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Development of Generative Artificial Intelligence from a Copyright Perspective
European Union Intellectual Property Office, 2025/05/13

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Coming as it does from the Euiropean Union Intellectual Property Office, I think this report (436 page PDF) comes from a certain pro-protectionist perspective. It reads that way, at least. If I had to summarize it in a few sentences, I would say that it classifies content use for the training of AI as an instance of 'text and data mining' (TDM), which is allowed under European law, but from which content owners can obtain an exemption. It also notes that copyright holders enjoy protection for things like images and works (such as the 'Snoopy' character) whether or not the replicas were copied or produced by other means. The report also notes that there is no standard mechanism for declaring an opt-out from TDM not a mechanism for enforcing this opt-out. It feels to me that by favouring the status quo the report runs the risk of offering special privileges for large companies to opt-out and/or make special deals with commercial AI companies, while offering no protection for everyone else, while disabling the possibility of non-commercial AI that is unable to enter into these special deals.

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A brief history of the numeric keypad
Francesco Bertelli, DOC, 2025/05/13

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This is a nice, detailed and not-so-short article asking why telephone and calculator keypads are organized differently (the telephone has 1-2-3 as the top row, the calculator 7-8-9 as the top row. It's also a great object lesson in how the design of digital environments we use today is based on a long history of similar devices from the pre-digital world, and how usability is defined into our tools over the years. Via OSNews, Apostolos K.

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The End of Participation Growth
Alex Usher, HESA, 2025/05/13

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I agree with Alex Usher rarely enough that it's worth highlighting this moment of agreement. Usher writes, "since it's quite clear that this overall plateauing of participation is happening entirely by way of freezing educational inequality at substantial levels, being OK with the present situation means being OK with major inequalities, and in any democracy which wishes to remain a democracy, that's not really OK." Quite right. Now, he's wrong when he says "no one phrases their case in terms of access anymore. We don't care about outcomes. And I do mean no one. Not students, not governments, not institutions." No one, maybe, except me. I'm always talked about access. But otherwise, yeah, it hasn't been a priority for people. Usher also makes the usual case that "countries with free tuition don't have noticeably narrower part(icipation) rate gaps," to which I add that while tuition cuts may not be sufficient to improve access, they are most likely necessary.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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