Format Will Shift To Video and French

by rossitaUncategorizedPosted on Comments are Disabled

I have retracted a previous statement about deleting all content from this platform. After I took down the entire blog, I was reminded that I am contractually obligated to keep a certain number of posts online. I have discretion over which ones, and I retain full creative control over the delivery of the content, including personal liability for the stuff that I say.

So, I will be setting up a new platform where the posts are delivered in short videos. Meanwhile, I will drastically reduce the number of written posts into pages, so as to avoid undue focus on the “latest” stuff versus the quality of the articles, and so all new content will be in video, in order to reflect the original vocation of the platform and the consumption habits of the majority of users.

As I re-uploaded the blog, unfortunately all contributing authors and AI GEN content is now attributed to my own name. I don’t think there are more than 10 very short LLM generated posts and likely only from 2023. I will fix that. In the meantime I apologize for the chaos.

Contract or no contract, I simply don’t see a point of continuing a blog right now, because many of the things I said and wrote 6 years ago (when I was still in law school) are basically still trending, progress and reform around the world are in stagnation, so clearly I don’t need to hold my breath for the latest stuff. I will begin scripting after the holidays and will launch the new platform by May 2025.

Finally, to comply with Quebec’s language requirements, I will be emphasizing French in the future. I let go during the pandemic, but I realize I’ve been giving a bad example. Maintaining French is essential for Canada’s identity.

Happy Holidays!

Joyeux temps des Fêtes!

Je reviens sous un autre format.

Germany: Use Of Copyrighted Images In AI Training Is Not Infringement, So Long As Not For Profit

by rossitaArtificial Intelligence, Intellectual Property, LitigationPosted on Comments are Disabled

On Friday, the Hamburg Regional Court dismissed a photographer’s lawsuit against the non-profit research network Laion over the use of a copyrighted image. Laion provides a publicly accessible database with nearly 6 billion image-text pairs that can be used to train AI systems. One of the images in this database belonged to the plaintiff, who sought a court order to prohibit its use. The issue presented to the court was whether the text and data mining exceptions in § 44b UrhG and § 60d UrhG justify using copyrighted works for AI training. The court seems to agree with Laion’s position (Ruling from September 27, 2024 – 310 O 227/23) and in the first instance, the photographer has now lost the case before the Hamburg Regional Court .

Nevertheless, the legal dispute is not about whether the image can generally be used for AI training, but whether Laion was allowed to download it to compare it with the image description for its database purposes. Downloading such an image constitutes a reproduction of a protected work, which requires the permission of the copyright holder. However, the Hamburg court considers this use to be justified by the text and data mining exception in § 60d UrhG. This provision permits the use of copyrighted works for scientific purposes, particularly for text and data mining, without infringing on the copyright holder’s rights. Text and data mining refer to converting unstructured data into structured formats to identify meaningful patterns and generate new insights, a process that relies on vast data collections.

The Hamburg court believes that Laion’s comparison of the image and its description falls under this exception. It views this process as an analysis to identify correlations between image content and its description, which is considered a privileged scientific purpose. The fact that the data was later used for AI training does not change this assessment, as the original purpose of data collection was for scientific research.

The court also touched on the pressing question of whether using such data for commercial purposes would be permissible under § 44b UrhG if the copyright holder includes a usage restriction in machine-readable language alongside their work. In this case, the photo agency from which Laion obtained the image had posted such a restriction in “natural language” on its website. The court hinted that such restrictions in natural language might be considered machine-readable if modern AI technologies can comprehend them.

Online Harms Bill Must Address Platform Liability And Provide For Swift Banning Of Platforms

by rossitaUncategorizedPosted on Comments are Disabled

Contrary to my previous objections to the Online Harms Bill, which I criticized as “too little too late nothingburger” and “disappointing” because age verification is missing, I am now finding new ways to work with this law to arrive precisely where we need to get regarding corporate criminal liability of platforms. Given that we don’t have the sociopathic section 230 CDA here, all we need is to be bold and move fast, before the law is struck on constitutional grounds by corporate lobbies.

The Online Harms Bill creates a very welcome tool to repress rampant tech facilitated crimes, by reversing the criminal law onus, in other words we can finally say that anyone who produces and disseminates harmful content is by definition guilty until proven otherwise.

Among many things, I see a clear possibility to raise criminal sentencing for child pornographers from nothing to perpetuity through the Online Harms Bill, simply by proving that juvenile porn is according to United Nation reports a most blatant instance of hate speech and antisocial behaviour. Interference with minors is absolutely encompassed in the current hate speech definition. Moreover, we have decades of studies and reports on the societal decay and breakdown resulting from technology facilitated violence (a.k.a. hate speech) against women and children.

My understanding is that we will be setting up administrative tribunals where you don’t need to be a member of a bar, you can be a social worker and hand out life-sentences. To accelerate trials and sentencing, we can also implement AI decision-makers like in the European Court. They seem to be doing pretty well so far.

