Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech; The New York Times, January 14, 2026

 Jessica Grose , The New York Times; Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech

"It might be harder to shame the tech companies themselves into making their products safer, but we can shame third-party companies like toymakers, app stores and advertisers into ending partnerships. And with enough public disapproval, legislators might be inspired to act.

In some of the very worst corners of the internet might lie some hope...

Without more public shaming, what seems to be the implacable forward march of A.I. is unstoppable...

As Jay Caspian Kang noted in The New Yorker recently, changing social norms around kids and tech use can be powerful, and reforms like smartphone bans in schools have happened fairly quickly, and mostly on the state and local level."

Library offering two hybrid workshops on AI issues; University of Pittsburgh, University Times, January 16, 2026

 University of Pittsburgh, University Times; Library offering two hybrid workshops on AI issues

"Next week the University Library System will host two hybrid AI workshops, which are open to all faculty, staff and students.

Both workshops will be held in Hillman Library’s K. Leroy Irvis Reading Room and will be available online.

Navigating Pitt's AI Resources for Research & Learning: 4-5 p.m. Jan. 21. In this workshop, participants will learn about all the AI tools available to the Pitt community and what their strengths are when it comes to research and learning. The workshop will focus on identifying the appropriate AI tools, describing their strengths and weaknesses for specific learning needs, and developing a plan for using the tools effectively. Register here.

Creating a Personal Research & Learning Assistant: Writing Effective Prompts: 4-5 p.m. Jan. 22. Anyone can use an AI tool, but maximizing its potential for personalized learning takes some skills and forethought. If you have been using Claude or Gemini to support your research or learning and are interested in getting better results faster, this workshop is for you. Attend this session to learn strategies to write effective prompts which will help you both ideate on your topic of interest and increase the likelihood of generating useful responses. We will explore numerous frameworks for crafting prompts, including making use of personas, context, and references. Register here."

Copyright laws need to modernize to include fan-made edits; The Miami Hurricane, January 14, 2026

 Marissa Levinson, The Miami Hurricane; Copyright laws need to modernize to include fan-made edits

[Kip Currier: Unfortunately, this University of Miami's student newspaper's Op-Ed -- Copyright laws need to modernize to include fan-made edits -- contains staggeringly inaccurate interpretations and assertions about copyright law and fair use. 

No one wanting to make informed decisions on copyright-related matters should rely on the writer's cherry-picked aspects of copyright law that are then stitched together to make wildly erroneous conclusions.

Copyright literacy is essential.]

 

[Excerpt]

"I can’t even count the amount of times I’ve been scrolling through my saved folders on TikTok, Instagram or X to watch video edits of clips from my favorite TV shows, only to find nothing but a shell of what once used to be there, with a body of text over it. It reads: “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim.” 

Video edits of shows and movies, which are often paired with trending songs as the audios, have gained traction on social media platforms among hundreds of fan bases. Navigating this new age of fan-generated edits comes with confusion. As copyright laws based on precedent aren’t current enough to guide regulations on this new type of content, video edits deserve to be protected under copyright law.

Are edits legal?

Fan-made video edits range from less than 30-seconds to a few minutes long. This poses the question of whether they are legal in terms of copyright. The law gives copyright the “power ‘to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Investors the exclusive Right to their Respective Writings and Discoveries,’” according to Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. 

This means, under the Copyright Act of 1976, “original works of authorship fixed in tangible medium of expression” are protected. According to the four exemptions of the copyright law, video edits are protected by the first amendment and therefore, should be legal to publish."

Nobel Prize committee says Machado decision to give Trump award doesn’t change who won; The Hill, January 16, 2026

SOPHIE BRAMS, The Hill; Nobel Prize committee says Machado decision to give Trump award doesn’t change who won

 "The committee that awards the Nobel Prize said Friday that the physical symbols of the prize — a medal and diploma — can be given away, but the honor itself is “inseparably linked” to the winner.  

“The medal and the diploma are the physical symbols confirming that an individual or organisation has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The prize itself – the honour and recognition – remains inseparably linked to the person or organisation designated as the laureate by the Norwegian Nobel Committee,” the committee said in a statement."

MLK Day concert held annually at the Kennedy Center for 23 years is relocating; NPR, January 14, 2026

 Elizabeth Blair, NPR ; MLK Day concert held annually at the Kennedy Center for 23 years is relocating

"Let Freedom Ring, an annual concert in Washington, D.C., celebrating the life of Martin Luther King Jr., has been a signature event at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for more than 20 years. Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and Chaka Khan have performed, backed by a choir made up of singers from D.C.-area churches and from Georgetown University, which produces the event.

