Warhol understood what transformative art looked like, the US Supreme Court doesn’t
Last year Walled Culture wrote about an important copyright case before the US Supreme Court. It concerned Warhol’s images of the musician Prince, which are based on a…
Top EU court to issue definitive ruling on whether copyright is more important than privacy
Back in November last year, Walled Culture reported on the shocking opinion by a top EU court advisor that copyright was more important than privacy. The case in…
Mass resignation by top academics over “too greedy” publisher, as Council of the EU calls for open access
It’s no secret that academic publishers are making fabulous profits by exploiting the work provided free of charge by researchers and funded by taxpayers. This is still happening,…
Generative AI in Google search is great news for the true fans model, but what about publishers?
Most of the analysis of generative AI – things like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT – has focused on how it will affect creators. But another important aspect is…
A “blatant no” from a copyright holder stops vital linguistic research work in Africa
Copyright discussions typically concern texts in just a few languages, and often only in English. In part, that’s because copyright law has evolved most quickly in anglophone countries.…
Ed Sheeran has won yet another copyright infringement case – and that’s outrageous
Ed Sheeran keeps on getting hit with accusations of copyright infringement. It’s partly his own fault, as he himself admits, reported here by the Guardian: in 2017, he…
Librarians of the world unite: call for action on ebooks
The terrible lawsuit against the Open Library for daring to increase access to books during the Covid pandemic is not just an attack on the Internet Archive’s selfless…
Germany wants to include copyright infringement as an example of “digital violence”
The hyperbolic rhetoric that is a feature of the copyright industry, which tries absurdly to characterise making an additional digital copy as “theft”, can lead to some serious…
Canadian musician Grimes shows how to embrace generative AI for fun and profit
Back in November last year, Walled Culture wrote about the growing panic in the copyright world as a result of generative AI programs writing music. Since then, the…