We have extensive reports on the ways that platforms knowingly encourage and perpetuate hate speech, mainly in the form of tech facilitated violence. Honestly, I don’t see how user-generated and hardcore porn (and anything that is not LGBTQ+) will get a hate-speech exemption, given the Privacy Commissioner report (that stayed hidden for as long as it possibly could) specifically on how consent of unwitting “performers” is NEVER verified on Aylo. Even the new “safeguards” Aylo brought forward include the possibility to consent for somebody else by providing a release form. As if a user couldn’t produce a fake release. I had 9 remixes commercialized to my name and someone gave a release signed by someone pretending to be me to a US publisher, so Aylo’s efforts are total bullshit in that regard. The rest is voluntary blindness by pro-Aylo officials. This is just one example of organized inefficiency.

The Online Harms Bill should also allow victims from outside of Canada to file complaints. We learned from parliamentary sessions on the status of women that intimate partner violence victims are fleeing Canada, because the criminal justice system here intentionally compromises their safety by protecting and releasing violent criminals. We saw in these sessions that reps from the current administration were antagonizing and harassing victims (survivors left in tears), which shows that officials political interests are aligned with the rise of technology facilitated violence. It is our duty to take the Online Harms Bill and use it against all the corporations and their users these officials try to protect. It is a small sacrifice to stop speech temporarily (voluntarily remain silent or shut down or pause social media accounts) until we weed out the bad apples once and for all.

I am currently examining a report from 5 years ago, called Deplatforming Mysogyny on platform liability for technology facilitated violence, and will compare it with the efforts brought forward in the Online Harms Bill. The report explains how digital platforms business models, design decisions, and technological features optimize them for abusive speech and behaviour (the current definition of hate speech) by users and examine how tech violence always results in real life violence and harm. It is funny how we’ve known all these years that tech platforms are destroying society by encouraging violence and murders, but allowed them to stay in business.

As early as 2018, the Report of the Special Reporteur on violence against women, UNHRC, 38th Sess, UN Doc A/HRC/38/47 (2018) reports that “Information and communications technology is used directly as a tool for making digital threats and inciting gender-based violence, including threats of physical and sexual violence, rape, killing, unwanted and harassing online communications or even the encouragement of others to harm women physically. It may also involve the dissemination of reputation harming lies, electronic sabotage in the form of spam and milgnant viruses, impersonation of the victim online and the sending of abusive emails or spam, blog posts, tweets or other online communications in the victim’s name. Technology facilitated violence may also be committed in the work place or in the form of so-called honour-based violence by intimate partners […]

It is therefore important to acknowledge that the Internet is being used in broader environment of widespread and systemic structural discrimination and gender-based violence against women and girls, which frame their access to and use of the internet and other information and communications technology. Emerging forms of ICT have facilitated new types of gender-based violence and gender inequality in access to technologies, which hinder women’s and girls’ full enjoyment of their human rights and their ability to achieve gender equality. […] 

The consequences of harm caused by different manifestations of online violence are specifically gendered, given that women and girls suffer from particular stigma in the context of cultural inequality, discrimination, and patriarchy. Women subjected to online violence are often further victimized through harmful and negative gender stereotypes, which are prohibited by international law.”

If intentionally sexualizing individuals or a group of people in order to deprive them of the basic enjoyment of their human rights is not hate speech, good luck proving otherwise.

Tech facilitated gender based violence is further defined as being rooted in, arising from, and exacerbated by misogyny, sexist norms, and rape culture, all of which existed long before the internet. However TFGBV in turn accelerates, amplifies, aggravates, and perpetuates the enactment of and harm from these same values, norms and institutions, in a vicious circle of technosocial oppression. (Source Jessica West)

Deplatforming misogyny gives several examples of hate speech:

  • Online Abuse: verbally or emotionally abusing someone online, such as insulting and harassing them, their work, or their personality traits and capabilities, including telling that person she should commit suicide or deserves to be sexually assaulted
  • Online Harassment: persistently engaging with someone online in a way that is unwanted, often but not necessarily with the intention to cause distress or inconvenience to that person. It is perpetrated by one or several organized persons, as in gang stalking (source Suzie Dunn)
  • Slut-shaming (100% hate-speech) can be perpetrated across several platforms and may include references to the targeted person’s sexuality, sexualized insults, or shaming the person for their sexuality or for engaging in sexual activity. This type of hate-speech has the objective to create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment (UNHRC, 38th Sess, UN Doc A/HRC/38/47 (2018))
    • Discussing someone else’s sexuality is kind of always a red flag and criminal defense lawyers (among many other professionals) are totally engaging in hate speech in total impunity, just saying. Something needs to change or the legal industry should be completely eliminated from enforcing a clean internet. They should have zero immunity for perpetrating hate-speech and thereby encouraging violence against women and children.
  • Non-consensual distribution of intimate images: (see Aylo’s business model) circulating intimate or sexual images or recordings of someone without their consent, such as where a person is nude, partially clothed, or engaged in sexual activity, often with the purpose of shaming, stigmatizing or harming the victim. (also known as image based abuse and image-based sexual exploitation). The UN warns against using the term “revenge porn” because it implies that the victim did something wrong deserving of revenge.
  • Sextortion: attempting to sexually extort another person by capturing sexual or intimate images or recordings of them and threatening to distribute them without consent unless the targeted person pays the perpetrator, follows their orders, or engages in sexual activity with or for them.
  • Voyeurism: criminal offense involving surreptitiously observing or recording someone while they are in a situation that gives rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy.
  • Doxing: publicly disclosing someone’s personal information online, such as their full name, home adress, and social insurance number. Doxing is particularily concerning for individuals who are in or escaping situations of intimate partner violence, or who use pseudonyms due to living in repressive regimes or to avoid harmful discrimination for aspects of their identity, such as being a transgender or sex worker. (see: The Guardian: Facebook’s real name policy hurts people)
  • Impersonation: taking over a person’s social media accounts, or creating false social media accounts purporting to be the victim, usually to solicit sex or make compromising statements.
  • Identity and Image Manipulation, i.e. Deepfake videos: use of AI to produce videos of an individual saying something they did not say or did not do. In reality, video deepfakes are kind of fringe. The current AI applications are mainly focused on sexualizing and undressing women through unauthorized use of Instagram photos.
  • Online mobbing, or swarming: large numbers of people engaging in online harassment or online abuse against a single individual (Amber Herd comes to mind)
    • The Depp and Herd trial is an example of court-enabled hate-speech. The way Herd was cross-examined on television falls within the definition of incitement of violence against victims of intimate partner violence. This trial harmed the reputation of the profession beyond any repair and resulted in uncontrollable online mobbing.
  • Coordinated flagging and Brigading are cited in the report but I am not at all convinced that they are user-perpetrated. I believe that algorithmic conduct is 100% on the platforms. Users have zero control and liability in that regard. Nice try, but nope. If a survivor is taken down, I won’t let platforms get away with “users did it”. No way. Saying otherwise is pro-corporate propaganda.
  • Technology aggravated sexual assault: group assault which is filmed and posted online. Here is where the Online Harms Bill can be used to sentence perps to life in prison, something that can’t be achieved under the criminal code.
  • Luring for sexual exploitation: i.e. grooming through social media, or through fake online ads, in order to lure underage victims into offline forms of sexual exploitation, such as sex trafficking and child sexual abuse. Here is another instance of hate speech deserving of a life-sentence.

To be continued in another post: it is a long report (or to be more precise a bundle of legal and UN reports) and the bill is also a handful. I am only skimming the surface of the most prevalent forms of hate-speech which invariably equate to incitement of gender-based and intersectional genocide (see report on missing and murdered indigenous women and how it amounts to genocide). Just to say I can work with that bill. Bring it!

Law school messed too much with my head by convincing me that I care about human rights for violent criminals and procedural safeguards for perp corps. I never did. It feels good to be my dystopian self again.

Entheon By Illusionaries in London, UK

by rossitaArtPosted on Comments are Disabled

Entheon is an immersive groundbreaking immersive exhibition that brings the profound works of Alex and Allyson Grey to the UK and Europe for the first time. The exhibition is an international project, uniting technology and production teams to bring the vision to life. According to Salar Nouri, Creative Director and Curator at Illusionaries, Entheon “breaks new ground, entering a realm where art, love, and spirit converge in a unique celebration of creativity.”

Exploring Humanity and Spirituality

Entheon offers a rare opportunity to delve into the Greys’ visionary perspectives on consciousness, perception, and the human spirit. Their artwork explores the interconnectedness of the physical and spiritual worlds, providing a profound exploration of self.

360-Degree Immersive Experience

Visitors embark on a 15-minute journey through Entheon’s godly faces, encouraging exploration of inner creativity. A mirrored room features animated CG adaptations of the Greys’ paintings, transforming their art into a dynamic experience. This space, inspired by the Greys’ visionary minds, creates a labyrinth of visual and spiritual exploration.

A New Era in Immersive Art

Entheon heralds a new era in the appreciation for immersive art, pushing the boundaries of creativity and spirituality. This unparalleled experience is now open to the public at Illusionaries, London’s experiential art hub.

The sight of Alex and Allyson Grey art always takes my breath away, but this is on a whole new level. I can’t wait to see it in person. You can get your ticket here.

Also, if there ever is another pandemic, I can see this type exhibition doing extremely well on the metaverse.