But this year's event, headlined by actor and rapper Common, will not be held at the Kennedy Center...

Composer Nolan Williams Jr., Let Freedom Ring's music producer since 2003, also says he has no regrets that the event is moving.

"You celebrate the time that was and the impact that has been and can never be erased. And then you move forward to the next thing," said Williams.

This year, Williams wrote a piece for the event called "Just Like Selma," inspired by one of King's most famous quotes: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Williams says sometimes the quote is "interpreted in a passive way."

"The arc doesn't just happen to move. We have to be agents of change. We have to be active arc movers, arc benders," said Williams. "And so throughout the song, you hear these action words like 'protest,' 'resist,' 'endure,' 'agitate,' 'fight hate.' And those are all the action words that remind us of the responsibility that we have to be arc benders."

Trump pardons South Bay businesswoman convicted of fraud after he granted her clemency once before; The San Diego Union-Tribune, January 16, 2026

ALEX RIGGINS , The San Diego Union-Tribune; Trump pardons South Bay businesswoman convicted of fraud after he granted her clemency once before

"For the second time in five years, President Donald Trump has granted clemency to twice-convicted South Bay businesswoman Adriana Isabel Camberos, this time issuing her and her brother full and unconditional pardons of their fraud convictions after commuting her previous fraud sentence in 2021.

Camberos, 55, was first convicted in 2016 of taking part in a fraud scheme with her husband and others that involved selling counterfeit 5-Hour Energy drinks. She was about halfway through her 26-month prison term in that case when Trump commuted her sentence on the last day of his first term. Unlike a full pardon, that action set her free from prison but didn’t wipe out her conviction.

But in 2023, federal prosecutors in San Diego alleged that Camberos and her brother, Andres “Andy” Enrique Camberos, were operating a new fraud scheme that netted them tens of millions of dollars by selling discounted products meant to be sold in Mexico in the more lucrative U.S. market.

A San Diego federal jury later convicted the siblings on eight fraud counts. Among the jury’s findings was that the siblings committed wire fraud just 42 days after Trump first granted Adriana Camberos clemency."

Martha Graham Dance Company Won’t Celebrate Centennial at Kennedy Center; The New York Times, January 16, 2026

 Michaela Towfighi , The New York Times; Martha Graham Dance Company Won’t Celebrate Centennial at Kennedy Center

"The Martha Graham Dance Company said on Friday that it would not perform at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts this spring as part of the troupe’s centennial tour across the United States.

“The Martha Graham Dance Company regrets that we are unable to perform at the Kennedy Center in April,” it said in a statement. “We hope to perform at the center in the future.”

The company did not give a reason for the withdrawal. But several artists and groups have pulled out of Kennedy Center events since its board of trustees voted last month to add President Trump’s name to the building."

Microsoft Shuts Down Library, Replaces It With AI; Futurism, January 16, 2026

 Frank Landymore, Futurism; Microsoft Shuts Down Library, Replaces It With AI

"Does Microsoft hate books more, or its own workers? It’s hard to say, because The Verge reports that the multitrillion dollar giant is gutting its employee library and cutting down on digital subscriptions in favor of pursuing what’s internally described as an “AI-powered learning experience” — whatever in Clippy’s name that’s supposed to mean."

Microsoft is closing its employee library and cutting back on subscriptions; The Verge, January 15, 2026

Tom Warren, The Verge; Microsoft is closing its employee library and cutting back on subscriptions

"Microsoft is closing its physical library of books and cutting employee subscriptions. It's part of cost cutting and a move to AI."

Adviser in Anne Frank case suggests VPNs alone don’t break copyright borders; Courthouse News Service, January 15, 2026

 EUNSEO HONG , Courthouse News Service; Adviser in Anne Frank case suggests VPNs alone don’t break copyright borders

"The dispute centers on a clash between the Anne Frank Fonds, which holds the copyright for certain versions of her diary in the Netherlands, and a group of academic and cultural institutions that published a comprehensive scholarly edition of the manuscripts online. While the diary entered the public domain in several EU countries in 2016, including Germany, Belgium and Italy, copyright protection in the Netherlands runs until 2037.

To account for that divide, the publishers limited access where the diary is still protected, using geoblocking and on-screen warnings. The Fonds challenged that setup, arguing that the possibility of access through VPN services was enough to make the publication unlawful in the Netherlands.

Rantos rejected that logic, warning that tying liability to the mere possibility of circumvention would make territorial copyright unworkable online.

“It is common ground that, in both the virtual and real world, no security measure is absolutely inviolable,” he wrote, underscoring that EU law does not expect publishers to do the impossible.

