More than a single print brand

[Cross-posted from Lucire]   Lucire will get a sister title in print. As the only magazine from New Zealand that’s licensed internationally—as far as I know—we could do one of two things: not pursue new titles because no one else does this work in this country, or expand our horizons further because no one else […]

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I have business for the photo bots, but they don’t want it

We received a few more automated notices from Copytrack last month, and as usual we were able to show them the licences. However, this one involved one of our editors, and I had to waste her time looking for documentation from a decade ago. There are some other legal issues relating to their methods, which […]

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You can’t contract yourself out of breaking the law, Google—that’s not how it works

Google has updated its privacy policy, giving itself carte blanche to take publicly available data to use for its large language models and “AI”. I don’t think whomever wrote the update has any comprehension of the law. Or that they do, but think they can get away with it. Maybe in their own country they […]

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Farewell to Universal Media Server, hello Plex Media Server

After many years, I’ve had to remove Universal Media Server. I used v. 6.3.1 for many years and I see that was launched in 2016. I know that wasn’t the first year I began using the program, so I could well have had some form installed for the last decade. I stuck with v. 6.3.1 […]

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Someone at Google did right

Fair’s fair: for once, Google did right, even though it took them ages. My last entry on this topic was in April, when Google refused to remove a pirate site that they provide cloud services for. Two months later, I received word that they had reviewed one of the URLs I had complained about: ‘We’re […]

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When reverse image search services allege you’ve stolen work

I think these are going to get more frequent. We received another copyright claim, accusing us of publishing a photograph without authorization. They wanted around €500, part of that for the licence, and part of that for running it since 2009. This one, from a German company, was easier to deal with than an American […]

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On Lucire’s locked Twitter account: they’re still doing sweet F. A.

Pixabay Twitter, after having done sweet F. A. about Lucire’s locked account, and failing to provide any response since the last lot of evidence was sent to them on the 4th ult., wrote this to me today: After reviewing the reported account, it appears that this issue may have been resolved. Please reply to this […]

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Twitter continues playing silly buggers—are they illiterate?

Pixabay It’s hard to believe, but Twitter is far, far worse than Facebook when it comes to straightening things out.    They’ve now asked for my ‘government-issued ID’ thrice and I’ve provided it thrice. It meets all their criteria.    This is the latest bollocks: Hello, We’re writing to let you know that we’re unable […]

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How Jaguar Land Rover can still win its Land Rover Defender IP case against Ineos

I haven’t read the full judgement of the Land Rover Defender case, where Jaguar Land Rover sought to protect the shape of the original Defender under trade mark law, to prevent Ineos from proceeding with the Grenadier.    According to Bloomberg, as reported in Automotive News, ‘The judge upheld the findings by the IP Office […]

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Capitalism falls down when it’s rigged

Martin Wolf, writing in the Financial Times, touches on a few points that resonate with my readings over the years.    He believes capitalism, as a system, is not a bad one, but it is bad when it is ‘rigged’; and that Aristotle was indeed right (as history has since proved) that a sizeable middle […]

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