NFT Scams On The Rise

by rossitaCyber-Incidents, MetaversePosted on Comments are Disabled

NFT’s are pretty much obsolete right now, but it seems that people continue falling for numerous NFT scams. Here is a most common phishing example. First, scammers send one or several NFTs to your wallet. Then you receive an offer through email which looks like this :

Hi,

We’re thrilled to share exciting news about your  NFT portfolio!  One of your listings has attracted significant interest. Here’s a quick snapshot of the latest offer: 

  • Offer ID: 0xGo0D922p
  • Offered by: CryptoFans
  • Price: 1.93 ETH

Review Offer

Please take a moment to sign in to your account and explore this new opportunity. Should you have any queries or require support, our dedicated team is ready and eager to assist you.

Best regards,
Opensea Team

It is signed by Opensea that recently had a data breach BUT the email originates from someone called cognitosystems. I obviously removed the link associated with “Review Offer”. I just left it as a link for visual illustration. Please do not click on any link you receive by email in relation to NFT’s. This scam is a classic phishing operation, designed to steal your wallet credentials. If you really think there is an offer of any kind, login through your wallet. Do not trust any NFT offers by email.

California AG v Nudify and Other Deepfake AI

by rossitaArtificial Intelligence, Cyber-Incidents, Litigation, ReformPosted on Comments are Disabled

As usual, unbridled “free speech”, voluntary blindness, minimization of harm, and inexistent enforcement of laws against gender based violence invariably impact women and girls. Given that there has been little political or judicial will to stop intimate violence, it is hardly surprising to see generative AI being hijacked to produce ever more nonconsensual intimate images of women and girls, as is the case with the latest anti-social trend of “undress technology” being widely used in schools by teenage boys who undress their teachers and classmates for the purpose of causing long-lasting harm and inciting girls to commit suicide. While videos are harder to produce, the creation of images using “undress” or “nudify” websites and apps has become commonplace.

Big tech and investors are complicit and should be subjected to criminal investigations, but aren’t. An alarming report by 404 Media shows that violence through deepfake technology is intentionally promoted and knowingly encouraged by Big Tech platforms be it via targeted ads on social media or directly in app stores as it appears on the top of searches.

As if this weren’t enough, WIRED reports that Big Tech platforms further facilitate violence against women by allowing people to use their existing accounts to join the deepfake websites. For example, Google’s login system appeared on 16 such websites, Discord’s appeared on 13, and Apple’s on six. X’s button was on three websites, with Patreon and messaging service Line’s both appearing on the same two websites. The login systems have been used despite the tech companies terms and conditions that state developers cannot use their services in ways that would enable harm, harassment, or invade people’s privacy.

Sign-in APIs are tools of convenience. We should never be making sexual violence an act of convenience. We should be putting up walls around the access to these apps, and instead we’re giving people a drawbridge.”

“This is a continuation of a trend that normalizes sexual violence against women and girls by Big Tech,” says Adam Dodge, a lawyer and founder of EndTAB (Ending Technology-Enabled Abuse).

After being contacted by WIRED, spokespeople for Discord and Apple said they have removed the developer accounts connected to their websites. Google said it will take action against developers when it finds its terms have been violated. Patreon said it prohibits accounts that allow explicit imagery to be created, and Line confirmed it is investigating but said it could not comment on specific websites. X did not reply to a request for comment about the way its systems are being used.

The tech company logins are often presented when someone tries to sign up to the site or clicks on buttons to try generating images. It is unclear how many people will have used the login methods, and most websites also allow people to create accounts with just their email address. However, of the websites reviewed, the majority had implemented the sign-in APIs of more than one technology company, with Sign-In With Google being the most widely used. When this option is clicked, prompts from the Google system say the website will get people’s name, email addresses, language preferences, and profile picture.

“In order to use Sign in with Google, developers must agree to our Terms of Service, which prohibits the promotion of sexually explicit content as well as behavior or content that defames or harasses others,” says a Google spokesperson, adding that “appropriate action” will be taken if these terms are broken. Other tech companies that had sign-in systems being used said they have banned accounts after being contacted by WIRED.

“We must be clear that this is not innovation, this is sexual abuse. These websites are engaged in horrific exploitation of women and girls around the globe. These images are used to bully, humiliate, and threaten women and girls”, says David Chiu, San Francisco’s city attorney.

This fiasco has prompted San Francisco’s city attorney to file a lawsuit against undress and nudify websites and their creators. Chiu says the 16 websites his office’s lawsuit focuses on have had around 200 million visits in the first six months of this year alone. The lawsuit brought on behalf of the people of California alleges that the services broke numerous state laws against fraudulent business practices, nonconsensual pornography and the sexual abuse of children. But it can be hard to determine who runs the apps, which are unavailable in phone app stores but still easily found on the internet.

The undress websites operate as shadow for profit businesses and are mainly promoted through criminal platforms like Telegram who notoriously push child porn and human trafficking worldwide under the guise of “free speech”. The websites are under constant development: They frequently post about new features they are producing—with one claiming their AI can customize how women’s bodies look and allow “uploads from Instagram.” The websites generally charge people to generate images and can run affiliate schemes to encourage people to share them; some have pooled together into a collective to create their own cryptocurrency that could be used to pay for images.