In his view, copyright responsibility turns on a publisher’s conduct, not on every workaround devised by determined users, unless the safeguards are intentionally flimsy or built to be easily defeated.

Stef van Gompel, a professor of intellectual property law at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, said the advocate general got it right in drawing a clear line between a publisher’s actions and what users might do to get around them. Treating VPN workarounds alone as a copyright violation, he said, would stretch the law too far.

“Otherwise, this would mark the end of online territorial licensing of copyright in the EU and jeopardize the free flow of information online,” van Gompel said. He warned that otherwise, works published where they are in the public domain could end up effectively off-limits online “if the work is still in copyright in any other country in the world.”"

Alabama library denied funding because it won’t move classic book ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’; AL.com, January 15, 2026

 

• Williesha Morris

, AL.com; Alabama library denied funding because it won’t move classic book ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’

"In a meeting fraught with crosstalk and tension, the Alabama Public Library Service board voted to withhold state funding to the Fairhope Public Library. The library kept some flagged books, including “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in its teen section instead of moving them to the adult’s section...

At issue is about $22,000 in state funding. Since the showdown began, the library has raised more than $100,000 in community donations. 

Fairhope librarians must move the following “sexually explicit” books to the adult section to receive state funding:

• “Beyond Magenta” by Susan Kuklin
• “Crank” by Ellen Hopkins
• “Doing” It by Hannah Witton
• “Identical” by Ellen Hopkins
• “Lighter Than My Shadow” by Katie Green
• “Shine” by Lauren Myracle
• “Sold” by Patricia McCormick
• “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood
• “The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas
• “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky

Most of these books have appeared on banned book lists for years, including lists created by conservative groups like Clean Up Alabama and Moms for Liberty...

This is the first time that the state library board denied funding based on book placement. In 2024, the board decided to update the state code mandating libraries move books that were “inappropriate” for children to the adult section."

AI’S MEMORIZATION CRISIS: Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry.; The Atlantic, January 9, 2026

Alex Reisner, The Atlantic; AI’S MEMORIZATION CRISIS: Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry

"On tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books."

Extracting books from production language models; Cornell University, January 6, 2026

 Ahmed Ahmed, A. Feder Cooper, Sanmi Koyejo, Percy Liang, Cornell University; Extracting books from production language models

"Many unresolved legal questions over LLMs and copyright center on memorization: whether specific training data have been encoded in the model's weights during training, and whether those memorized data can be extracted in the model's outputs. While many believe that LLMs do not memorize much of their training data, recent work shows that substantial amounts of copyrighted text can be extracted from open-weight models. However, it remains an open question if similar extraction is feasible for production LLMs, given the safety measures these systems implement. We investigate this question using a two-phase procedure: (1) an initial probe to test for extraction feasibility, which sometimes uses a Best-of-N (BoN) jailbreak, followed by (2) iterative continuation prompts to attempt to extract the book. We evaluate our procedure on four production LLMs -- Claude 3.7 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and Grok 3 -- and we measure extraction success with a score computed from a block-based approximation of longest common substring (nv-recall). With different per-LLM experimental configurations, we were able to extract varying amounts of text. For the Phase 1 probe, it was unnecessary to jailbreak Gemini 2.5 Pro and Grok 3 to extract text (e.g, nv-recall of 76.8% and 70.3%, respectively, for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone), while it was necessary for Claude 3.7 Sonnet and GPT-4.1. In some cases, jailbroken Claude 3.7 Sonnet outputs entire books near-verbatim (e.g., nv-recall=95.8%). GPT-4.1 requires significantly more BoN attempts (e.g., 20X), and eventually refuses to continue (e.g., nv-recall=4.0%). Taken together, our work highlights that, even with model- and system-level safeguards, extraction of (in-copyright) training data remains a risk for production LLMs."

Texas A&M abruptly cancels ethics course over race, gender policy; The Texas Tribune, January 15, 2026

JESSICA PRIEST , The Texas Tribune; Texas A&M abruptly cancels ethics course over race, gender policy

"Texas A&M University canceled a graduate ethics course three days after the semester began, saying Professor Leonard Bright did not provide enough information to let administrators determine if the course meets new standards for discussing race and gender. 

Bright disputes that characterization.

The decision is distinct from earlier course changes at Texas A&M as the class had already met once before administrators canceled it."

‘A nasty little song, really rather evil’: how Every Breath You Take tore Sting and the Police apart; The Guardian, January 15, 2026

 Ben Beaumont-Thomas, The Guardian; ‘A nasty little song, really rather evil’: how Every Breath You Take tore Sting and the Police apart

"This week’s high court hearings between Sting and his former bandmates in the Police, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers, are the latest chapter in the life of a song whose negative energy seems to have seeped out into real life.

