We are in the midst of a substantial technological revolution embodied by artificial intelligence, and whilst the technology is frequently overhyped, there is little doubt that it will continue to exert a significant influence on everyday life. Technological developments have been accompanied by lawsuits, policy papers, and even legislative action Read more…
On the 20th of October 2024, this blog turned 20 years old. I’ve been both dreading and looking forward to this milestone. On the one hand, this is probably one of the longest single projects I’ve ever undertaken, and it has resulted in a written corpus that I cannot even Read more…
Copyright AI nerds have been eagerly awaiting a decision in the German case of Kneschke v LAION (previous blog post about the case here), and yesterday we got a ruling (text of the decision in German here, courtesy of Mirko Brüß). In short, LAION was successful in its defence against Read more…
This is the third post in a series about the Copyright Wars (previous posts here and here), which I’ve written given the growing interest regarding copyright prompted by the rise of generative AI. This is a rather basic list of things that I see people getting wrong all the time, Read more…
In a previous post we provided the background of what some call the Copyright Wars, delineating the sides and the parties. While legal conflicts about copyright have been raging since its inception, this post will only cover the modern conflicts that arose after the Internet came into being. This short Read more…
My social timeline has been abuzz with the latest copyright decision regarding the Internet Archive, which lost its appeal in the copyright lawsuit from Hachette. In the words of a colleague, this is a “disappointing but not unforeseen” development; the lower court ruling left little room for an appeal to Read more…
There’s been a disturbance in the Force. Have you felt it? All across popular culture, we have been witnessing an interesting phenomenon: the blurring of lines, the fading to grey, the end of good and evil. It’s all a matter of perspective, haven’t you heard? Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve Read more…
The Internet has been abuzz with the arrest in France of Telegram’s creator Pavel Durov. Details are still sketchy, but French judiciary authorities have issued a press release with some of the charges, these include administering an online platform used to conduct illegal activities such as money laundering, organised crime, Read more…
With the release of Grok 2, Twitter’s latest model, there has been a growing number of images depicting fictional characters as well as celebrities and public personalities on the social media platform, sometimes with hilarious results, and often quite disturbing. This has resulted in a surprising number of people asking Read more…
My social media timeline has started filling up with angry reactions to the news that several academic publishers have been licensing academic works to AI companies for training purposes without having consulted the authors of those works. I can understand the anger and frustration that this news have generated, so Read more…