As well as the login systems, several of the websites displayed the logos of Mastercard or Visa, implying that banks are entirely on board with deepfake technology although they claim otherwise. Visa did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, while a Mastercard spokesperson says “purchases of nonconsensual deepfake content are not allowed on our network,” and that it takes action when it detects or is made aware of any instances.

On multiple occasions, the only time tech companies and payment providers intervene is when pressured by media reports and requests by journalists. If there is no pressure, it is business as usual in the realm of violence against women and girls. And we all know it is a lucrative one.

“What is concerning is that these are the most basic of security steps and moderation that are missing or not being enforced. It is wholly inadequate for companies to react when journalists or campaigners highlight how their rules are being easily dodged. It is evident that they simply do not care, despite their rhetoric. Otherwise they would have taken these most simple steps to reduce access.” Clare McGlynn, law prof at Durham University

No, they don’t care. We must ban speech altogether and start from scratch.

USPTO Updated Guidance On AI Assisted Inventions

by rossitaArtificial Intelligence, Intellectual PropertyPosted on Comments are Disabled

Yesterday, the USPTO issued an updated guidance for subject matter eligibility of AI assisted inventions with very useful subject matter examples throughout the guidance. https://www.uspto.gov/about-us/news-updates/uspto-issues-ai-subject-matter-eligibility-guidance

IV. Applicability of the USPTO Eligibility Guidance to AI-Assisted Inventions

For the subject matter eligibility analysis under 35 U.S.C. 101, whether an invention was created with the assistance of AI is not a consideration in the application of the Alice/Mayo test and USPTO eligibility guidance and should not prevent USPTO personnel from determining that a claim is subject matter eligible. In other words, how an invention is developed is not relevant to the subject matter eligibility inquiry. Instead, the inquiry focuses on the claimed invention itself and whether it is the type of innovation eligible for patenting.

Suno AI Lawsuit Breakdown

by rossitaArtificial Intelligence, Intellectual PropertyPosted on Comments are Disabled

This complaint is very similar to the Udio complaint. I will address different points. Suno is the first Music AI platform I started testing last month. Others including Udio followed through word of mouth. Prior to May, there were no viable music AI platforms according to professional standards, but Suno’s latest version opened the floodgates of creativity – the industry mentions 10 new songs a second on Suno alone – and there are already a good few dozens of platforms quickly catching on.

In a way, everything we may say now about AI is at a very early stage of training, building, debugging and adjusting and is evolving as we speak through the invaluable input of millions of user pioneers. We are seeing progress unfold at the speed of light before our eyes. Everyone is learning, AI is learning and countless users who never made music in their lives are also learning about making music, with each platform providing valuable tips and tricks. There is a process of demystification and breakdown of loops, beats, melodies, and vocal flows in different languages, as well as deconstruction and re-appropriation of the music production process. It brings tears to my eyes to see so many users become creators instead of passive consumers.

Many users throughout platforms mention that since AI came along, their favorite songs are the songs they made themselves. This is fantastic for humanity. Obviously, these users have now less time to listen to commercial songs. Until now, we had to listen to everything the industry imposes on us, because there was no alternative to learn from, other than public domain. It was time-consuming, frustrating, and depressing due to violent, reductive, and misogynistic lyrics and systemic undue sexualization and dehumanization of artists by the industry. Now that AI listens to these commercial “hits”, we can protect our ears while focusing on more productive things that bring us joy. In a way AI doesn’t do anything more than we’d be doing without AI, but AI saves us time and protects our emotional well-being and integrity by ingesting and filtering the trash the industry throws at us, so that we can minimize our exposure to harmful content.

Can the music industry really stop progress and continue keeping AI for themselves?

In both complaints we see that the platforms refuse to disclose what data they trained their models on. They claim it is proprietary information. The reasoning behind refusing to disclose training particulars may be that anything related to training is a trade secret and training in itself is fair use.

Ideally a LLM should have no restrictions regarding training and they shouldn’t pay for data that is publicly available. Copyright law specifically provides a training / education exemption under its fair use doctrine which may differ from one country to another, but essentially recognizes that non-commercial and transformative activity which is good for humans and society in general justifies limiting the ability of rights-holders to derive profit from copyright. Without fair use exceptions, there would be no journalists, no standup comedians, no content creators, no Youtube or TikTok, no parodies, no criticism (i.e. pop art), etc.

I can certainly copy an entire song to break it down and learn how it was made note by note. Why can’t AI? When I need to learn a music video choreography, I copy entire videos from the internet, I break them down into sections which I then further copy (several times per section, slow then normal speed) into a myriad of little video tutorials that I watch a million times until I get the moves right. While I learn the moves, I reproduce these moves with my own body which I film (another countless times) and edit into new videos. This is a 100% fair use example (and btw it’s true, I do that every day). Why can’t AI do the same with music? What’s the difference? Why does it stop being fair use when AI does the copying for the purpose of training rather than a user trying to learn a song or a dance?

