Hi afternoon folks,
Wow, what an incredibly rich discussion today, and so many excellent resources were shared on a host of different topics.
First, Deniz shared with us this article published by a Danish open access journal. We specifically want to direct your attention to the way the Creative Commons information is displayed on the right-hand side of the page; what’s great about this format (and it could be used as a model), is how it not only gives the license but explains it, so there is no misunderstanding whatsoever.
Next is the Creative Commons License Chooser tool, which asks you a series of questions as to how you’d like your work to be used or not to be used, and recommends a license that matches your preference. It then generates a marking (e.g., “This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0 “) that you can use as footer text.
Thanks to Naseer’s question about what recourse to copyright law scholars and creators have against AI-generated text summaries of their work, I found this interesting blog post about the issue, which is becoming more prevalent, while still being legally unresolved. From Natalie Wexler’s “AI-Generated Summaries Are a Problem“:
To the extent that people have focused on the problem, they’ve looked at authors who are, like me, distraught about AI-generated knockoffs. That’s not out of fear they’ll cut into sales of the book—at least, not for me. Rather, I’m concerned (a) that readers will think I wrote the stupid thing myself, or at least approved it, and (b) they’ll come away with a mistaken or shallow understanding of my book.
Unfortunately, unless you’re a famous person who knows the CEO of Amazon, there’s not much you can do to fight back. Copyright law doesn’t help, because it only protects against copying. When I complained to Amazon, they told me—after three weeks—that I should provide specific examples of where the workbook used text I wrote without my permission. But that’s not the problem.
Similarly, my publisher’s lawyer advised that workbooks and AI-generated summaries—which dispense with the “self-reflection question” pretense—generally aren’t actionable because they don’t reproduce enough content from the book itself to qualify as copyright infringements.
Natalie Wexler, 2024
On the topic of AI, Erica shared with us the following guide to opt out of Meta/Facebook using your data to train its generative AI. You only have until Wednesday to opt out, so if you have Facebook, I highly recommend doing so. Thanks Erica for drawing this to our attention!
Naseer also raised the question about international enforcement of copyright and IP. Michael brought up the phenomenon of pirate sites operating out of countries that will not enforce Euro-American copyright law or takedown requests by creators (authors, musicians, filmmakers, etc).
However, the flip side of this phenomenon is major corporations using their power to enforce these claims internationally, even in countries where local IP laws may not directly align with US copyright law. An interesting example is the agro-chemical giant Bayer/Monsanto using its patents of seeds to go after small farmers in Brazil and India. This is an excellent open access article by Karine Peschard and Shalinia Randeria, published in the incredible Journal of Peasant Studies, which discusses these legal disputes.
Lastly, thank you to Crystal for sharing this NYTimes article about school choice, discussing the geographic and neighborhood disparities of K-12 student experiences. Inequalities in such experiences contribute to vastly different approaches and attitudes among students to college learning experiences/expectations, and underscores the need for unconditional positive regard.
See you Wednesday for our final session!
