I get 50 years of copyright. It reasonably balances the needs of the holders with the public's desires for freedom. 70 years is the upper limit, after which arguments for a longer term start to turn specious. 95 years is plainly absurd. Let's hope the term limits never get abolished, such that everything we do gets controlled by the few holders indefinitely.

#copyright #copyrightLaw #copyrightTerm #DMCA #DRM #intellectualProperty #publicDomain

Twenty years ago, orphans’ works were the biggest topic in copyright. Two decades later, a new article shines a light on how things have changed.

https://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2026/03/26/revisiting-the-orphan-works-debate-20-years-later/

#Copyright #OrphanWorks #CopyrightLaw

Supreme Court rules ISPs aren't liable for subscribers' music piracy

https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/streaming/supreme-court-rules-isps-arent-liable-for-subscribers-music-piracy-163412791.html

#HackerNews #SupremeCourt #ISPs #MusicPiracy #CopyrightLaw #DigitalRights #StreamingJustice

Every once in a while, SCOTUS gets one right.

https://clik.mp/1ap

#SCOTUS #copyright #copyrightlaw #supremecourt

I've just finished reading the UK Government's new report today on the use of copyright works in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems, produced by the Dept for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Dept for Culture, Media and Sport & the Intellectual Property Office UK.

Here are the key respondent views + conclusions from the government - I'm available for on-air commentary as needed:

📌Gov UK most concerned about AI creating "digital replicas" of someone’s voice or face - but bizarrely not bothered about copyrighted texts, images, software etc being used in AI model training datasets (the report calls it "input transparency")

📌There is currently no mandate for AI developers to disclose publicly what IP they are using in their datasets, only which web crawlers they use to crawl the internet. But not what data they crawl or what it is used for

📌Creative industries strongly support the introduction of mandatory standards on input transparency, while tech firms have complained of the "practical and financial burdens of disclosure", particularly affecting small AI startups

📌AI developers & tech firms want exceptions to copyright for AI innovation. Creative industries have rejected the option to opt out of this

📌Gov UK to work on best practices around labelling the content outputted by AI models as AI-generated, but they want to see what other nations do first

📌However, Govt UK said this despite including in this report the new legislation from California, China and South Korea that already requires AI content to be labelled as such on release

📌Gov UK won't "intervene" in the copyright licensing market right now, because "many stakeholders" didn't want it (who tho? 👀)

📌Gov UK to "consider" further work on barriers to enforcing IP rights

Dunno, feels like the House of Lords is right. The UK Govt is still hedging against tightening legislation, in favour of the tech giants.

But what happens when the AI models ingest everything related to all white collar jobs that require a computer? What will we do then?

Full report: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69ba692226909a14239612e4/CP2602959_-_Report_on_Copyright_and_Artificial_Intelligence_web.pdf

#AI #copyrightlaw #UKlaw #generativeAI #technology #technews

If you are following the #chardet storm, an even bigger one than the anti Free Software package management legislation from California, Colorado, and Illinois, this is the next place to visit:

https://github.com/chardet/chardet/issues/327

Predictably, there are a lot of people on other fora following along here and yet still missing the part where a LLM that was likely trained not only on LGPL code but also a lot of actually not #FreeSoftware code that could be scraped from various sources, was used to generate code that was then declared MIT licenced.

#CopyLeft #LLMs #VibeCoding #CopyrightLaw