Notices by Mike Masnick ✅ (mmasnick@mastodon.social), page 14

@bashley it seems like every 3 to 6 months someone sends me this image.

@Noelwalling @c_9 this is false. Old twitter worked closely with researchers. Meta has regularly worked with researchers.

Part of the problem is that the media then misrepresents those studies and leads people like you to claim that they're trying to stifle things.

@ProfT @erosalie @c_9 i mean, we heard the same thing about women's magazines in the 80s/90s.

Did we ban those?

"Strong regulation" is literally regulation of speech, and it's being done in completely nonsensical ways.

You're a teacher: TEACH KIDS to have better media literacy and understanding.

@erosalie my post mentioned that harms exist, and I have regularly called for *targeted* solutions to help those where the harms are real. My issue is with broad based proposals that assume social media is inherently harmful to children.

@erosalie @c_9 I discuss some of those in the post, but most of the research shows no *causal* link, and the few that show correlational links have evidence that the correlation is the other way (i.e., those facing other problems end up spending more time on social media...).

None of that's to say we shouldn't look for ways to help those in need, but to challenge the premise that social media is INHERENTLY harmful to kids, which is the theory behind the initiative.

@ruedigergad @dgavin @mattontech the entirety of this discussion ignores fair use. Also, no, it is not "stealing." Nothing is lost. It's not even copying. It's reading.

Common Sense Media (who appears short on common sense) is pushing a ridiculous and dangerous California ballot initiative to let anyone sue social media companies for perceived harm to kids. It's a disaster and CSM's boss has made it clear that he does not care about what the actual data says on this issue.

This will do real harm to kids, shutting down spaces they use, and allowing parents to go all moral panic and sue social media if they don't like how their kid is
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/08/leading-save-the-kids-advocate-pushing-absolutely-dangerous-protect-the-california-ballot-initiative-that-will-do-real-harm-to-children/

@resuna @andyb I simply pointed out that scanning, even for corporate, for profit reasons, can be fair use.

If you want to go further into the details of why this particular scanning is likely fair use, that's a different discussion. But suffice it to say, it is very likely fair use as well.

The scanning is quite obviously transformative. And if it's not, you'd destroy all sorts of useful data mining initiatives & research, not to mention things like screen readers for the blind.

@resuna @andyb i mean, now you're moving the goalposts.

I pointed out that scanning large corpuses of copyright-covered data for commercial reasons has been found to be fair use, and you demanded citations.

I gave you them.

Now you're arguing something different.

It is difficult for me to believe you are engaging in this conversation honestly when you do that.

Furthermore, reducing all generative AI to "parody text and bad image generation" more or less confirms your bad faith.

@resuna @andyb Both HathiTrust and the Google Books cases involved scanning of tons of copyright-covered books, and both were found to be fair use, even for Google, a large giant tech company, which used it to build a book search tool.

@resuna @andyb fair use does say that scanning to build a useful tool is allowed and not infringing. even for big corporate entities. no one is saying magic words. i can quote you cases if you'd like. but I feel like you don't care about facts, just emotions.

Hey folks, since it's Public Domain Day, let's also note that our PUBLIC DOMAIN GAME JAM IS NOW OPEN! One month to come up with a game using any newly public domain material! https://itch.io/jam/gaming-like-its-1928

More details here: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/01/and-were-off-time-to-get-started-on-this-years-public-domain-game-jam/

@gmcgath no. that was a joke... once the copyright office was in 2024, it was public domain across the country.

@resuna @andyb not ironic. fair use.

@mikewmerritt it doesn't. but I was having some fun. Once it hit midnight ET, it was public domain across the country.

@eikenberry well, i've been arguing that training a model does not implicate any copyright rights, so I will stand by that and say no. But, others might disagree. Courts will let us know...

@andyb a friend sent me this as well:

I mean, come on. This is amazing.

If you're on the east coast and want to create public domain mickey's, there's an AI for that. https://huggingface.co/Pclanglais/Mickey-1928

If you're out west, well, live dangerously...

Mickey Mouse (the Steamboat Willie version) is now public domain on the east coast of the US.