A terrible decision on AI-made images hurts creators; The Washington Post, April 27, 2023

Edward Lee, The Washington Post; A terrible decision on AI-made images hurts creators

"The Copyright Office’s position is wrong. It misunderstands authorship and ignores the copyright clause’s goal of promoting “progress” by offering authors incentives to create new works, including with new technologies.

Its decision also misunderstands the creative process."

Freed From Copyright, These Classic Works Are Yours To Adapt; NPR, January 5, 2019

Milton Guevara, NPR; Freed From Copyright, These Classic Works Are Yours To Adapt

""Copyright has been overextended so many times, largely at the behest of major copyright holders," says author Naomi Novik. "Even though what that actually does is inhibit people from creating new works and sharing these older works." Novik is a founding member of the Organization for Transformative Works, a nonprofit that focuses on preserving fan fiction and art — that is, work created by fans, based on characters and worlds from their favorite written works, film, and TV, which can occasionally come into conflict with copyright law.

"For a character to live, that character has to belong to the audience," says Novik. "Works of art are meant to nourish our collective understanding; they're meant to nourish our conversation." 

Duke Law's entire list of works that entered the public domain this year can be found here."

Lawyers sue, men plunder; Sydney Morning Herald, 11/2/09

Sydney Morning Herald; Lawyers sue, men plunder:

A throwaway line in a television quiz show was the prelude to a multimillion-dollar court battle that could change the way musicians go about creating music, writes Joel Gibson.

"The courts have been reluctant to interpret copyright law too heavily against new works, she said, for fear of stymying creativity - but the music industry will be anxiously awaiting the outcome of this case.

''It does create uncertainty about how people can reference other songs … It means you can never have a thought or write a song without looking over your shoulder. Musicians would have to start retro-fitting their songs with some kind of analysis.''

McKeough said the protection of creative works had to be balanced by the knowledge that ''nothing is truly original, there are so many songs in the world''.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/entertainment/music/lawyers-sue-men-plunder/2009/11/01/1257010103921.html?page=4

Economists List File Sharing's Benefits; Information Week, 6/17/09

Thomas Claburn via Information Week; Economists List File Sharing's Benefits:

"In a newly published Harvard Business School paper, economists Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf argue that while file sharing has weakened copyright protection, weak copyright protection benefits society.

File sharing, the paper states, has not discouraged creative artists from producing new works...

The paper, however, acknowledges that content quality has not been considered. Its argument would be less compelling were it discovered that the increase in albums since 2000 consisted mainly of music cobbled together from Apple GarageBand loops.

Entertainment industry complaints about falling revenue, the paper suggests, don't tell the full story...

"While it is difficult to say how representative this sample is, there is no doubt that trade groups such as the Business Software Alliance vastly exaggerate the impact of file sharing on industry profitability when they treat every pirated copy as a lost sale," the paper states."

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/ipod/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218000206