It seems that both complaints put much effort in proving that the LLMs copied entire songs for training. They are not really denying it. Training is clearly a transformative process. I think what the fuss is revolving around is whether there is such a thing as “excessive training” that should be excluded from fair use defenses.

In Para. 12, the plaintiffs suggest that music generated on AI platforms is NOT human-created work! This is a strange insult to millions of human users. I’m pretty sure this qualifies as hate speech. Last time I checked, I am human and I write my own lyrics. Yet another lowly and unfounded attack. Why do they think they are the only humans in the room. WTF!

Due to the dehumanizing characterization of human users as non-human, I am not going to read the rest of the complaint. Sorry, but I can’t deal with more hateful content. Not on Canada Day. I’ll let my bot finish the job but I won’t publish the result.

Udio Complaint Entirely Based On Industry Infringing Its Own Lyrics

by rossitaArtificial Intelligence, Intellectual Property, LitigationPosted on Comments are Disabled

I am reading the Udio complaint right now. It is a little more than a “nothingburger” as the majority of users and IP lawyers have overwhelmingly noted. It is also an example of how to make a mockery of the justice system, beginning with basing an entire claim on self-serving evidence, more precisely all the evidence is based on intentional infringement of industry-owned lyrics. The only thing the plaintiffs are capable of proving with this lawsuit is how they hypothetically infringed their own lyrics, forced AI to further infringe their copyright through very precise instructions, and obtained a copyright infringing result. Several times.

If copyright law has ever been clear about something since the 18th century is not to copy other people’s texts without their consent. If you give AI infringing lyrics, it will come up with an infringing output, how surprising is that.

This lawsuit is a coaxing manual. How about, we copied the actual chorus from Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean lyrics and directed Udio to sound like Michael Jackson in as much detail and likeness as possible, and Udio made a song that resembles Billy Jean!!! So, the plaintiffs entered into prompt the excerpt “Billy Jean is not my lover, she’s just a girl who claims I am the one”. One can’t make this up. This is monumental bad faith and a waste of time of judicial resources.

Moving on, the plaintiffs copied word for word lyrics excerpts from All I Want For Chrismas is You (disclaimer: I can’t stand this song), inserted the infringed lyrics into the prompt and the name Mariah Carey along with other personal and artistic characteristics of the artist and again, the platform gave them exactly what they wanted, a copyright infringing result.

The exact same thing happened to other very old songs My Girl, I Get Around (Beach Boys), Dancing Queen (solely based on “we can dance we can jive”), American Idiot (interesting choice of song), as well as other holiday songs.

On pages 27, 28 we have an interesting “artist resemblance” table I deemed useful to reproduce as an example of exactly how NOT to make music with AI. I doubt that the great majority of AI users have the same desperate clinging to has-beens as the plaintiffs imagine. Don’t these overexposed artists already have thousands of copycats who have never heard of AI? The market was already saturated with these styles before the advent of AI. Also, the table doesn’t specify what lyrics were used in the prompt, so it is safe to assume that from the outset the lyrics were infringed like in the previous examples.

I hope you read that. It was quite funny. I have a few favorites in there. You ask AI to recreate a famous song by a band that rhymes with the smeetles, and OMG, AI sounds like the Beatles. Do you seriously expect a music AI platform had never heard of the Beatles or did you force the AI to go out of its way to find out about “smeetles” and which famous band rhymes with… Smeetles?!? I looked it up. It is not a word.

Words are the most important thing for LLMs. This is why you can’t ask ChatGPT or Claude to answer your emails, because they see each word in the email they need to answer as a prompt and the result is guaranteed nonsense. Each word inside the prompt (even someone else’s email) is interpreted separately as a part of an instruction, you must think like an algorithm for a minute and understand how a model interprets words.

Unless the model, like the latest Udio, is specifically programmed to ignore the artists names and rhymes thereof (eyeroll really), it will always try to reproduce as accurately as possible the instructions contained in words a human provides. This is why it will always be human users who will bear liability for AI’s output.

The complaint goes on to say that Udio copied other people’s vocals. I agree that it is the case and I agree it is not cool, but that’s the courts fault. There is little will to grant copyright to vocal performers, even in jurisdictions like Canada where vocal performances are specifically protected by the Copyright Act.

I spent 4 years in court trying to stop a label from remixing and selling my own vocal samples, and the only reason I won is because the contested vocals were attached to my own original lyrics in a distant slavic language, so it became eminently clear that the only way to enforce music copyright is to own the lyrics, something that continues being true in the field of AI.

The rest of the complaint adresses the fair use test, so that’s for the jury to decide. On a first sight, the main grievance appears to be the notion of “competition”. The industry is obviously diverting the fair use doctrine in order to enforce an anti-competitive monopole on all the musical loops in the world and trying to use the justice system to prevent any new music being made, unless they own the rights. That in my opinion is another sign this is an abusive lawsuit.

