A recent court decision means the National Gallery can no longer charge licensing fees on images of works that are out of copyright. CC-licensed photo by Dániel Bagó on Flickr.
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A selection of 10 links for you. Happy new year, let’s do better! I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.
The Plagiarism War has begun • The Atlantic
Ian Bogost wondered whether his academic work would survive the sort of examination that brought down Claudine Gay:
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On December 29, I downloaded my thesis from the institutional repository at UCLA, where I had earned my doctorate, signed up for an iThenticate account [for the Turnitin plagiarism-detection software], and arranged for The Atlantic to pay the standard rate of $300 to analyze my dissertation’s 68,038 words.
Then I started to wonder what the hell I was doing. I had fairly strong confidence in the integrity of my work. My dissertation is about how to do cultural criticism of computational works such as software, simulations, and video games—a topic that was novel enough in 2004, when I filed it, that there wasn’t a ton of material for me to copy even if I’d wanted to. But other factors worked against me. Like Gay, who submitted her dissertation in 1997, I wrote mine during a period when computers were commonplace but the scholarly literature wasn’t yet easily searchable. That made it easier for acts of plagiarism, whether intended or not, to go unnoticed. Was it really worth risking my career to overturn those rocks?
On the principle that only a coward hides from the truth, I pressed the “Upload” button on the iThenticate website, waited for the progress bar to fill, then closed my laptop. When I came back for my report the next day, it felt a little like calling up my doctor’s office for the news, possibly bad, about whatever test they had run on my aging, mortal body. I took a breath and clicked to see my result.
It was 74. Was I a plagiarist? This, apparently, was my answer. Plagiarism isn’t normally summed up as a number, so I didn’t know quite how to respond. It seemed plausible that 74 might be a good score. Turns out it wasn’t
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This was a brave move. The score is a percentage – but, and it’s a building-sized but, Turnitin doesn’t understand time, so things written after the suspected document will also count if they derive from it. (Bogost has written books building on his earlier work.) In reality once you weeded out those, and boilerplate (such as “reproduced with permission of the copyright owner”) his number was much, much, much lower. (Gay’s thesis was written in 1996, when Turnitin wasn’t even an idea.)
But there’s a plagiarism-detection feeding frenzy just now, being fed by a right-wing venture capitalist who wants to bring down the whole of MIT. Buy popcorn.
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Google settles $5bn lawsuit for ‘private mode’ tracking • BBC News
Annabelle Liang:
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Google has agreed to settle a US lawsuit claiming it invaded the privacy of users by tracking them even when they were browsing in “private mode”.
The class action sought at least $5bn (£3.9bn) from the world’s go-to search engine and parent company Alphabet.
…Lawyers representing Google and its users did not immediately respond to the BBC’s requests for comment.
US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers put a scheduled trial for the case on hold in California on Thursday, after lawyers said they had reached a preliminary settlement.
Judge Rogers had rejected Google’s bid to have the case dismissed earlier this year, saying she could not agree that users consented to allowing Google to collect information on their browsing activity. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. However, lawyers are expected to present a formal settlement for the court’s approval by February 2024.
The class action, which was filed by law firm Boies Schiller Flexner in 2020, claimed that Google had tracked users’ activity even when they set the Google Chrome browser to “Incognito” mode and other browsers to “private mode”. It said this had turned Google into an “unaccountable trove of information” on user preferences and “potentially embarrassing things”.
It added that Google could not “continue to engage in the covert and unauthorized data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone”. Google said it had been upfront about the data it collected when users viewed in private mode, even if many users assumed otherwise.
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Things aren’t going well for Google’s lawyers in the US: paying $700m to settle a suit brought by states on antitrust and the Play Store; lost to Epic Games.
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Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from charging reproduction fees—at last • The Art Newspaper
Bendor Grovesnor:
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A recent judgement on copyright in the Court of Appeal (20 November) heralds the end of UK museums charging fees to reproduce historic artworks. In fact, it suggests museums have been mis-selling “image licences” for over a decade. For those of us who have been campaigning on the issue for years, it is the news we’ve been waiting for.
The judgement is important because it confirms that museums do not have valid copyright in photographs of (two-dimensional) works which are themselves out of copyright. It means these photographs are in the public domain, and free to use.
