Film and music industries on edge: AI's growing influence stirs fear of job displacement, copyright issues; KATU2ABC, August 8, 2023

 KONNER MCINTIRE and JANAE BOWENS , KATU2ABC; Film and music industries on edge: AI's growing influence stirs fear of job displacement, copyright issues

"Currently, the Orrin G. Hatch-Bob Goodlatte Music Modernization Act provides some protection to musicians. It was made law in 2018 and helps to ensure musicians are fairly compensated by publishers.

The law directly addresses piracy which has cost artists billions of dollars.

Five years later, Congressional leaders, including Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.,who serves as the Chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, are concerned the law will not protect musicians against AI.

“For Congress, we’re now looking at old challenges with new dangers, including the ever-present threat of piracy as well as artificial intelligence, which pose still unknown questions for intellectual property protection efforts even as they open doors to a new world of technological capability that is, at present, limitless,” the congressman recently wrote in an op-ed.“If we don’t get AI right, it could very well render not only the Music Modernization Act obsolete – but also the policy choices we make next.”"

Publishers Sue Internet Archive Over Free E-Books; The New York Times, June 1, 2020

Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times; Publishers Sue Internet Archive Over Free E-Books

Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Hachette and Wiley accused the nonprofit of piracy for making over 1 million books free online.

"A group of publishers sued Internet Archive on Monday, saying that the nonprofit group’s trove of free electronic copies of books was robbing authors and publishers of revenue at a moment when it was desperately needed.

Internet Archive has made more than 1.3 million books available free online, which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for a period of 14 days, according to the complaint. Then in March, the group said it would lift all restrictions on its book lending until the end of the public health crisis, creating what it called “a National Emergency Library to serve the nation’s displaced learners.”

But many publishers and authors have called it something different: theft.

“There is nothing innovative or transformative about making complete copies of books to which you have no rights and giving them away for free,” said Maria A. Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, which is helping to coordinate the industry’s response. “They’ve stepped in downstream and taken the intellectual investment of authors and the financial investment of publishers, they’re interfering and giving this away.”"

Copyright Alliance blasts Internet Archive’s Emergency Library launch as “vile”; ZDNet, March 31, 2020

Charlie Osborne, ZDNet; Copyright Alliance blasts Internet Archive’s Emergency Library launch as “vile”

The National Emergency Library opened to help learners “displaced” by COVID-19.

"The Authors Guild said that COVID-19 has been used "as an excuse to push copyright law further out to the edges" which, in turn, is causing authors that are already struggling to pay the bills additional harm...

"Acting as a piracy site -- of which there already are too many -- the Internet Archive tramples on authors' rights by giving away their books to the world," the group says.  

More criticism has come in the form of comments made by the Copyright Alliance, an organization that represents the rights of those in creative industries including authors and artists. CEO Keith Kupferschmid noted that creators are among the hardest hit at present, and while projects have been set up to help those in these industries, the executive said IA's project is making "things much worse for those that need our help.""

Counterfeits in the Digital Marketplace; Lexology, November 7, 2018

Goulston & Storrs PC - Andrew J. Ferren and Jessica Carballo, 

Lexology; Counterfeits in the Digital Marketplace

[Kip Currier: Timely article, on this Cyber Monday, and in light of my IP course's lecture last week on IP Piracy and the Dark Web. 

Anybody else noticing how so many goods fall apart or break really quickly these days?! Glazed gardening pots that crack and disintegrate in one season. Designer metal shower hooks that break off in one year. Ear and nose trimmers that conk out after one use. Clothes that fray--sometimes even after just one wash cycle in cold water. And on and on and on...

As this article makes clear, too, it's annoying when some goods aren't what they claim to be and have a built-in obsolescence of about zero. It's downright dangerous when they explode or catch fire, and when they contain arsenic, lead, and other harmful substances that kids and adults are breathing in and coming into contact with. And let's not forget impacts of counterfeit items on animals, whether farm ones or animal companions, in the form of contaminated feed.

