The Data That Powers A.I. Is Disappearing Fast; The New York Times, July 19, 2024

Kevin Roose , The New York Times; The Data That Powers A.I. Is Disappearing Fast

"For years, the people building powerful artificial intelligence systems have used enormous troves of text, images and videos pulled from the internet to train their models.

Now, that data is drying up.

Over the past year, many of the most important web sources used for training A.I. models have restricted the use of their data, according to a study published this week by the Data Provenance Initiative, an M.I.T.-led research group.

The study, which looked at 14,000 web domains that are included in three commonly used A.I. training data sets, discovered an “emerging crisis in consent,” as publishers and online platforms have taken steps to prevent their data from being harvested.

The researchers estimate that in the three data sets — called C4, RefinedWeb and Dolma — 5 percent of all data, and 25 percent of data from the highest-quality sources, has been restricted. Those restrictions are set up through the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a decades-old method for website owners to prevent automated bots from crawling their pages using a file called robots.txt."

Tech companies battle content creators over use of copyrighted material to train AI models; The Canadian Press via CBC, June 30, 2024

Anja Karadeglija , The Canadian Press via CBC; Tech companies battle content creators over use of copyrighted material to train AI models

"Canadian creators and publishers want the government to do something about the unauthorized and usually unreported use of their content to train generative artificial intelligence systems.

But AI companies maintain that using the material to train their systems doesn't violate copyright, and say limiting its use would stymie the development of AI in Canada.

The two sides are making their cases in recently published submissions to a consultation on copyright and AI being undertaken by the federal government as it considers how Canada's copyright laws should address the emergence of generative AI systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT."

YouTube and content creators clash over the platform’s automated copyright tool; Marketplace, November 4, 2022

Marketplace; YouTube and content creators clash over the platform’s automated copyright tool

"Every minute, people upload more than 500 hours of video to YouTube — cat videos, music videos, even videos of people recording their audio podcasts.

And some of those clips include content the people uploading them don’t own, like clips of music from popular songs.

YouTube, and its owner, Google, have an automated technology called Content ID that regularly scans for copyrighted material — including music — and flags it for copyright holders.

Marketplace’s Kimberly Adams spoke about this with Marketplace’s Peter Balonon-Rosen, who explained why the system has some musicians frustrated."

New York Times Says Fair Use Of 300 Words Will Run You About $1800; New York Times, 6/10/16

Tim Cushing, TechDirt; New York Times Says Fair Use Of 300 Words Will Run You About $1800:

"Fair use is apparently the last refuge of a scofflaw. Following on the heels of a Sony rep's assertion that people could avail themselves of fair use for the right price, here comes the New York Times implying fair use not only does not exist, but that it runs more than $6/word.

Obtaining formal permission to use three quotations from New York Times articles in a book ultimately cost two professors $1,884. They’re outraged, and have taken to Kickstarter — in part to recoup the charges, but primarily, they say, to “protest the Times’ and publishers’ lack of respect for Fair Use.”

These professors used quotes from other sources in their book about press coverage of health issues, but only the Gray Lady stood there with her hand out, expecting nearly $2,000 in exchange for three quotes totalling less than 300 words.

The professors paid, but the New York Times "policy" just ensures it will be avoided by others looking to source quotes for their publications. The high rate it charges (which it claims is a "20% discount") for fair use of its work will be viewed by others as proxy censorship. And when censorship of this sort rears its head, most people just route around it. Other sources will be sought and the New York Times won't be padding its bottom line with ridiculous fees for de minimis use of its articles.

The authors' Kickstarter isn't so much to pay off the Times, but more to raise awareness of the publication's unwillingness to respect fair use."

A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers To Pay Up; Forbes, 5/23/16

Michael Blanding, Forbes; A Little Understanding Motivates Copyright Abusers To Pay Up:

"Obtaining an image from the Internet is as easy as right-clicking and downloading. We’ve all done it—or, ahem, know someone who has. We rarely think about who created these images or whether we have the rights to use them. This leaves the owners of those images with a conundrum: Should they pursue the violators?

First off, the monetary amounts at stake are often small—tens or hundreds of dollars in licensing fees. Is it worth the time, cost, and effort to send a bunch of settlement request letters? Second, few of these types of digital copyright infringements wind up in court. So why bother if the ultimate enforcement mechanism seems so far-fetched?

Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Hong Luo looks at these questions in a 2015 working paper, “Copyright Enforcement: Evidence from Two Field Experiments,” co-written with Julie Holland Mortimer of Boston College and the National Bureau of Economic Research. The paper was updated earlier this year.

Their findings about how to motivate copyright violators to actually pay up are important not only for copyright holders, but also applicable to many disputes involving small amounts."

Copyright and Intellectual Property: Change is Coming; Wired.com, 10/29/13

Vitalii Soldatenko, Wired.com; Copyright and Intellectual Property: Change is Coming: "Against the backdrop of the new developments and opportunities in today’s information-centric culture, copyright registration can be an obsolete mean to an ineffective end. In many cases, it’s even a limiting factor for industry development, and oddly enough, infringes on the rights of authors. Our current intellectual property system benefits corporations by complicating the process of protecting the rights of content creators. In an era where opportunities and innovations abound our system is almost a tragic comedy."

Boyle Web sensation: A massive missed opportunity?; Associated Press, 5/29/09

Jake Coyle via Associated Press; Boyle Web sensation: A massive missed opportunity?:

"According to rough estimates by the Times of London based on online ad rates, the first Boyle video could have earned close to $2 million with minimal advertising on YouTube.

Eliot Van Buskirk, a writer for Wired.com who has covered this territory, thinks a unique opportunity was missed.

"This video of Susan Boyle is quickly becoming the most viewed video of all-time — and nobody's making money," said Van Buskirk. "It's been sort of a growing pains stage of ad-supported media."

Van Buskirk said the situation showed the need for content creators and distributors to have agreements in place for when a sensation strikes.

"We're still in the early stages — somehow — of media on the Internet," he said.

A percentage of the would-be ad revenue also would have gone to YouTube. Instead, the Google Inc.-owned company has earned little directly from what might become its biggest hit since launching four years ago."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090529/ap_en_tv/us_web_susan_boyle