Friday’s Endnotes – 07/14/23

Duct-taped bananas and copyright absurdity — Eleonora Rosati writes, “So, is the inherent blurriness, ambiguity or even absurdity of copyright’s foundational concepts a problem that needs to be rectified? I think not. For an exclusive IP right that regulates (and should stimulate) the production and dissemination of cultural objects and also serves as an instrument of technological governance, these very features have been both key and necessary to its survival and progressive evolution.”

The Art of Translation — The New York Times presents an interactive story from translator Sophie Hughes that walks the reader through the creative and intellectual exercise of translating prose. The process resembles authorship more than rote calculation; as Hughes observes, “Contrary to what I’d imagined, in my eagerness to be faithful to the original meaning above all else, translation didn’t turn out to be a subdued search for equivalence — for the closest possible ‘match’ for each word — but a playful pursuit of equilibrium across an entire work, an exhilarating and, yes, joyful balancing act of loyalties: to sense, to significance and to style.”

Senate IP Subcommittee Mulls Federal Right of Publicity at AI and Copyright Hearing — Steve Brachmann at IPWatchdog reports, “On July 12, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held its second hearing in two months on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) developments and intellectual property rights. This most recent hearing focused on potential violations of copyright law by generative AI platforms, the impact of those platforms on human creators, and ways in which AI companies can implement technological solutions to protect copyright owners and consumers alike.”

Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement — “The suits alleges, among other things, that OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s LLaMA were trained on illegally-acquired datasets containing their works, which they say were acquired from ‘shadow library’ websites like Bibliotik, Library Genesis, Z-Library, and others, noting the books are ‘available in bulk via torrent systems.'”

Shein Named in Copyright, Racketeering Lawsuit Over Alleged Infringement Scheme — “According to the complaint that they filed in a California federal court on Tuesday, independent designers Krista Perry, Larissa Martinez, and Jay Baron claim that Shein and various related entities, including Roadget Business and Zoetop Business, (collectively, ‘Shein’) are on the hook for copyright and trademark infringement in connection with their practice of ‘produc[ing], distribut[ing], and selling exact copies of their creative works,’ which they allege is ‘part and parcel of Shein’s “design” process and organizational DNA.'”