Museums use copyright to restrict the circulation of images, obliging people to buy expensive licences. Any thought of scholars sharing images, or using those available on museum websites, was claimed to be a breach of copyright. Not surprisingly, most people paid up. Copyright is the glue that holds the image fee ecosystem in place.
What has now changed? Museums used to rely on the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which placed a low threshold on how copyright was acquired; essentially, if some degree of “skill and labour” was involved in taking a photograph of a painting, then that photograph enjoyed copyright. But subsequent case law has raised the bar, as the new Appeal Court judgement makes clear.
In his ruling (THJ v Sheridan, 2023), Lord Justice Arnold wrote that, for copyright to arise: “What is required is that the author was able to express their creative abilities in the production of the work by making free and creative choices so as to stamp the work created with their personal touch”. Importantly, he went on: “This criterion is not satisfied where the content of the work is dictated by technical considerations, rules or other constraints which leave no room for creative freedom”. In other words, if the aim of a museum photograph is to accurately reproduce a painting (which it must be), then it cannot acquire copyright.
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The judgment was made in November, but this article only appeared near the end of December. Why? Because the THJ v Sheridan case is about something totally different – whether there’s copyright in an options trading software interface. But it reads across (as they say) to museums and images. Even more remarkable: the National Gallery actually lost money in its image licensing scheme.
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Chinese student Kai Zhuang found in Utah after cyber kidnapping scam, police say • The Washington Post
Jennifer Hassan:
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A 17-year-old Chinese student who went missing in Utah last week has been found unharmed, police said, adding that he appeared to be the victim of an elaborate “cyber kidnapping” scheme, a “disturbing criminal trend” in which scammers put people under duress and convince their families that they are being held for ransom.
Kai Zhuang, who was living in Riverdale, was discovered “alive but very cold and scared” inside a tent in remote mountains near Brigham City, Riverdale Police Chief Casey Warren said in a statement Sunday. The teen was probably instructed by those conducting the scam to isolate himself, he said.
Exchange students, particularly from China, are often targeted in virtual kidnapping cases, Warren said, adding that victims “often comply out of fear that their families will be harmed if they do not comply with the cyber kidnappers.” Warren did not identify the perpetrators in Kai’s case or where they were operating from, and said police were still investigating.
According to the FBI, while the crime can take on myriad forms, it is “always an extortion scheme” in which families are tricked into believing that a loved one has been abducted and are coerced into paying a ransom, though the person claimed to be missing has not actually been taken. Families are often sent voice recordings and photos by the perpetrators in a bid to convince them that the crime is taking place, the Riverdale police statement said.
…Police said that the teen was being “manipulated and controlled” by the perpetrators in the days before he was found and that he apparently “was isolating himself at the direction of the cyber kidnappers.”
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It isn’t exactly this Black Mirror episode, but not that far away. (In passing: the twist at the end of that episode is one of the smartest I’ve ever seen in skewing your view of the protagonist.)
One also wonders if this scheme is going to migrate to the UK and/or Europe. If so, consider yourself forewarned.
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Amazon Prime Video will start showing ads on January 29th • The Verge
Chris Welch:
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Earlier this year, Amazon announced plans to start incorporating ads into movies and TV shows streamed from its Prime Video service, and now the company has revealed a specific date when you’ll start seeing them: it’s January 29th. “This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time,” the company said in an email to customers about the pending shift to “limited advertisements.”
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership,” the company wrote. Customers have the option of paying an additional $2.99 per month to keep avoiding advertisements.
The rest of the email summarizes the many benefits of a Prime subscription — no doubt an attempt to keep customers from canceling over this decision. Verge readers were none too pleased about the initial news back in September.
Amazon Prime currently costs $14.99 each month or $139 annually. (Prime Video can be subscribed to individually for $8.99/month.)
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If you’re a Prime Video subscriber in the UK, you’ll also have had the “yeah anyway adverts” email. One can’t help thinking that Amazon could have taken a lesson from Apple and pretty much anyone else by not spending $715m on “The Rings of Power”, a LOTR series which was such a yawnathon that it only had a 37% completion rate (50% passes muster at Prime, apparently) and then (or roughly simultaneously) spending more than $200m on Citadel, a would-be action blockbuster series beset with “creative differences” and which was so derivative I didn’t finish the first episode. They’d have been $1bn to the better and maybe we wouldn’t have had the ads.
Slow Horses and Reacher: lower budget, book adaptations, hit the target.