The Trump administration and some federal agencies have made some good steps in the past couple of years in better enforcing IP rights and cracking down on counterfeit goods. The U.S. Congress also needs to take more aggressive action, with civil and criminal consequences, to rein in and hold bad actors and entities accountable and ensure public safety and health are paramount. "Caveat emptor" should not and must not exculpate disreputable sellers from facing the ramifications of their amoral actions.]

"Counterfeiting has moved beyond high-priced luxury goods to low-cost everyday items. Many of these fake products pose real dangers: face masks with arsenic; phone adapters that can electrocute you; computer chargers that fry your hardware; batteries that blow up. These counterfeits infiltrate online marketplaces, where they co-mingle with authentic products in warehouses and ship to unsuspecting consumers. With millions of goods leaving fulfillment centers every day, brand owners and consumers must wrestle with a billion dollar problem: how do you police the largest marketplace in the world?

In January of this year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office filed a report detailing the results of a federal investigation in which 47 products were purchased from five online retailers, including Amazon and Walmart.com. All of the products were advertised as new, shipped from the United States, and sold by third-party sellers with customer ratings above 90%. Nearly half were counterfeit.

How does this happen? The five websites investigated have sizable “marketplaces,” virtual storefronts that let people other than the hosting company sell merchandise. For perspective, more than half of the goods sold on Amazon are from these third-party sellers. Anyone with an ID and a credit card can open a virtual storefront; few identifying details are required to set one up, and these details are regularly falsified. Since 2014, manufacturers from China (the world’s largest maker of counterfeit goods) have been able to sell directly to consumers in the Amazon Marketplace. In fulfillment centers, where products are picked up for packaging and shipment, goods from third-party sellers and goods direct from brand owners co-mingle. The resulting product pool is a mix of authentic and counterfeit goods, all sold as the same product and often for the same price."
 

The EU copyright law that artists love—and internet pioneers say would destroy the web; Quartz, September 11, 2018

Ephrat Livni, Quartz; The EU copyright law that artists love—and internet pioneers say would destroy the web

"European internet users are up in arms over proposed changes to copyright law that will either make the web more fair and lucrative for content creators or destroy the web as we know it—depending on whom you ask.

The movement to modernize and unify EU intellectual property law, initiated in 2016, is up for a vote in the European Parliament in Brussels Sept. 12

Two controversial sections—Article 13 and Article 11—would force technology platforms to police digital content by automatically evaluating intellectual property before anything is uploaded and make news aggregators pay to license links to posts. This would ensure that musicians, artists, filmmakers, photographers and media outlets are paid for work that currently drives advertising revenue to technology companies like Google and Facebook for content that they don’t pay for, or say so supporters. Opponents argue that it will transform the web from a free and open platform to a tool to police information and limit ideas."

SCIENCE’S PIRATE QUEEN; The Verge, February 8, 2018

 Ian Graber-Stiehl, The Verge; SCIENCE’S PIRATE QUEEN

"The legal campaigns against Sci-Hub have — through the Streisand effect — made the site more well-known than most mainstay repositories, and Elbakyan more famous than legal Open Access champions like Suber. The threat posed by ACS’s injunction against Sci-Hub has increased support for the site from web activists organizations such as the EFF, which considesr the site “a symptom of a serious problem: people who can’t afford expensive journal subscriptions, and who don’t have institutional access to academic databases, are unable to use cutting-edge scientific research.”

The effort may backfire. It does nothing to address disappointment scientists feel about how paywalls hide their work. Meanwhile, Sci-Hub has been making waves that might carry it further to a wider swath of both the public and the scientific community. And though Elbakyan might be sailing in dangerous waters, what’s to stop idealistic scientists who are frustrated with the big publishers from handing over their login credentials to Sci-Hub’s pirate queen?"

Chinese Government and Hollywood Launch Snoop-and-Censor Copyright Filter; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), May 1, 2017

Jeremy Malcolm, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Chinese Government and Hollywood Launch Snoop-and Censor Copyright Filter

"Two weeks ago the Copyright Society of China (also known as the China Copyright Association) launched its new 12426 Copyright Monitoring Center, which is dedicated to scanning the Chinese Internet for evidence of copyright infringement. This frightening panopticon is said to be able to monitor video, music and images found on "mainstream audio and video sites and graphic portals, small and medium vertical websites, community platforms, cloud and P2P sites, SmartTV, external set-top boxes, aggregation apps, and so on."...