One thing I’m hearing from everywhere on this issue is that if the courts side with the music industry, nothing is in place to stop Russia and China to keep infringing the industry’s IP with the same tools, fair use or not, and they will flood us with their own commercial versions of AI generated output and will charge us for it, while our unsustainable music industry keeps dying anyway. There comes a moment when you just can’t afford to stifle innovation as a court.

Age Verification Bill Is Preferable to (too little too late) Online Harms Bill

by rossitaCyber-Incidents, Psychology, Reform, UncategorizedPosted on Comments are Disabled

Age verification to access adult content online is the only viable and sensible way to counter the irreparable damage pornographic platforms cause to society. The fact that Pornhub prefers to block access to their content in jurisdictions that enforce age verification is a sign that Pornhub is nothing less than a criminal platform. If all adult sites are truly “sketchy” to cite our prime minister, and couldn’t be trusted to verify ID, then I don’t understand why they are allowed to legally operate. They should simply be blocked and it would save the government a great deal of money.

Last time I checked, everyone in Canada (and many places in the US) needs to show their papers to buy alcohol, cigarettes, or government weed. Even nightclubs want to see your papers before letting you in. If you don’t want to show your papers, you don’t get in. If you’re too young, you don’t get in. Not once have I been able to get into a club in our (extremely liberal) Quebec before the age of 18, or the (more conservative) province of Ontario before the age of 19. We also hear stories of the time when porn content was only available on tangible format (magazines, videotapes, dvd’s) people had to show ID to access such content. Yet, online porn of the vilest kind has always been accessible to children in Canada. How does that make any sense?

I personally worked on cannabis legalization memoir during my second year in law school in 2016 (two years later, it was legalized) and age verification was always a sine qua non for legalization, given how harmful weed can be to the developing brain. In the same manner, I also recommended a system preventing the sale of cannabis to people experiencing mental health issues. It didn’t get implemented, but it should. You can hate me for it but the science is clear, if you have a diagnosed mental health condition, weed will make you psychotic and likely a danger to yourself and others. In order to counter the overdose epidemic, I am also a proponent of the legalization of opiates, and mainly pharmaceutical opiates that should be available to all addicts, who are often patients in need of pain-management let down by the health system, to be administered by certified nurses in every pharmacy of this country.

However, when it comes to porn, I believe the societal damage exceeds that of any drug. I believe that online porn (through the nonconsensual user generated model that is being pushed and rewarded on popular platforms) is the main factor behind the mental health epidemic amongst minors. Many kids never really fully get to understand how consent works. Those who believe they need to perform the violent acts depicted in porn videos, become suicidal. For many people, it is the first introduction to heterosexual relations and it makes kids hate society and their biological sex. It is not a coincidence that so many kids refuse to conform to their gender.

Given that online porn tends to obfuscate the notion of consent for profit, which in itself promotes content depicting self-harm and assault, studies are proving now and again that online porn is the main driver of nonconsensual content, antisocial behaviour, intimate partner violence, criminal harassment, cyberbullying (to name a few), and now identity theft via deepfakes.

This is not an ideological or political issue. I don’t understand why online pornographers in Canada should be exempt from age checks. Even less do I understand why the federal government keeps giving these platforms a free pass to make their content available to everyone, for free (a paywall would fix a few issues). But, this is the feeling I am getting when reading the Online Harms Bill that took 5 years in the making, with its convoluted system of takedown enforcement, as if Canada ever enforced anything. I myself spent 4 years in court to take down commercial nonconsensual stuff and it only worked out when the adverse party corporation declared a bankruptcy, briefly went out of business, and their international distributor finally caved because even Google intervened before the courts reluctantly did. Canadian courts in general are mildly useless, as they seem to spend most of their efforts in further sexualizing survivors and siding with the adverse parties’ commercial interests (like the government consistently sides with Pornhub). Nobody can tell us how Canada under the online harms bill will enforce “hefty” fines on platforms that operate in Sweden, South Korea, Morocco, or Iceland for example. In my case I had to take down over 5400 pieces of online content spread over 50 countries and an extraterritorial interlocutory injunction wasn’t enough. It was only the beginning. But oh, age verification has nothing to do with Digital ID (something that will happen anyway, don’t worry). It has to do with common sense.

Not once in my life have I heard an argument saying that parents should be the ones to enforce a ban on cigarettes or cannabis, rather than the state to impose age verification at the stores. Not once have I heard the argument that age verification to access cannabis is infringing on the privacy of old farts who want to buy legal cannabis. And don’t start me on the times we needed to disclose our health status AND show government ID to buy food at Costco or Walmart, a trauma that feels like yesterday… (will not forget, neither forgive). Why is online porn so different and important to the federal government that it should be accessible for free to children at all times?

