Category: Podcasts

Podcast – Tech Designer Carla Diana

This year’s World IP Day theme celebrates Women and IP: Accelerating Innovation and Creativity, and for that reason as well as the fact that artificial intelligence dominates all topics these days, my guest for this episode is the highly innovative Carla Diana, whom I first interviewed in 2014.

Carla is a tech designer, author, and educator. She runs the 4D design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan; she is the lead designer at Diligent Robotics in Austin, Texas; and she is the author of dozens of articles and essays about technology and design. Her most recent book, published in 2021 by Harvard Business Review Press, is My Robot Gets Me: How Social Design Can Make New Products More Human. And we’ll talk about what that means, plus generative AI, driverless cars, ethics in technology, and at least one product I had not imagined was a thing.

Show Contents

  • 00:01:24 – Carla’s background.
  • 00:05:57 – Why good design is social.
  • 00:11:55 – Design modalities & thinking about consumers with disabilities.
  • 00:20:27 – That tech should not mimic human behavior.
  • 00:28:57 – On avoiding innovation for its own sake.
  • 00:36:07 – On ethics in technology.
  • 00:45:51 – Generative AI and the arts.
  • 01:00:55 – Tech solutions for tech problems (e.g. Glaze for visual artists).
  • 01:05:32 – Self-driving vehicles.
  • 01:09:30 – Economic & social implications of a driverless world.
  • 01:15:26 – Combining design and ethics.

When the State Steals Your Work – Podcast with Rick Allen

In March 2020, the Supreme Court delivered its opinion in the case Allen v. Cooper. The outcome was not surprising because the Court affirmed precedent ruling from the late 1990s which held that the 11th Amendment bars suing a state or state actors for damages stemming from intellectual property infringement.

Thus far, I’ve explored the murky waters of state sovereign immunity as it relates to Allen v. Cooper and other cases, including author Michael Bynum and photographer Jim Olive’s lawsuits filed in the State of Texas. So far, my focus in this area has been academic. But on February 8th, Rick Allen filed an amended complaint in North Carolina, and after I read that narrative, I wanted to invite Rick back to the podcast to talk more personally about his story, what it means to him, and what it should mean to anyone who hears it.

Show Contents

  • 1:15 Becoming an Underwater Cameraman
  • 11:06 Queen Anne’s Revenge Opportunity of Lifetime
  • 15:06 Wreck Diving and Filming
  • 27:19 Personal Investment
  • 37:20 Rare Cooperation Between Treasure Hunters and Archeologists
  • 43:00 A Near-Fatal Accident
  • 48:00 State Infringements
  • 59:00 Blackbeard’s Law
  • 1:05:00 Suing the State of North Carolina
  • 1:16:00 Implications for All Creators
  • 1:29:00 Overlap with Censorship

Photo of Rick Allen by Cindy Burnham.

Podcast: Copyright & Culture with Terrica Carrington

The theme of World IP Day this year is IP and Youth: Innovating for the Future. And one young IP expert trying to shape a better future for the next generation of creators is Terrica Carrington, VP of Legal Policy and Copyright Counsel at Copyright Alliance. With a passion for social justice, Terrica focuses a great deal of her energy and talent on broadening the copyright system to serve a more diverse range of creators—especially young creators of color.

In January, Terrica was presented by the Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts with the G. Hamilton Loeb Award for Pro Bono Excellence for her work supporting the arts; and among her many other activities, she co-hosts a series of panel discussions called Black in Copyright in collaboration with Copyright Alliance, the Copyright Society, and the Young Lawyers Division of the Black Entertainment & Sports Lawyers Association.

Episode Contents

  • 01:47 – Why copyright law?
  • 04:40 – Working in public policy.
  • 07:30 – Public policy and interest in social justice.
  • 08:27 – #BlackTikTokStrike
  • 12:07 – copyright in choreography
  • 19:52 – copyright & cultural misappropriation
  • 24:08 – #BlackTikTokStrike & the Elvis narrative
  • 27:29 – Copyright Alliance BIPOC initiative.
  • 33:46 – dialogue informing the law.
  • 36:06 – responses to the TikTok strike.
  • 38:39 – engaging young creators in copyright.