Below you will find pages that utilize the taxonomy term “copyright”
proposing legislation on Creative Commons for the 2025 Community of Christ World Conference
- kudos:Even after many years of attending, being a member of, and now serving in Community of Christ, I’m still alternately surprised by how many things are the same as my Latter-day Saint upbringing and how many things are different. In the latter category, even though I’ve intellectually understood this for a while, it still surprises me that the World Conferences of Community of Christ (renamed from General Conferences in the 1960s) are sites of debate and discussion rather than a series of sermons.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Big publishers think libraries are the enemy'
- kudos:A good take by Molly White. I remember when I stopped thinking about ebooks in terms of screens (as opposed to paper) and started thinking about them in terms of DRM (as opposed to free use). DRM helps the already powerful at the expense of everything else, and I want to do more to push back against it. link to “Big publishers think libraries are the enemy”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free'
- kudos:Deeply appreciate Masnick’s writeup. I don’t know the ins and outs of the law, and that’s given me some pause in being upset about the ruling. To see a lawyer find fault with so much gives me greater confidence in my own frustration. The most dangerous part, though, doesn’t require a law degree to understand. The logic of the findings poses a threat to all libraries, not just this one.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending'
- kudos:In a weird kind of Streisand effect, I’ve only started using the Internet Archive library since this lawsuit began and it’s a fantastic service. I won’t pretend to know the ins and outs of copyright law, but this sucks. link to “The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Ex-Google CEO says successful AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to ‘clean up the mess’'
- kudos:What reckless hubris. As I wrote earlier today, I’m in favor of more liberal IP law, but not so that businesses can swallow up content to profit from it. link to “Ex-Google CEO says successful AI startups can steal IP and hire lawyers to ‘clean up the mess’”
trying to remember that Disney sucks (even if I like a lot of their IP)
- kudos:When I was slowly making my way through David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything last month, I was having trouble processing all of the ideas in the ambitious, dense book, so I was surprised when one idea sounded familiar: schismogenesis. A few years ago, Cory Doctorow wrote an essay using schismogenesis as a theme. Here’s Doctorow’s explanation of the concept from the original book, and the beginning of his thesis in the post:
📺 tvblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for The Acolyte
- kudos:This was good! Not perfect: there were some rough edges, it’s hard to take some scenes seriously if you’ve watched The Good Place, and there’s a bad case of the Force working as the plot needs it to. Despite all that, though, I love the franchise leaning into a “actually, the Jedi kind of suck” story, and there were some interesting fight scenes and compelling story elements. Happy to see Star Wars experimenting like this… though, of course, it should be moving into the public domain so that everyone (not just Disney) can do that experimentation.
follow up on not having control over my own research
- kudos:Back in December, I wrote a frustrated post about an article I’d submitted to a special issue that was now being repackaged into an edited volume, in which my research would appear as a chapter. At the time, I wrote about how frustrated I was at the lack of control I had over my own research output. I might well have consented to having my work reprinted in this new format, but I was frustrated that my consent was neither sought nor necessary for the process.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Journalists “deeply troubled” by OpenAI’s content deals with Vox, The Atlantic'
- kudos:In a roundabout way, I think this helps demonstrate why scraping data for generative AI isn’t a question of copyright. Even when there is a legal agreement, it can still be exploitative—it’s a question of digital labor. link to “Journalists ‘deeply troubled’ by OpenAI’s content deals with Vox, The Atlantic”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'YouTuber Has Video Demonitized Over Washing Machine Chime'
- kudos:Bookmarking so I have enraging examples to show my students. link to “YouTuber Has Video Demonitized Over Washing Machine Chime”
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'OpenAI, Mass Scraper of Copyrighted Work, Claims Copyright Over Subreddit's Logo'
- kudos:I don’t think intellectual property is the way to fight back against generative AI, but it is wildly out of line for a company who profits off using other’s intellectual property to be this petty. link to “OpenAI, Mass Scraper of Copyrighted Work, Claims Copyright Over Subreddit’s Logo”
libraries could be the best streaming services
- kudos:Membership in one of my local libraries includes access to Freegal, a kind of janky, third-tier music streaming service. The selection isn’t fantastic, but my tastes in music aren’t exactly mainstream, and over the past four years, I’ve found a lot of music I like available through the service. In fact, because you can download a limited number of tracks per week, I have Indochine songs, Gérard Lenorman albums, and even the Stranger Things soundtrack all saved to my phone so that I can bypass the jankiness of the service and the official app.
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I have lots of concerns about LLM training, but I think it’s better to think of the issue in terms of digital labor, not copyright. My blog is licensed for reuse, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less exploitative for someone to scrape it all to develop software that will make them rich off my work.
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My department has a copyright class on the books that’s never been taught—even when I offered to take it on after being hired. I understand why that offer wasn’t taken up, but I can’t help but think about all I could do in that class with Mickey Mouse this semester.
publication copyright and reprinting consent
- kudos:Ben has been one of my best students over the past 5.5 years. He was a non-traditional student who flunked out of UK decades ago, went on to be a successful small business owner elsewhere in the country, and then leapt at the chance to come back to UK through an online degree completion program. As part of that program, he took one of the classes I was teaching at the time, which counted toward general education credit.
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Pluralistic: Bill Willingham puts his graphic novel series “Fables” into the public domain (15 Sept 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow'
- kudos:Appreciate Doctorow’s detailed (and expert) perspectve here. link to ‘Pluralistic: Bill Willingham puts his graphic novel series “Fables” into the public domain (15 Sept 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers - The New York Times'
- kudos:Good coverage of a worrying development. I’m sympathetic to authors’ worries here, but I also think they’re wrong. If digital is different than the physical, copyright considerations need to be more generous, NOT stricter. The Internet Archive is an important service, and I’m worried about the future. link to ‘The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers - The New York Times’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright | Techdirt'
- kudos:This is dumb. Copyright is important, but this example shows how much we’ve made it overreach. link to ‘Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright | Techdirt’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'The Fanfic Sex Trope That Caught a Plundering AI Red-Handed | WIRED'
- kudos:This is a wild, compelling story that I missed when it first came out. Glad to be reading it now. link to ‘The Fanfic Sex Trope That Caught a Plundering AI Red-Handed | WIRED’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Chokepoint Capitalism can break you free from big tech and big content - The Verge'
- kudos:It’s a long interview, so I didn’t read the whole thing, but what I did read made me want to read this book even more. I have a copy, I just need to open it up. link to ‘Chokepoint Capitalism can break you free from big tech and big content - The Verge’
🔗 linkblog: my thoughts on 'Facebook Is So Sure Its Erroneous Blocking Of Music Is Right, There’s No Option To Say It’s Wrong | Techdirt'
- kudos:Intellectual property is important, but copyright filters are an absolute mess. link to ‘Facebook Is So Sure Its Erroneous Blocking Of Music Is Right, There’s No Option To Say It’s Wrong | Techdirt’
why 'open access' isn't enough
- kudos:I just barely microblogged something about what I want to say here, but over the past hour, it’s been nagging at me more and more, and I want to write some more about it. I was introduced to academia through educational technology, and I was introduced to educational technology through a class at BYU taught by David Wiley. This class was not about educational technology, but David’s passion for Web 2.
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One of my favorite students will always be the undergrad from a few years ago who expressed outrage when I explained that researchers frequently have to sign over the copyright to their own studies.
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One of my earliest publications has been added to a research anthology without my knowledge or consent, since publisher owns copyright. Not necessarily opposed to end result, but still miffed about lack of control.
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Today I get to teach about copyright and fair use in class, which is basically an excuse to watch YouTube videos and discuss whether they meet fair use or not.