Update: Although Australia failed to follow up on introducing age checks last year, given their unique diaspora of single-user sex workers and (not human trafficked) entrepreneurs, the UK is already surprisingly advanced into determining “trusted and secure digital verification services” with a focus on “layered” checks. It is encouraging to know that government ID alone won’t be enough to access adult sites in the UK, and that users will need to submit at least one instant selfie (timestamped at the moment of access) to prove they really are who they say they are. If photos on ID don’t match selfies, users’ access to the sites will be blocked. This is easily enforceable through third party facial recognition AI that will not store any personal information, face scans, or selfies, and will only assess age on a moment to moment basis. Contrary to banks who regularly leak users personal information for the simple reason that they need to store such data, it won’t be possible for pornsites to leak anything because they won’t have access to any personal information, and the third party AI verifying it won’t be allowed to store it.

If we worry so much about porn sites handling sensitive information, then we should bar them from taking users credit cards for their premium content. As it is now, they have large databases of credit cards. A credit card is sufficient to perform a full credit check on the holder, so it is pretty damn sufficient at identifying a user.

Canada should follow in the steps of the UK and rewrite the online harms act, first to remove the bizarre ideological sections regarding hate speech (we already have hate speech offenses in the criminal code and more than enough caselaw on the matter), as well as the bizarre life sentence for vague ideological thought crimes, since it has nothing to do with protecting children. I wouldn’t mind a life sentence for child porn producers and pedophiles, however, who currently get out with a slap on the wrist; (2) borrowing from the UK Online Safety Act, to mandate the use of trusted and secure digital verification services including real time facial recognition, face scans, digital wallets, government ID, selfies and many combinations thereof. Of course the cost will be relayed on platforms. This will unite Bill S210 and C63 on same footing; (3) similar to the UK Act, Canada should exempt Twitter, Reddit, and other mainly text-based platforms; (4) leave the 24 hour takedown requirements, but create an expeditious appeal process to affected users to reinstate content that doesn’t fall under the purview of the act, and impose dissuasive fines including the payment of attorney fees for frivolous takedown requests (à la DMCA by analogy). (5) to err on the safe side, Canada should mandate all mobile providers to automatically block porn sites, so that only computer cameras would be used for real time face scans and face video.

Another reason to block adult mobile apps is that all mobile apps are specifically designed to collect and store personal information even when you are not using them. Mobile OS also regularly take photos, videos and recordings of users for the purpose of improving their experience. It is standard practice to collect extensive personal information on mobile users since intelligent phones exist. Cybersecurity experts are able to decrypt such data packets while hackers (or law enforcement with or without a warrant) are able to intercept and use them. If you access porn on your phone, you can safely expect that your most intimate and biometric details are stored in many many places, and you would be even more surprised to learn that you automatically consented to all of it. Age verification would be the least of your problems. There are tons of applications capable of accurately guessing your age based on what you do with your phone.

Finally, we should never leave it to parents to protect children, because if you read criminal jurisprudence, parents and especially foster parents (and other family members) are often factors of child abuse and child pornography in this countryfor the reason that they have unfettered access to these children. Abusive parents also get away with a slap on the wrist. Since we don’t trust parents to respect children’s choice of gender, it would be a little hypocritical to trust them to safeguard their kids from porn. I wouldn’t.

Update 2nd: after wasting a few hours on online harms bill scenarios, I predict the bill has no future other than to target speech criticizing the bill (like this post) and to ban survivor speech (already going on without the help of the bill). So basically, if the bill ever comes to exist, it will achieve the exact opposite effect of its apparent intended purpose. As Australia has shown, nothing concrete will happen in the sphere of child protection anywhere. These bills are all for show, as corporate commercial interests will always trump child safety and consent. Even the UK will only apply age checks from 2025. Why 2025? Because the UK will likely also bail before the promised deadline and drop the checks altogether shortly before 2025. Comparative law should be renamed to comparative inefficiency.

Just like electric cars promises are flopping all over the place, because you can’t tell people to choose between doing their laundry or charging their car to go to work, you also can’t authorize a mega-polluting wetland-destroying Swedish project on unceded Mohawk territory, and pretend to care about the environment or ancestral rights in the same sentence. And very obviously, you can’t make porn accessible to children for free at all times and pretend to be a good person just because you wrote another fake bill (which is not quite written yet).

The point is, do not wait for a bill or a court to save you. As I previously said, the only way to enforce anything in the realm of nonconsensual material is to arm yourself with patience and look for ways in and out of court to apply pressure on local courts via foreign legal mechanisms, file police reports and Interpol reports, seek injunctions, sue platforms, sue banks that continue to work with rogue platforms, use the takedown and delisting mechanisms of search engines, make videos, hit film festivals, write open letters to ministers.. and whatever other grassroots ideas you may come up with. If you sue in damages, sue in the US, not Canada. The important thing is to take action every single day. I love how in the US people pick up the phone and call their state rep or senator. The only way out is to let the whole world know that you did not consent. Don’t stop until everything is taken down to the ground.