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Bird’s bankruptcy is bad news for scooter commuters — and cities • The Washington Post
Megan McArdle:
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If you’ve visited a major city in the past five years, you’ve probably seen Bird’s black-and-white scooters all over the place — perhaps even one or two being driven on the sidewalk. Now the company is in the same position that its scooters are often left in: tipped over on the ground and obviously in need of repair.
In theory, bankruptcy can manage Bird’s repair by allowing it to shed debt and bring costs in line with spending. The company has filed for a Chapter 11 reorganization, from which its operations could conceivably emerge lean and strong enough to carry its investors to the land of profits, and its users everywhere they want to go within about a 10-mile radius.
In practice, though, Bird’s predicament raises questions about the viability of the whole business of “shared micromobility.”
Bird invented this industry in 2017, a major service not just to those of us who love zipping hither and yon but also, I’d argue, to all the cities where they operate. Yes, many folks resent sharing roads and sidewalks with the scooters. But every time a scooter substitutes for a car trip, it means fewer greenhouse emissions, less air pollution and noise, less traffic, and less danger to pedestrians.
All this is valuable! So why isn’t Bird making money?
…Bird’s business, for example, is in many ways more analogous to Avis or Hertz than a tech company, with its high capital expenditures on vehicles and substantial labor costs to keep those vehicles serviced and positioned in the areas of highest demand. Except that there are a lot more close substitutes for a scooter — walking, transit, Uber — than there are for rental cars. So scooter companies can’t necessarily charge what it costs to provide the service. This is one explanation for Bird’s $471.3m operating loss last year. As money becomes more expensive, these kinds of losses become untenable.
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Though as McArdle points out, rival Lime is (non-GAAP) profitable; micromobility can be made to work, but it’s tricky.
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Ski resorts battle for a future as snow declines in climate crisis • The Guardian
Sandra Laville:
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In the ski resorts of Morzine and Les Gets in the French Alps, the heavy rainfall meant that full opening of resorts was delayed until two days before Christmas, leaving the industry and the millions of tourists planning trips to stare at the sky in hope.
But no amount of wishing and hoping will overcome what is an existential threat to skiing in the Alps, an industry worth $30bn (£23.8bn) that provides the most popular ski destination in the world.
The science is clear, and is spelled out in carefully weighed-up peer reviewed reports. The most recent, this year, warned that at 2ºC of global heating above pre-industrial levels, 53% of the 28 European resorts examined would be at very high risk of a scarce amount of snow.
Scarce snow has been defined as the poorest coverage seen on average every five years between 1961 and 1990.
If the world were to hit 4ºC of heating, 98% of the resorts would be at very high risk of scarce snow cover. [Overspill note: if we hit 4ºC of heating, pretty much everyone will have much more serious concerns than how many ski runs are open.]
Another study has revealed the way in which snow cover in the Alps has had an “unprecedented” decline over the past 600 years, with the duration of the cover now shorter by 36 days.
Some respond by holding on to the idea that skiing will and can survive if global temperatures are kept to the limits set by the Paris agreement, and if the industry adapts.
…This year 500 professional winter sports athletes published a letter calling for greater climate action by FIS [International Ski Federation]. They highlighted a competition schedule that forced skiers to take air flights backwards and forwards over the Atlantic from week to week, creating unnecessarily large carbon footprints, and called on the federation to open the season later and end it earlier to respect the changing climate.
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Ironically, the most effective climate action at present has been taken by whoever at Boeing didn’t properly secure the door frame on one of its planes, leading to the grounding of 737 Max 9 models for an indefinite period.
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Chief executive of collapsed crypto fund HyperVerse does not appear to exist • The Guardian
Sarah Martin:
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A man named Steven Reece Lewis was introduced as the chief executive officer of HyperVerse at an online global launch event in December 2021, with video messages of support from a clutch of celebrities released on Twitter the following month, including from the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and actor Chuck Norris.
Promotional material released for HyperVerse, which was linked to a previous scheme called HyperFund, said Reece Lewis was a graduate of the University of Leeds and held a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. A brief career summary of Reece Lewis, which was presented in a video launch for potential investors, said he had worked for Goldman Sachs, sold a web development company to Adobe and launched an IT start-up firm, before being recruited to head up HyperVerse by the HyperTech group. This was the umbrella organisation for a range of Hyper-branded crypto schemes.
