The Copyright Office takes on the sticky issue of artificial intelligence; Federal News Network, March 11, 2025

Tom Temin, Federal News Network; The Copyright Office takes on the sticky issue of artificial intelligence

"Artificial intelligence raises storms of questions in every domain it touches. Chief among them, copyright questions. Now the U.S. Copyright Office, a congressional agency, has completed the second of two studies of AI and copyrights. This one deals with whether you can copyright outputs created using AI. Emily Chapuis, the Copyright Office’s deputy general counsel, joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss...

Emily Chapuis: Yeah. That’s right. So we don’t recommend in the report that Congress take any action. And the reason for this is we think that copyright law is sufficiently flexible to deal with changes in technology. And that’s not just based on AI, but on the entire history of copyright law, has had to deal with these questions, whether it’s the development of the camera or the internet. The questions about copyright ability are always on a case-by-case basis. And the technology that’s used and how it’s used and what it’s used for are important elements of that. But the sort of defining legal principles aren’t different in this context than in those other ones.

Tom Temin: Right. So the human input idea then is kind of an eternal for copyright. How do you decide that? Is it a percentage of human input? Because the machine does a lot here. But you could say, ‘Well, the camera did a lot when it opened and closed the shutter and exposed silver halide. And then there was a machine process to produce that image. But it was the selection, the timing, the decisive moment.’ To quote Henri Cartier-Bresson, another French photographer. That’s really the issue here. The human input and not the machine input.

Emily Chapuis: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s hard to parse. I mean, we’ve had people ask, so what’s the percentage that has to be human created? And there’s not a clear answer to that, again, because it’s case by case. But also the question isn’t really amount as much as it is control. So who’s controlling the expression. And so one of the things that we try to explain is that even the same technology can be used in a variety of different ways. So you can use generative AI technology as a tool assistive to enhance the human expression or you can use it as a substitute for human expression. And so control is sort of the bottom line in terms of what we’re looking at to draw that distinction."

Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media; The Guardian, March 13, 2022

Charles Kaiser , The Guardian; Sandy Hook review: anatomy of an American tragedy – and the obscenity of social media

"Those recommendations are the result of the infernal algorithms which are at the heart of the business models of Facebook and YouTube and are probably more responsible for the breakdown in civil society in the US and the world than anything else invented.

“We thought the internet would give us this accelerated society of science and information,” says Lenny Pozner, whose son Noah was one of the Sandy Hook victims. But “really, we’ve gone back to flat earth”."

America’s digital divide is an emergency; The Washington Post, June 23, 2020

Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Washington Post; America’s digital divide is an emergency

 

"The Internet was founded to connect. As access to America’s fundamental systems and basic rights moves online, now is the time to bridge the divide. As the events of 2020 have made clear, a quality Internet connection isn’t optional. Providing one to all Americans is a necessity."

In Memory of Lawrence Roberts The man who actually got the internet going has passed away.; Slate, January 3, 2019

Morten Bay, Slate; In Memory of Lawrence Roberts

The man who actually got the internet going has passed away. 

 

"Why, you may ask, have you never heard of Larry Roberts if he was so influential in developing and implementing technologies still in use five decades later?

First of all, no single person is the “mother” or “father” or the internet. Hundreds of people contributed to its emergence, even in the early years. Second, we unfortunately often confuse achievements with likability and communication skills. The people lauded in the media as internet “fathers,” such as Vint Cerf, Leonard Kleinrock, and Tim Berners-Lee, have all made invaluable contributions. But they’re also excellent storytellers and charming personalities. The soft-spoken Larry Roberts and his stern demeanor didn’t work well on TV, and he spoke in technical facts rather than sound bites. But Roberts, driven by his credo of faster knowledge sharing for civilization’s sake, did more than anyone else to get the job done. Where others theorized, Roberts executed."

Censoring China’s Internet, for Stability and Profit; The New York Times, January 2, 2019

Li Yuan, The New York Times; Censoring China’s Internet, for Stability and Profit

"For Chinese companies, staying on the safe side of government censors is a matter of life and death. Adding to the burden, the authorities demand that companies censor themselves, spurring them to hire thousands of people to police content.

That in turn has created a growing and lucrative new industry: censorship factories."

Why you should protect your child's online privacy; CNN.com, June 7, 2017

Caroline Knorr, CNN.com; Why you should protect your child's online privacy

"If you don't want to have the bejesus scared out of you, don't talk to an expert on kids' online privacy. If you knew what was really out there -- online predators, identity thieves, data miners -- you'd lock up the internet and throw away the key.

The truth is, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The internet is so woven into our lives, we need to be aware of the worst-case scenarios that can strike when we're unprepared. Below are a few of those scary things that can and do happen. But with some eyes and ears to the ground, they are totally preventable...

Protect yourself. Talk to your kids about keeping private things private, considering how far information can travel and how long it can last, and how they can talk to their friends about respecting one another's personal privacy."

GDPR: EU Goes Against The Global Grain To Protect Privacy; Forbes, June 7, 2017

Simon Crosby, Forbes; GDPR: EU Goes Against The Global Grain To Protect Privacy

"Could it be that the EU is about to save the internet? At a time when internet users worldwide are increasingly under surveillance by governments, service providers, advertising networks and social media websites, it seems that one of the internet’s greatest promises -- open communication for all -- has been lost. But the EU has an opportunity to sway the outcome with the recently adopted General Data Protection Regulation, which will become law next year.

The EU’s implementation of GDPR has an opportunity to become the most important globally recognized set of principles to protect online privacy. In recent developments, President Donald Trump and his administration promised to mandate rapid improvements in U.S. cybersecurity, but they quickly acquiesced to commercial interests by overriding regulations that the Federal Communications Commission had set up to legitimize the sale of subscriber information by ISPs.

What does GDPR mean for consumers? In short, it will strengthen the practice of fundamental privacy rights of individuals and put users back in control of their personal data. This level of regulation will apply to both corporations and governments and will have the potential to inherently disrupt the protocols for data protection on a global scale."

"Invasion of Privacy"; Bizarro, April 12, 2017

Dan Piraro, Bizarro; "Invasion of Privacy"

"Bullhorn vs. Internet"; Bizarro, March 5, 2017

Dan Piraro, Bizarro; "Bullhorn vs. Internet"