The fingerprints on a letter to Congress about AI; Politico, October 23, 2023

 BRENDAN BORDELON, Politico; The fingerprints on a letter to Congress about AI

"The message in the open letter sent to Congress on Sept. 11 was clear: Don’t put new copyright regulations on artificial intelligence systems.

The letter’s signatories were real players, a broad coalition of think tanks, professors and civil-society groups with a stake in the growing debate about AI and copyright in Washington.

Undisclosed, however, were the fingerprints of Sy Damle, a tech-friendly Washington lawyer and former government official who works for top firms in the industry — including OpenAI, one of the top developers of cutting-edge AI models. Damle is currently representing OpenAI in ongoing copyright lawsuits...

The effort by an OpenAI lawyer to covertly sway Congress against new laws on AI and copyright comes in the midst of an escalating influence campaign — tied to OpenAI and other top AI firms — that critics fear is shifting Washington’s attention away from current AI harms and toward existential threats posed by future AI systems...

Many of the points made in the September letter echo those made recently by Damle in other venues, including an argument comparing the rise of AI to the invention of photography."

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF, February 24, 2017

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Law Professors Address RCEP Negotiators on Copyright

"Next week the latest round of secret negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) kicks off in Kobe, Japan. Once the shy younger sibling of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the recent death of the TPP has thrust RCEP further into the spotlight, and raised the stakes both for its sixteen prospective parties, and for lobbyists with designs to stamp their own mark on the text's intellectual property and e-commerce chapters.

Our last analysis of RCEP pointed out some of the ways in which the then-current leaked text represented an improvement on the TPP, but how other parts of it—including those on copyright enforcement—repeated its mistakes and failed to seize opportunities for improvement. This week, over 60 copyright scholars released an open letter that sets out their views of what negotiators ought to do in order to address these problems...

The RCEP negotiators evidently haven't taken the failure of the TPP to heart, or they would be doing more to ensure that their negotiations are inclusive, transparent, and strike a fair balance between the interests of copyright owners and those of the public."

Think Tanks and the Influence of Corporate Dollars; New York Times, 8/10/16

Room for Debate, New York Times; Think Tanks and the Influence of Corporate Dollars:

"Think tanks inform both government policy and media analysis with their research, because as nonprofit institutions, they are seen as independent. But some institutions vigorously push their donors’ agendas, acting like lobbyists. Some scholars even use their positions at think tanks to promote work they are separately paid to do for corporations.

What can be done to protect against corporate influence over research institutions?"

How Think Tanks Amplify Corporate America’s Influence; New York Times, 8/7/16

Eric Lipton and Brooke Williams, New York Times; How Think Tanks Amplify Corporate America’s Influence:

"The likely conclusions of some think tank reports, documents show, are discussed with donors — or even potential ones — before the research is complete. Drafts of the studies have been shared with donors whose opinions have then helped shape final reports. Donors have outlined how the resulting scholarship will be used as part of broader lobbying efforts. The think tanks also help donors promote their corporate brands, as Brookings does with JPMorgan Chase, whose $15.5 million contribution is the largest by a private corporation in the institution’s history.

Despite these benefits, corporations can write off the donations as charitable contributions. Some tax experts say these arrangements may amount to improper subsidies by taxpayers if think tanks are providing specific services.

“People think of think tanks as do-gooders, uncompromised and not bought like others in the political class,” said Bill Goodfellow, the executive director of the Center for International Policy, a Washington-based think tank. “But it’s absurd to suggest that donors don’t have influence. The danger is we in the think tank world are being corrupted in the same way as the political world. And all of us should be worried about it.”

A group of Democratic state attorneys general is investigating whether Exxon Mobil worked with certain think tanks in past decades to cover up its understanding of fossil fuels’ impact on climate change, in part by financing reports questioning the science, a suggestion the company rejects.

Executives at Brookings, the Center for Strategic and International Studies and other think tanks say they have systems in place to ensure that their reports are based on scholars’ independent conclusions."

Watering down of ethics code on county agenda Tuesday; Sun Sentinel, 6/5/15

Brittany Wallman, Sun Sentinel; Watering down of ethics code on county agenda Tuesday:

"Broward commissioners will order up Tuesday the ethics code they really wanted on their plates. And they'll ask for a free bottle of water with it.

They'll direct the county attorney's office to write a new ethics law they can vote on in the fall.

Looking at the list of potential changes, nearly all of them could be classified as weakening, loosening, or narrowing the code's effects.

For one thing, politicians finally would be able to accept that free bottle of water they talk about frequently. In fact, they could accept a $10 case of water from a lobbyist, under what's proposed below."