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…
Why Meta’s project to translate automatically between 200 languages will be stymied by copyright
Meta’s AI division has announced two exciting new projects in the field of machine translation: The first is No Language Left Behind, where we are building a new…
Facebook is so sure its erroneous blocking of music is right, there’s no option to say it’s wrong
It’s hardly a secret that upload filters don’t work well. Back in 2017, Felix Reda, then Shadow Rapporteur on the EU Copyright Directive in the European Parliament, put…
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…
Two reasons the snippet tax won’t wash as a solution, and what to do instead
Walled Culture has written a number of posts about the so-called “snippet tax” – the idea that platforms like Google and Facebook should pay for the privilege of…
How to save the newspaper industry (hint: not with snippet taxes)
There’s no denying that the newspaper industry is in trouble. In part, the publishing companies have themselves to blame. For too long, they have fought against the Internet,…
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…
A bit is a bit is a bit: digital platforms begin to merge with digital producers
Last week Walled Culture wrote about Microsoft’s planned purchase of the video gaming company Activision. That’s been followed by some other news stories that may not involve such…
Beyond a game: Microsoft swallows up Activision, a further concentration of power in a few digital giants
This blog has written a couple times about YouTube‘s dominance in the video sector. Spotify may well create a similar leading position for itself in music streaming, while…
An unprecedented loss of digital culture looms thanks to copyright; here’s how to avoid it
A few weeks ago, we wrote about copyright’s absurdly long term, which typically lasts for 70 years after a creator’s death. That it makes it hard for other…