Emperor

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/27573974

The growing debate over the future of intellectual property law in the age of AI took a wild turn in the past few days when Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and Block, and initially a leading figure at Bluesky, declared he would like to see all IP law eliminated.

“Delete all IP law,” Dorsey wrote on X on Friday (April 11).

Elon Musk, owner of X and head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), chimed in by saying “I agree.”

...

Ed Newton-Rex, a former VP of Audio at Stability AI and now a leading campaigner for the protection of intellectual property, described Dorsey and Musk’s assertion as “tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don’t want their life’s work pillaged for profit.”

Pushback also came from Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, patent specialist and lawyer who served as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate in the 2024 election.

“Actual IP professional here – NO,” she wrote in response to Dorsey’s tweet. “IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations. If you want to reform it, let’s talk!”

To which Dorsey responded: “Creativity is what currently separates us, and the current system is limiting that, and putting the payments disbursement into the hands of gatekeepers who aren’t paying out fairly.”

Notably, Dorsey is Chairman of Block, Inc., the company formerly known as Square, which owns music streaming service TIDAL.

Dorsey’s tweet likely doesn’t reflect official TIDAL policy on the issue of IP. The company’s CEO, Jesse Dorogusker, told MBW a few years ago that he views music as being “undervalued and underpriced.”

One can only imagine what the value of music would look like if copyright protections were to disappear altogether. It would not be a stretch to imagine that its value would fall close to zero, along with the value of other commercialized cultural products, and the value of labor carried out by artists and other creators.

Responding to Dorsey, some on social media pointed out that Dorsey’s own businesses have benefited from IP protections.

“Very easy to say after you’ve made billions off your IP,” one commenter wrote.

The growing debate over the future of intellectual property law in the age of AI took a wild turn in the past few days when Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and Block, and initially a leading figure at Bluesky, declared he would like to see all IP law eliminated.

“Delete all IP law,” Dorsey wrote on X on Friday (April 11).

Elon Musk, owner of X and head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), chimed in by saying “I agree.”

...

Ed Newton-Rex, a former VP of Audio at Stability AI and now a leading campaigner for the protection of intellectual property, described Dorsey and Musk’s assertion as “tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don’t want their life’s work pillaged for profit.”

Pushback also came from Nicole Shanahan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, patent specialist and lawyer who served as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate in the 2024 election.

“Actual IP professional here – NO,” she wrote in response to Dorsey’s tweet. “IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations. If you want to reform it, let’s talk!”

To which Dorsey responded: “Creativity is what currently separates us, and the current system is limiting that, and putting the payments disbursement into the hands of gatekeepers who aren’t paying out fairly.”

Notably, Dorsey is Chairman of Block, Inc., the company formerly known as Square, which owns music streaming service TIDAL.

Dorsey’s tweet likely doesn’t reflect official TIDAL policy on the issue of IP. The company’s CEO, Jesse Dorogusker, told MBW a few years ago that he views music as being “undervalued and underpriced.”

One can only imagine what the value of music would look like if copyright protections were to disappear altogether. It would not be a stretch to imagine that its value would fall close to zero, along with the value of other commercialized cultural products, and the value of labor carried out by artists and other creators.

Responding to Dorsey, some on social media pointed out that Dorsey’s own businesses have benefited from IP protections.

“Very easy to say after you’ve made billions off your IP,” one commenter wrote.

Albert Saniger, the founder and former CEO of Nate, an AI shopping app that promised a “universal” checkout experience, was charged with defrauding investors on Wednesday, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Founded in 2018, Nate raised over $50 million from investors like Coatue and Forerunner Ventures, most recently raising a $38 million Series A in 2021 led by Renegade Partners.

Nate said its app’s users could buy from any e-commerce site with a single click, thanks to AI. In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ’s Southern District of New York alleges.

Saniger raised millions in venture funding by claiming that Nate was able to transact online “without human intervention,” except for edge cases where the AI failed to complete a transaction. But despite Nate acquiring some AI technology and hiring data scientists, its app’s actual automation rate was effectively 0%, the DOJ claims.

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Nate isn’t the only startup that has allegedly exaggerated its AI capabilities. For example, an “AI” drive-through software startup was also powered largely by humans in the Philippines, The Verge reported in 2023.

More recently, Business Insider reported that an AI legal tech unicorn, EvenUp, used humans to do much of its work.

The big American tech firms known as the “Silicon Six” have been accused of paying almost $278bn (£211bn) less corporate income tax in the past decade compared with the statutory rate for US companies making the same profits.

Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft generated $11tn of revenue and $2.5tn of profits over the past 10 years.

Yet they paid an average 18.8% in combined national and federal corporation taxes, compared with an average 29.7% in the US, according to the Fair Tax Foundation (FTF), which said the Silicon Six had “hardwired” tax avoidance into their business models.

Analysis by the not-for-profit organisation found that if one-off repatriation tax payments in the US connected to historical tax avoidance were excluded, the average corporate income tax contribution of the six firms fell to 16.1% over the past decade.

The companies had also inflated their stated tax payments by $82bn over the same period by including contingencies for tax they did not expect to pay, the report claimed.

Paul Monaghan, the chief executive of the FTF, said: “Our analysis would indicate that tax avoidance continues to be hardwired into corporate structures. The Silicon Six’s corporate income tax contributions are, in percentage terms, way below what sectors such as banking and energy are paying in many parts of the world.”

Monaghan pointed to “aggressive tax practices” such as the contingency tax positions, while the companies also exerted “enormous political influence as well as economic power”, spending millions of dollars on lobbying governments.

The report comes as the US tech companies’ influence has been highlighted by the presence of their bosses including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg at Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

A significant tax cut for such companies has reportedly been at the heart of discussions with the UK in its attempts to secure lower tariffs on its products exported to the US.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/27495977

The audiodrama that has got a few mentions on here before switches from BBC Radio 4 to Kickstarter. Not sure why, as it has gone down well at the Beeb but that is how they are doing things.

The audiodrama that has got a few mentions on here before switches from BBC Radio 4 to Kickstarter. Not sure why, as it has gone down well at the Beeb but that is how they are doing things.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/27468401

Season 15 returned to BBC One on Saturday 12th April and received an overnight rating of two million viewers, as per TV Zone. The consolidated ratings, which include BBC iPlayer, devices and catch-up, will be released at a later date.

The viewership marks it as the fourth most-watched programme of the day and second most-watched for BBC One, just slightly behind Gladiators' 2.9 million viewers.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/27468401

Season 15 returned to BBC One on Saturday 12th April and received an overnight rating of two million viewers, as per TV Zone. The consolidated ratings, which include BBC iPlayer, devices and catch-up, will be released at a later date.

The viewership marks it as the fourth most-watched programme of the day and second most-watched for BBC One, just slightly behind Gladiators' 2.9 million viewers.

Season 15 returned to BBC One on Saturday 12th April and received an overnight rating of two million viewers, as per TV Zone. The consolidated ratings, which include BBC iPlayer, devices and catch-up, will be released at a later date.

The viewership marks it as the fourth most-watched programme of the day and second most-watched for BBC One, just slightly behind Gladiators' 2.9 million viewers.

Analysis: As a new book shows, growth and success has turned optimistic tech startups into corporate cesspits of greed, manipulation and contempt

In the early days of Google, the phrase 'don't be evil' was both its motto and part of its Code of Corporate Conduct. By 2018, that phrase was history and so was the sentiment that that inspired it in many peoples' eyes.

For many tech giants, growth and success has seemed to morph what were once benevolent and optimistic startups into cesspits of greed, manipulation and contempt. Descriptions of the inner workings of companies like Google, Facebook (now Meta), and Twitter (now X) portray dystopian hellscapes in which employees are treated like disposable cogs in an ever-grinding machine and competitors are squeezed out of the market by means fair and foul. It is a world where corporate leaders tell us that the biggest failing of civilization is that we have empathy for one another.

In Careless People, a new exposé of corporate life at Facebook/Meta, Sarah Wynn-Williams describes her seven years in the executive suite of that company. As a former diplomat from New Zealand, she joined Facebook believing that the internet could make the world a better place by fostering connections between people and communities.

But the corporate world she describes is one in which the internet was consciously used to spread hate, fear and division. It's a book where the behaviour of top executives involving ongoing patterns of sexual harassment, exploitation and fawning worship of power-mad leaders reads like something from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

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While I agree with many of the points Carolan raises, I believe her analysis misses a major factor in the development of toxic cultures in so many tech giants, namely the lionisation of CEOs and top executives. Leaders like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos have accumulated immense wealth and power, and they are sometimes treated like demi-gods in the business press.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28168462

Here are five DC cosmic horror titles that are self-contained and exemplify and celebrate the genre. These are all one volume each and perfect to devour in an afternoon.