By , March 01, 2019.

A philosopher argues that an AI can’t be an artist — “We can’t count the monkey at a typewriter who accidentally types out Othello as a great creative playwright. If there is greatness in the product, it is only an accident. We may be able to see a machine’s product as great, but if we know that the output is merely the result of some arbitrary act or algorithmic formalism, we cannot accept it as the expression of a vision for human good.”

Scribd Files Complaint Against DRM Circumvention Tool — Section 1201 prohibits on circumventing technological measures protecting access to copyrighted works. Actions for violations of Section 1201 may be brought by “any person injured.” So it was only a matter of time before we saw an entity besides a copyright owner file a 1201 lawsuit.

Books Digitization and Demand — Mark Seeley takes a look at a recent paper that examines demand for books in response to the Google Books Project. “[A]uthors and publishers were at the time the suit was initiated against Google heavily engaged in e-book production and creating an e-book market. It is possible that the Google project provided more incentive in this development, but the concern was not about print—it was about unauthorized use, print or online, without compensation.”

Fair Use Week Again. But Why? — Newhoff writes, “Perhaps future legal experts will find that the most important decision came in the ReDigi case, denying the fair use defense of this business, which sought to create and exploit a market for ‘used’ digital music files.  One reason this decision my be seen as a landmark is that Judge Leval himself wrote the opinion and added further nuance to his own ‘transformative’ doctrine, which has been the cause of considerable confusion in other cases.”

Kodak’s Kodakit Asks Photographers to Give Up the ‘Entire Copyright’ — Petapixel’s Michael Zhang highlights some of the extraordinary conditions that photographers must agree to before selling their photos through what has been dubbed here the “Uber of photography.”