozen lawsuits filed by copyright holders against AI companies. We’ve written about how silly many of these Read more about The NY Times Lawsuit Against OpenAI Would Open Up The NY Times To All Sorts Of Lawsuits Should It Win, shows that if you feed it a URL it can regurgitate what’s on the first parts of that URL[…]
The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies. The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular Read more about New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Reading Publicly Available Information[…]
A U.S. computer scientist on Wednesday lost his bid to register patents over inventions created by his artificial intelligence system in a landmark case in Britain about whether AI can own patent rights. Stephen Thaler wanted to be granted two patents in the UK for inventions he says were devised by his “creativity machine” called Read more about AI cannot be patent ‘inventor’, UK Supreme Court rules in landmark case – but a company can[…]
French senators criticised the government’s stance in the AI Act negotiations, particularly a lack of copyright protection and the influence of a lobbyist with alleged conflicts of interests, former digital state secretary Cédric O. The EU AI Act is set to become the world’s first regulation of artificial intelligence. Since the emergence of AI models, Read more about AI Act: French govt accused of being influenced by lobbyist with conflict of interests by senators in the pockets of copyright giants. Which surprises no-one watching the AI act process.[…]
As Walled Culture has often noted, the process of framing new copyright laws is tilted against the public in multiple ways. And on the rare occasions when a government makes some mild concession to anyone outside the copyright industry, the latter invariably rolls out its highly-effective lobbying machine to fight against such measures. It’s happening again in Read more about The UK Government Should Not Let Copyright Stifle AI Innovation[…]
In 2020, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley and Penguin Random House sued the Internet Archive (IA) for copyright infringement, equating its ‘Open Library’ to a pirate site. IA’s library is a non-profit operation that scans physical books, which can then be lent out to patrons in an ebook format. Patrons can also borrow books that Read more about Internet Archive: Digital Lending is Fair Use, Not Copyright Infringement – a library is a library, whether it’s paper or digital[…]
A few weeks ago, publishing giant Penguin Random House (and, yes, I’m still confused why they didn’t call it Random Penguin House after the merger) announced that it was filing a lawsuit (along with many others) against the state of Iowa for its attempt to ban books in school libraries. In its announcement, Penguin Random Read more about Internet Archive Files Opening Brief In Its Appeal Of Book Publishers’ wanton destruction of it[…]
In 1999 Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Hiltzik co-authored a Pulitzer Prize-winning story. Now a business columnist for the Times, he writes that a Southern California maker of pornographic films named Strike 3 Holdings is also “a copyright troll,” according to U.S. Judge Royce C. Lamberth: Lamberth cwrote in 2018, “Armed with hundreds of cut-and-pasted Read more about Copyright Troll Porn Company Makes Millions By Shaming Potential Porn Consumers[…]
[…] Robotic artists have been involved in various types of creative works for a long time. Since the 1970s computers have been producing crude works of art, and these efforts continue today. Most of these computer-generated works of art relied heavily on the creative input of the programmer; the machine was at most an instrument Read more about Artificial intelligence and copyright – WIPO[…]
When Epic went after both Apple and Google a few years ago with antitrust claims regarding the need to go through their app stores to get on phones, we noted that it seemed more like negotiation-by-lawsuit. Both Apple and Google have cut some deals with larger companies to lower the 30% cut the companies take Read more about Things That Make No Sense: Epic Lost Its Fight Over Apple’s Closed iOS Platform, But Won It Over Google’s More Open Android Platform[…]