by JCM | 5 Aug, 2024 |
Given the music industry’s track record of building successful cases for unauthorised sampling and even inadvertent plagiarism (aka Cryptomnesia, as with the George Harrison ‘My Sweet Lord’ lawsuit back in the 70s) this will be the one to watch.
The music industry’s absolutist approach to copyright is a dangerous path to follow, however. How can you legally define the difference between “taking inspiration from” and “imitating”? What’s the difference between a GenAI tool creating music in the style of an artist, and an artist operating within a genre tradition?
*Everything* is a mashup or a reference, to a greater or lesser extent – that’s how culture works. We’re all standing on the shoulders of giants – as well as myriad lesser influences, most of which are subconscious. Hell, the saying “there’s nothing new under the sun” comes from the Book of Ecclesiastes, written well over 2,000 years ago.
Put legal restrictions on the right of anyone – human or bot – to build or riff on what’s come before, and culture risks hitting a dead end.
So while I have sympathy with artists’ concerns, the claim that GenAI could “sabotage creativity” is a nonsense in the same way claims that the printing press or photocopier could sabotage creativity are. Creativity is about the combination of ideas and influences and continual experimentation to find out what works – GenAI can help us all do this faster than ever. If anything, this should help increase creativity.
What *does* sabotage creativity is short-termist, protectionist restrictions on who’s allowed to do what – exactly like the ones these lawsuits are trying to impose.
by JCM | 1 Aug, 2024 |
The decline in news audiences reported here – 43%, or 11 million daily views – is shockingly high. This follows Canada’s ill-considered battle with Meta, which led to Meta pulling news from its platforms, including Facebook, in the Canadian market last year, rather than arrange content licensing agreements with news publishers.
This amply demonstrates the vast power these tech platforms have in society and over the media industry, and so justifies the Canadian government’s worries. But it also more than shows – once again – how utterly dependent the online content ecosystem is on these channels for distribution.
Meta/Facebook obviously isn’t a monopoly, but a 43% decline in news consumption thanks to the shutting down of one set of distribution channels? It’s a safe bet that much of the rest of the traffic will be from Google, so it’s more of a duopoly.
What impact is this level of reliance on a couple of gatekeeping tech platforms – who can change their policies on a whim at any time – going to have on public awareness of current events and society at large
Elsewhere in the article we have an answer: “just 22 per cent of Canadians are aware a ban is in place”.
Shut down access to news, little wonder that awareness of news stories stays low.
Both Canada (with Meta) and Australia (with Google and Meta) have tried forcing the tech giants into doing licensing deals for content that their platforms promote. In both cases, this has – predictably – backfired, and led to the opposite effect to that intended.
But what’s the solution?
This question is becoming more urgent now that GenAI is in the mix, and starting to provide summaries of stories rather than just provide a headline, image, and link.
Meta/Google were effectively acting like a newsstand – showing passing punters a range of headlines to attract their attention and pull in an audience.
GenAI’s summarisation approach, meanwhile, is much closer to what Meta and Google were being (unfairly) accused of doing by the Canadian and Australian governments: Taking traffic away from news sites by providing an overview of the story on their own platforms.
But the GenAI Pandora’s Box has already been opened. Publishers need to move away from wishful thinking – the main cause of the failed Australian/Canadian experiments – and back to harsh reality.
Unlike the Meta news withdrawal – which could be reversed – this new threat to content distribution models isn’t going away.
by JCM | 7 Jun, 2020 |
Words are important, because language shapes our understanding of the world.
Over time, our choice of language can shatter or reinforce preconceptions – creating feedback loops of frustration or moments of radical shifts in perception that in turn can change society itself, for good or ill.
The same is true about our choice of what to talk about – or to ignore. Sometimes, staying silent is as strong a statement as speaking out. Sometimes, speaking out is a risk.
But for those of us – people or organizations – in a position of privileged security or power, sometimes speaking out is a duty.
The question is, what message will you send about what you see as important in the world in the words you use and the things you choose to talk about? And what good could your words do when you do speak out?
- This piece from NiemanLab shows that the choice of language in covering protests about racial inequality is yet another area in which society is unfair and promotes systemic inequities.
- This tweet highlights the importance of action as well as words in supporting movements for equality – especially from brands.
- This TED Talk is an eye-opening, amusing analysis of how the language we use and the way we frame discussions about racial violence can point to the absurdity and insanity of racist norms.
- This call from my current employers for brands to take action as well as show their support was rather good – and there has been action at my place behind the scenes, not shouted about, that has made me rather proud of my colleagues.
