Link tags: copyright

Pluralistic: The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (05 Dec 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

The promise of AI – the promise AI companies make to investors – is that there will be AIs that can do your job, and when your boss fires you and replaces you with AI, he will keep half of your salary for himself, and give the other half to the AI company.

That’s it.

That’s the $13T growth story that MorganStanley is telling. It’s why big investors and institutionals are giving AI companies hundreds of billions of dollars. And because they are piling in, normies are also getting sucked in, risking their retirement savings and their family’s financial security.

Now, if AI could do your job, this would still be a problem. We’d have to figure out what to do with all these technologically unemployed people.

But AI can’t do your job. It can help you do your job, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to save anyone money.

Is it okay?

Robin takes a fair and balanced look at the ethics of using large language models.

Public Domain Image Archive

Explore our hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.

A History Of The World According To Getty Images

A short documentary that you can dowload or watch online:

The film explores how image banks including Getty gain control over, and then restrict access to, archive images – even when these images are legally in the public domain. It also forms a small act of resistance against this practice: the film includes six legally licensed clips, and is downloadable as an HD ProRes file. In this way, it aims to liberate these few short clips from corporate control, and make them freely available for viewing and artistic use.

Licensed under aCreative Commons 0: “No rights reserved” license.

The Technium: Ideas Want to be Shared

The books I have written are created from words invented by others, filled with ideas created by others. Even the few new ideas that are new depend on older ideas to work. What I had to say would probably be said by someone else not long after me. (More probably there have already been said by someone I was not aware of.) I may be the lucky person to claim those rare new ideas, but the worth of my art primarily resides in the great accumulation of the ideas and works of thousands of writers and thinkers before me — what I call the commons. My work was born in the commons, it gets its value by being deeply connected to the commons, and after my brief stewardship of those tiny new bits, it should return to the commons as fast as possible, in as many ways as possible.

The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish by Rebecca J. Rosen in The Atlantic

Copyright correlates significantly with the disappearance of works rather than with their availability.

What’s the deal with copyright and 3D printing? by Michael Weinberg

Michael Weinberg’s follow-up whitepaper to “It will be awesome if they don’t screw it up.”

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet on Vimeo

If you live in the States, please, please, for the love of the internet, write to your representative at fightforthefuture.org/pipa

Unlicense.org » Unlicense Yourself: Set Your Code Free

A handy template for releasing code into the public domain.

Everything Is a Remix

It's well worth paying attention to this site, the accompaniment to the four-part series of videos entitled "Everything is a Remix."

ThinkGeek :: Blurgh! The ThinkGeek Blog - Officially our best-ever cease and desist

Sending a cease and desist letter to an obvious parody just makes the parody even funnier.

Open Letter From OK Go - OK Go

I believe it was the philosopher Conflicticus who said, "Only stupid bastards help EMI."

French Anti-Piracy Organisation Hadopi Uses Pirated Font In Own Logo | The FontFeed

Oh, the irony! Unconstitutionally draconian French "anti-piracy" organisation uses a pirated font in its logo.

USA, Canada and the EU attempt to kill treaty to protect blind people's access to written material - Boing Boing

I feel a rant coming on...

Caroline Lucas MEP » Blog Archive » Green MEP Joins Forces With Music Legend To Protest ‘Corporate Bully’ Copyright Proposals In Euro-Parliament

My representative in the European Parliament is full of WIN!

Fuck the foundries [dive into mark]

Mark Pilgrim knows the score.

Accused! - Jon Engle

A logo designer accused of ripping off his own work — kind of like what happened to Dan.

Our Goal: No Guilt Upon Accusation Law — Creative Freedom Foundation (creativefreedom.org.nz)

New Zealand is enacting one of the most draconian unfair ISP policing policies in the Western world. "Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation and forces the termination of internet connections and websites without evidence, without a fair trial, and without punishment for any false accusations of copyright infringement."

Locus Online Features: Cory Doctorow: Why I Copyfight

This is a brilliant and inspiring essay by Cory on the why the copyists—avid consumers who are branded as criminals—are not our enemy. Please read this; it is important for the survival of our culture.

Music Recording Industry Will Be First Traditional Media Industry To Be Utterly Destroyed By Digital Technology - Publishing 2.0

The RIAA now says it is illegal for you to put that CD you bought onto your own computer. Asshats.