If you follow copyright matters, it would be impossible not to read commentary proclaiming either that copyright is “dead” in the age of artificial intelligence or that confronting AI exposes copyright’s philosophical underpinnings as a convenient fiction. There is nothing new about copyright skeptics claiming that its humanist principles are a fiction, but now that machines can produce material that ...
In finding for the petitioners in Mahmoud v. Taylor, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority opens another path to banning books in schools—administrative hassle disguised as constitutional principle. The petitioners in the case are three families—one Muslim, two Catholic—with young children in the Maryland Central Public Schools (MCPS) where the board elected to include a number of children’s books with gay ...
With an introduction that combines the quasi-erudition of Big Tech utopianism and just enough dipshit to sound like Donald Trump, the White House unveiled an action plan on artificial intelligence that is part magical thinking and part policy statement. It all adds up to one bottom line: “Let Big Tech do what it wants, and things will be great.” In ...
In 2018, when Mattel introduced the Frida Kahlo doll as part of its “Inspiring Women” collection in the Barbie portfolio, some consumers saw a strong feminist statement, but many observers familiar with Kahlo’s life and work saw a commercial exploitation the artist would have hated. Indeed, Kahlo was a sharp critic of American capitalism and the kind of bourgeois sensibility ...
Dr. Rebecca Grant, Vice President of Lexington Institute, alleges in a recent post that copyright owners—specifically the bogeyman of “Hollywood”—form an obstacle to national security in the effort to win the AI cold war with China. Out of respect for her credentials as a security expert, I shall assume that all of Dr. Grant’s specific references to the role of ...