Every Breath You Take is the subject of a lawsuit filed by Copeland and Summers against Sting, alleging that he owes them royalties linked to their contributions to the hugely popular song, particularly from streaming earnings, estimated at $2m (£1.5m) in total. Sting’s legal team have countered that previous agreements between him and his bandmates regarding their royalties from the song do not include streaming revenue – and argued in pre-trial documents that the pair may have been “substantially overpaid”. In the hearing’s opening day, it was revealed that since the lawsuit was filed, Sting has paid them $870,000 (£647,000) to redress what his lawyer called “certain admitted historic underpayments”. But there are still plenty of future potential earnings up for debate."

Trump accepts Nobel Peace Prize medal from Venezuelan opposition leader Machado; ABC News, January 15, 2026

Jon Haworth , ABC News; Trump accepts Nobel Peace Prize medal from Venezuelan opposition leader Machado

"President Donald Trump met Thursday with Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who presented him with her Nobel Peace Prize medal. The president called it a "wonderful gesture of mutual respect."

"María presented me with her Nobel Peace Prize for the work I have done," Trump wrote on his social media platform. He also said that Machado was a "wonderful woman who has been through so much" and that it was a great honor to meet her.

Following the meeting, a White House official confirmed to ABC News that Trump did accept the medal...

Trump has coveted and openly campaigned for winning the Nobel Prize himself since his return to office."

Pentagon says it will ‘refocus’ Stars and Stripes content; Stars and Stripes, January 15, 2026

COREY DICKSTEIN, Stars and Stripes; Pentagon says it will ‘refocus’ Stars and Stripes content

[Kip Currier: Forward this Stars and Stripes article about Pete Hegseth's plans for the military newspaper to as many as possible. It's valuable perspective to hear from Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin and members of Congress.]

[Excerpt]

"The Pentagon said on social media Thursday it would take over editorial content decision-making for Stars and Stripes in a statement from the Defense Department’s top spokesman.

“The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters. We are bringing Stars & Stripes into the 21st century,” Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s top public affairs official and a close adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, wrote in a statement posted to X. “We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

The statement appears to challenge the editorial independence of Stars and Stripes, which while a part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity has long retained independence from editorial oversight from the Pentagon under a congressional mandate that it be governed by First Amendment principles.

The move was met with pushback from several Democratic senators, who accused the Pentagon of tampering with the newspaper’s reporting.

Stars and Stripes, which is dedicated to serving U.S. government personnel overseas, seeks to emulate the best practices of commercial news organizations in the United States. It is governed by Department of Defense Directive 5122.11. The directive states, among other key provisions, that “there shall be a free flow of news and information to its readership without news management or censorship.”

Editor-in-Chief Erik Slavin, in a note to Stars and Stripes’ editorial staff across the globe Thursday, said the military deserves independent news.

“The people who risk their lives in defense of the Constitution have earned the right to the press freedoms of the First Amendment,” Slavin wrote. “We will not compromise on serving them with accurate and balanced coverage, holding military officials to account when called for.”

Stars and Stripes first appeared during the Civil War, and it has been continuously published since World War II. It is staffed by civilian and active-duty U.S. military reporters and editors who produce daily newspapers for American troops around the world and a website, stripes.com, which is updated with news 24 hours a day, seven days a week...

Parnell’s post came a day after a Washington Post report revealed that applicants for positions at Stars and Stripes were being asked how they would support President Donald Trump’s policies. The questionnaire appears on the USAJobs portal, the official website for federal hiring. Stars and Stripes was unaware of the questions until the Post inquired about them, organization leaders said.

The Pentagon statement comes several years after the Defense Department attempted to shut down Stars in Stripes in 2020, during Trump’s first administration."

Pentagon taking over Stars and Stripes to eliminate ‘woke distractions’; The Hill, January 15, 2026

 ELLEN MITCHELL , The Hill; Pentagon taking over Stars and Stripes to eliminate ‘woke distractions’

[Kip Currier: It's unfortunate but not surprising to see that Pete Hegseth, given his actions to date, is taking "editorial control" of the Stars and Stripes newspaper that was started by Union soldiers on November 9, 1861, in the midst of the Civil War.]

[Excerpt]

"The Pentagon announced Thursday it would take editorial control of independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes to refocus coverage on “warfighting” and remove “woke distractions.”

The Department of War is returning Stars & Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters,” top Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement posted to X. “We will modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that syphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted Parnell’s statement.

