madisen

The United States, as you point out, has been actually freer than most in terms of offering access to information. It doesn’t have to be this way. Openness is not the default in terms of how if you look back in time, or even around the world. We need to show how openness works better. That you end up with companies that thrive better. That you have... See more

If we want to understand what AIs are going to look like, I think the proto AI that we have are corporations. Corporations are sort of these funny little beasts. They’re not small. I guess they’re not little beasts, but they’re strange. It takes special training to have humans be able to fit within them. They’re made out of humans mostly but they’r... See more

Copyright nearly killed the open web, in fact. Until the 11th hour of international decision-making on the subject, copyright law in both the US and the EU was going to make all intermediaries on the web, from search engines to internet service providers, liable for all copyright infringements that traveled over their networks, whether they knew ab... See more

It is time to find ways to manage both the open resources and the AI solutions built on top of them in a way that is more sustain -able and reduces harm

Early in the twenty-first century, the attempt to enact exclusivity-based laws for controlling access to digital resources in the US gave rise to the open movement. The movement quickly gained momentum. The champions of openness hoped that universal access to knowledge and culture, made possible thanks to the power of the Internet, would contribute... See more

Specific AI system regulations, such as the European AI Act or the AI Bill of Rights in the United States (both of which have yet to be adopted), may include rules that govern the development and management of AI training datasets. Other laws are also applicable. The Digital Services Act, recently adopted in the European Union, requires platforms t... See more

“The more information is free, the more opportunities for it to be collected, refined, packaged and made expensive,” said Stewart Brand, the technology visionary who first developed the formulation. “The more it is expensive, the more workarounds to make it free. It’s a paradox. Each side makes the other true.”

What is at stake is the design of a new content production and distribution ecosystem that will shape the entire digital environment and our societies. As has been the case in the past, a strong actor committed to the values of openness and free knowledge has a chance to tip the balance away from closed ecosystems controlled by commercial monopolis... See more