Lee spoke at the launch event as “chairman” of the HyperTech group, while Xu was introduced as the group’s “founder”. The company praised Reece Lewis’s “strong performance and drive”, citing his credentials as the reason for his recruitment.
Guardian Australia has confirmed that neither the University of Leeds nor the University of Cambridge has any record of someone by the name Steven Reece Lewis on their databases. No records exist of Steven Reece Lewis on the UK companies register, Companies House, or on the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Adobe, a publicly listed company since 1986, has no record of any acquisition of a company owned by a Steven Reece Lewis in any of its public SEC filings. It is understood that Goldman Sachs could find no record of Reece Lewis having worked for the company.
Guardian Australia was unable to find a LinkedIn profile for Reece Lewis or any internet presence other than HyperVerse promotional material.
…A report from the US-based blockchain analysts Chainalysis estimates consumer losses to HyperVerse in 2022 amounted to US$1.3bn (A$1.92bn).
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But but but, you say, Steve Wozniak and Chuck Norris vouched for him! Not so fast: you can hire them through the Cameo website to read out a script saying almost anything. Including what a wonderful person you are, even if you don’t exist.
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🔮 The horizon for 2024: AI & energy #1 • Exponential View
Azeem Azhar:
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We are at the very peak of fossil fuel use globally. Coal, which powered the Industrial Revolution from the mid-17th century, will be in decline from now on. As we defossilize, technology-driven energy systems (like solar) will guarantee a declining price ceiling for energy, freeing us of the vagaries of commodity-driven energy provision.
Solar power capacity additions are racing ahead. Renewable investment has exceeded fossil fuel investments for six years. Chinese solar panel prices dropped some 40+% this year to as low as 12.2c a watt, strengthening the case for the ongoing deployment of solar.
The rapid improvements in the technoeconomics of solar are making it increasingly appealing—and making forecasts progressively ropey. External forecasters are having to revise their estimates upwards. Our internal models are more bullish than these because we place more weight on learning effects and positive feedback loops.
EVs are on a tear with more than 40 million in use. Compared to earlier years, consumers have a choice of a more comprehensive selection of EVs.
The virtuous cycle is taking hold. As the market grows, more firms enter. They compete: offering consumers diversity and innovation. In this case, prices come down, and range — the most critical buying factor for an EV — increases.
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Azhar is always an optimist, and on these particular topics he tends to be proven correct.
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BT to turn 60,000 redundant street cabinets into EV charge points • The Sunday Times
Nicholas Hellen:
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BT is revealing plans to convert 60,000 of its dark-green “street cabinets” into electric car-charging stations, in a boost for drivers who worry about where they can top up their vehicles.
At present, Britain has 53,906 public chargers. Many are in petrol stations but only an estimated 20,000 can be found on residential streets, often built into lampposts.
BT’s new pavement chargers, which will be able to power six cars at a time, will output the same 7.4kW as a standard domestic charger. This means an electric vehicle will need to be plugged in for up to six hours for a full recharge.
The initiative will be particularly welcomed by the many drivers without access to off-street parking, or any other way of installing a charger at their home, which leaves them reliant on public chargers. Many say they are put off buying an electric vehicle (EV) due to the dearth of street chargers.
Speaking ahead of the launch at a tech event in Las Vegas, Tom Guy, managing director of Etc, the startup incubation arm of BT Group, said: “It’s for all those customers who don’t have a driveway and are woefully undersupplied.”
There are almost 1 million fully electric cars on the roads, and the government has set a target of 300,000 public chargers by 2030.
The telecoms giant said the cabinets, which are a familiar sight on pavements all around Britain, are becoming increasingly redundant because they contain copper-based wiring for broadband and phone services.
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Smart thinking by BT (which logically will thus transform into a conglomerate buying and selling electricity, apart from the many non-comms things it already does). Of course the government missed its 2023 target of having at least six rapid (or better) chargers at each motorway service area in England; only 39% did. Four of the 119 have no rapid charging. Spectacularly useless.
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| • Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016?Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more. |
Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified
The Overspill: when there's more that I want to say 
And of the 5 chargers I tried in the UK on my last visit, 4 didn’t work, and two of them were at the railway station. Never seen anything done so halfheartedly in my life (and my parents decided to switch to a hybrid instead of keeping their EV as they got too stressed over the whole process).