The announcement of China's government-linked 12426 Copyright Monitoring Center is absolutely chilling. It is just as chilling that the governments of the United States and Europe are being lobbied by copyright holders to follow China's lead. Although this call is being heard on both sides of the Atlantic, it has gained the most ground in Europe, where it needs to be urgently stopped in its tracks. Europeans can learn more and speak out against these draconian censorship demands at the Save the Meme campaign website."

Open access: All human knowledge is there—so why can’t everybody access it?; Ars Technica, 6/7/16

Glyn Moody, Ars Technica; Open access: All human knowledge is there—so why can’t everybody access it? :

"In 1836, Anthony Panizzi, who later became principal librarian of the British Museum, gave evidence before a parliamentary select committee. At that time, he was only first assistant librarian, but even then he had an ambitious vision for what would one day became the British Library. He told the committee:

I want a poor student to have the same means of indulging his learned curiosity, of following his rational pursuits, of consulting the same authorities, of fathoming the most intricate inquiry as the richest man in the kingdom, as far as books go, and I contend that the government is bound to give him the most liberal and unlimited assistance in this respect...

The example of The Pirate Bay shows that the current game of domain whack-a-mole is not one that the lawyers are likely to win. But even if they did, it is too late.

Science magazine's analysis of Sci-Hub downloads reveals that the busiest city location is Tehran. It wrote: "Much of that is from Iranians using programs to automatically download huge swathes of Sci-Hub’s papers to make a local mirror of the site. Rahimi, an engineering student in Tehran, confirms this. 'There are several Persian sites similar to Sci-Hub'."

In this, people are following in the footsteps of Aaron Swartz, with the difference that we don't know what he intended to do with the millions of articles he had downloaded, whereas those mirroring Sci-Hub certainly intend to share the contents widely. It would be surprising if others around the world, especially in emerging economies, are not busily downloading all 45 million papers to do the same."

Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge; Science Alert, 2/12/16

Fiona MacDonald, Science Alert; Researcher illegally shares millions of science papers free online to spread knowledge:

"A researcher in Russia has made more than 48 million journal articles - almost every single peer-reviewed paper every published - freely available online. And she's now refusing to shut the site down, despite a court injunction and a lawsuit from Elsevier, one of the world's biggest publishers.

For those of you who aren't already using it, the site in question is Sci-Hub, and it's sort of like a Pirate Bay of the science world. It was established in 2011 by neuroscientist Alexandra Elbakyan, who was frustrated that she couldn't afford to access the articles needed for her research, and it's since gone viral, with hundreds of thousands of papers being downloaded daily. But at the end of last year, the site was ordered to be taken down by a New York district court - a ruling that Elbakyan has decided to fight, triggering a debate over who really owns science."

Aaron Swartz and copyright wars in the Internet age; Boston Globe, 1/28/16

Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe; Aaron Swartz and copyright wars in the Internet age:

"Swartz is a particularly tragic casualty of a conflict as old as the Gutenberg Bible. When copycats can easily republish the latest Charles Dickens novel or Adele CD, how will artists and publishers get paid? But laws to protect intellectual-property rights can cripple the free exchange of ideas.

Justin Peters seems as helpless as the rest of us to resolve this dilemma. But in his lucid and witty new book, he ably sketches the contours of the dilemma...

Peters places Swartz’s well-meant misdeeds in historical context, showing how this young man was one of many smart, ambitious combatants on both sides of the copyright wars.

"I can’t fault Peters’s sympathy for Swartz, and I share his opinion that the prosecutorial sledgehammer fell much too hard. But Peters seems a little too inclined to play the populist, sneering at the pro-copyright arguments of publishers. Yes, our current intellectual property statutes are absurdly restrictive. But apart from strong protections, how would artists and writers hope to make a decent living?

The conundrum continues, with activists on both sides engaged in constant efforts to redraw the boundaries. Peters’s new book is an excellent survey of the battlefield, and a sobering memorial to its most tragic victim."