The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that among the 2023 recipients of the EFF Award (formerly the Pioneer Award), it will honor Sci-Hub founder Alexandra Asanova Elbakyan this September. The Russian-based Sci-Hub is an enterprise-scale pirate site specifically built to host scientific papers about which the EFF states: Through Sci-Hub, Elbakyan has strived to shatter academic publishing’s monopoly-like mechanisms in ...
In my last post, I discussed some of the allegations that “machine learning” (ML) with the use of copyrighted works constitutes mass infringement. Citing the class action lawsuits Andersen and Tremblay, I predicted that if the courts do not find that ML unavoidably violates the reproduction right (§106(1)), copyright law may not offer much relief to the creators of the ...
Many creators feel very strongly that “training” AI models with unlicensed, copyrighted works is unjust—not least because generative AIs built on their creativities will put some creators out of business while enriching more tech moguls. It is both insult and injury to see one’s work used, without consideration, to underwrite the mechanism of one’s own obsolescence. But regardless of how ...
We all know the mantra that says it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. According to Quote Investigator, the earliest published version of this sentiment appeared in 1846, but QI’s editors believe the notion is older than that and cannot be attributed to any one source. Whatever its derivation or contexts in which it has been used over many decades, ...
On May 18, the Supreme Court delivered opinions in Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh, a pair of interrelated cases in which both plaintiffs sought to hold online platforms liable for hosting material meant to inspire acts of terrorism. Because the Court unanimously found in Taamneh that there was no basis in anti-terrorism law for liability (and therefore no ...