Part of the Pentagon’s Defense Media Activity, Stars and Stripes has been editorially independent from Defense Department officials since a congressional mandate in the 1990s. The outlet’s mission statement states that it is “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.” 

In some form since the Civil War, Stars and Stripes has consistently reported on the military since World War II to an audience mostly of service members stationed overseas."

Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month; Ars Technica, January 13, 2026

BENJ EDWARDS , Ars Technica; Hegseth wants to integrate Musk’s Grok AI into military networks this month

"On Monday, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said he plans to integrate Elon Musk’s AI tool, Grok, into Pentagon networks later this month. During remarks at the SpaceX headquarters in Texas reported by The Guardian, Hegseth said the integration would place “the world’s leading AI models on every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.”

The announcement comes weeks after Grok drew international backlash for generating sexualized images of women and children, although the Department of Defense has not released official documentation confirming Hegseth’s announced timeline or implementation details."

Mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons sues over Grok-generated explicit images; The Guardian, January 15, 2026

Helena Horton, The Guardian; Mother of one of Elon Musk’s sons sues over Grok-generated explicit images

"The mother of one of Elon Musk’s children is suing his company – alleging explicit images were generated by his Grok AI tool, including one in which she was underage.

Ashley St Clair has filed a lawsuit with the supreme court of the state of New York against xAI, alleging that Grok, which is used on the social media platform X, promised to stop generating explicit images but continued to do so.

She is seeking punitive and compensatory damages, claiming dozens of sexually explicit and degrading deepfake images were created by Grok."

Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it’s illegal, X says; AP, January 15, 2026

ELAINE KURTENBACH , AP; Grok blocked from undressing images in places where it’s illegal, X says

"Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok won’t be able to edit photos to portray real people in revealing clothing in places where that is illegal, according to a statement posted on X. 

The announcement late Wednesday followed a global backlash over sexualized images of women and children, including bans and warnings by some governments. 

The pushback included an investigation announced Wednesday by the state of California, the U.S.'s most populous, into the proliferation of nonconsensual sexually explicit material produced using Grok that it said was harassing women and girls.

Initially, media queries about the problem drew only the response, “legacy media lies.” 

Musk’s company, xAI, now says it will geoblock content if it violates laws in a particular place...

Malaysia and Indonesia took legal action and blocked access to Grok, while authorities in the Philippines said they were working to do the same, possibly within the week. The U.K. and European Union were investigating potential violations of online safety laws."

‘WATERSHED RULING’: APPEALS COURT SAYS MUSICIANS CAN WIN BACK THEIR COPYRIGHTS GLOBALLY, NOT JUST IN THE U.S.; Billboard, January 13, 2026

 Bill Donahue, Billboard ; ‘WATERSHED RULING’: APPEALS COURT SAYS MUSICIANS CAN WIN BACK THEIR COPYRIGHTS GLOBALLY, NOT JUST IN THE U.S.

"A federal appeals court issued a first-of-its-kind ruling that says musicians can enforce U.S. copyright termination rules across the globe, adopting a novel legal theory that record labels and publishers have warned will disrupt “a half-century of settled industry norms.”

Upholding a lower court decision last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled Monday (Jan. 12) that songwriter Cyril Vetter could win back full global copyright ownership of the 1963 rock classic “Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love)” from publisher Resnik Music Group.=

What makes the ruling notable is the overseas reach. Termination, a crucial copyright provision that allows authors to recapture their rights decades after they sold them away, has only ever applied to American copyrights and had no effect on foreign countries. But the appeals court said that was not how Congress intended termination to work."

US health officials reverse course and reinstate $1.9bn to mental health and substance use; The Guardian, January 15, 2026

Melody Schreiber, The Guardian; US health officials reverse course and reinstate $1.9bn to mental health and substance use

"US health officials reversed course and began reinstating nearly $2bn in cuts to mental health and substance use programs on Wednesday night, one day after they unexpectedly announced the immediate shutdown of programs.

The reversal is a blow to the agenda of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, who has made aggressive and legally contested cuts to health agencies in the first year of the Trump administration and has proposed folding the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Samhsa) into a new agency he would call the Administration for a Healthy America (AHA).

There was immediate outcry about the effects of shutting down vital programs amounting to one-quarter of the budget of Samhsa.

The cuts would have affected overdose prevention and reversal, mental health and substance use support for children, mental health training and support for first responders, support for pregnant and postpartum women, and recovery support programs.

Some programs received reinstatement letters late on Wednesday night, while others are still waiting for official notice that their programs could resume, sources told the Guardian."