Over the past three years since the internet industry first had to respond to the so-called “Techlash,” various comments on the theme that “the internet didn’t turn out like we expected” have generally shared one common flaw—a failure to acknowledge that the expectation itself was folly. Whether parties are debating the amount of moderation that should or should not be done ...
Holy whiplash segues, Batman. There I was reading a perfectly interesting article by Sarah Jeong on the potential hazards of selling one’s personal data, when she took an incomprehensible—if mercifully brief—detour into the realm of copyright law. She presents a reasonable enough case that the companies now offering to help us “broker” our private data (e.g. health information) may be ...
On Tuesday, Meredith Filak Rose of Public Knowledge posted a blog suggesting that a solution to rampant misinformation is to “bring libraries online.” Not surprisingly, she identifies copyright law as the barrier currently preventing access to quality information that could otherwise help solve the problem … “High-quality, vetted, peer-reviewed secondary sources are, unfortunately, increasingly hard to come by, online or off. ...
I recently attended a round-table discussion on the subject of artificial intelligence and copyright. The first of several engaging topics I thought warranted a post was the question of “machine learning,” which I put in quotes here with respect to one scholar who admonished against anthropomorphizing AI by using words for human activities to describe the actions of computers. I ...
I was reading an editorial the other day written by Stephen Witt for NPR shortly after the passing of John Parry Barlow in 2018; and it occurred to me that internet activists seem to fit one of two profiles—Mourners and Evangelicals. And both are full of shit. Witt does an excellent job summarizing the early barefoot wanderings of the college-dropout, ...
