The EU has brought back opt-in copyright for text and data mining: let’s build on that foundation
The central theme of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions) is the clash between copyright, devised for an analogue world, and the Internet, which is inherently digital.…
Why the emerging new copyright landscape is both good news and bad news for creators and the public
The Walled Culture blog has been writing about the hot topic of generative AI and its impact on copyright for nearly six months now. One of the sharpest…
The EU link tax was bad enough, but Canada’s threatens to be even worse
At the heart of Walled Culture the book (available as a free ebook in various formats) is the story of the disgraceful EU Copyright Directive and how it…
In a world where AI art is cheap and easy to generate, do we still need copyright?
To say that AI-generated art is controversial would be something of an understatement. The appearance last year of free tools like Stable Diffusion has not just thrown the…
Copyright consultations are opaque and off-putting: time to apply some (artificial) intelligence
One of the reasons that copyright is so unbalanced in favour of companies, especially Big Content, is that the process of bringing in new copyright laws is hard…
A database of public domain works could reduce upload filter overblocking; it’s absurd we need one
One of many problems with the upload filters that Article 17 of the EU Copyright Directive will bring in is that they are likely to overblock. That is,…
Interview | Glyn Moody: Walled Culture – A Journey Behind the Copyright Bricks
Glyn Moody has been writing about copyright, digital rights, and the Internet for 30 years. He is the editor of the Walled Culture project and author of Walled…
Upload filters: unjustified blocks, unfair appeals process, and a system rigged in favour of Big Content
The EU Copyright Directive contains one of the worst ideas in modern copyright: what amounts to a requirement to filter uploads on major sites. Despite repeated explanations of…
Twitch mutes top videogame streamer because of claim he used someone’s copyright siren sound effect
Alongside death and taxes, one of life’s great certainties is a constant flow of absurd copyright claims. Here’s one from the world of live videogame streaming on the…
Interview | Mike Masnick: Techdirt, Supporting Creators, the SOPA/PIPA Battle, and NFTs
Mike Masnick explores the intersection of technology, innovation, policy, law, civil liberties, and economics, being the founder & editor of the popular Techdirt blog, as well as the…
Interview | Catherine Stihler: Creative Commons, the EU Copyright Directive, and Civil Society’s Role
Catherine Stihler OBE was appointed CEO of Creative Commons, in August 2020, a non-profit organisation that helps overcome legal obstacles to advance better sharing of knowledge and creativity…
Like news publishers, magazine publishers want money from Google; here’s why it is happy to pay
Last week, Walled Culture noted that newspaper publishers still don’t understand what has happened in their industry. They labour under the misapprehension that the digital giants like Google…
Copyright industry demands Finland’s version of upload filters should be more unbalanced
Like other EU Member States, Finland is grappling with the problem of how to implement the EU Copyright Directive’s Article 17 (upload filters) in national legislation. A fascinating…
The EU Copyright Directive is so bad it’s proving really hard to transpose into decent national laws
Walled Culture has written numerous posts about the EU Copyright Directive, because it contains two extremely harmful ideas. The first is the “snippet tax“, an attempt by some…
The ratchet strikes again: US SMART Copyright Act is even worse than EU upload filters
The EU’s Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market is bad news for many reasons. For example, it shows how the copyright industry has succeeded in obtaining…
Publishers seem to believe their outsized sense of entitlement should trump democracy
One of the striking features of the copyright industry is its insatiability. No matter how long, broad and strong copyright becomes, the copyright world wants it to be…