Another option for my Ethical Hackers. (I like the shoulder patch)

https://www.databreaches.net/interested-in-becoming-a-nation-state-hacker-for-the-u-s/

Interested in becoming a nation state hacker for the U.S.?

A new recruitment ad by the U.S. is attracting a lot of attention and comments.

Interested in becoming a nation state hacker? We will develop your skills in offensive and defensive cyber operations. Defend. Attack. Exploit. https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-careers/army-cyber.html

For those looking for some direction in their lives or to hone their skills or do something to help the country, maybe check into the requirements and benefits more. There’s a path open there if you qualify and you want to follow it.

(Related)

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/27/in-brief-security/

77% of security leaders fear we’re in perpetual cyberwar from now on

A survey of cybersecurity decision makers found 77 percent think the world is now in a perpetual state of cyberwarfare.

In addition, 82 percent believe geopolitics and cybersecurity are "intrinsically linked," and two-thirds of polled organizations reported changing their security posture in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Of those asked, 64 percent believe they may have already been the target of a nation-state-directed cyberattack. Unfortunately, 63 percent of surveyed security leaders also believe that they'd never even know if a nation-state level actor pwned them.

The survey, organized by security shop Venafi, questioned 1,100 security leaders. Kevin Bocek, VP of security strategy and threat intelligence, said the results show cyberwarfare is here, and that it's completely different to many would have imagined. "Any business can be damaged by nation-states," he added.

Installed without notice, clearly aimed at the driver, you might think they were out to get you.

Https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7g7xx/striking-seattle-workers-win-against-surveillance-cameras-in-vehicles

Striking Seattle Workers Win Against Surveillance Cameras in Vehicles

Sandwich company Homegrown put artificial intelligence powered cameras in drivers' vehicles. Now drivers will be allowed to cover them

… The news signals the rise of artificial intelligence assisted cameras placed in delivery vehicles and the visceral push back against them. Motherboard previously reported on how similar cameras installed to monitor Amazon delivery drivers were punishing the workers for mistakes they didn’t make.

Interesting. You could train an AI on Wikipedia, but you would like to ensure its accuracy first. Is that what they have in mind?

https://singularityhub.com/2022/08/26/meta-is-building-an-ai-to-fact-check-wikipedia-all-6-5-million-articles/

Meta Is Building an AI to Fact-Check Wikipedia—All 6.5 Million Articles

… As of early 2020, the site’s English version was averaging about 255 million page views per day, making it the eighth-most-visited website on the internet. As of last month, it had moved up to spot number seven, and the English version currently has over 6.5 million articles.

But as high-traffic as this go-to information source may be, its accuracy leaves something to be desired; the page about the site’s own reliability states, “The online encyclopedia does not consider itself to be reliable as a source and discourages readers from using it in academic or research settings.”

Meta—of the former Facebook—wants to change this. In a blog post published last month, the company’s employees describe how AI could help make Wikipedia more accurate.

Tools & Techniques.

https://www.makeuseof.com/how-to-use-camera-lucida-app-for-drawing/

How to Use the Camera Lucida App to Create Fantastic Drawings in No Time

Want to boost your drawing skills? The Camera Lucida app uses your phone or tablet to superimpose an image onto your drawing surface, making it easy to draw what you see.

After cashing our Tabor checks, should we look into a law like this to keep the money flowing?

https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/heres-a-look-at-all-the-settlements-stemming-from-illinois-biometric-privacy-act/2922736/

Here's a Look at Settlements Stemming From Illinois' Biometric Privacy Act

Illinois residents are likely familiar with a privacy law in the state that was behind checks worth hundreds of dollars for many Facebook users in the state.

Now, that same law is behind a number of other potential settlements, and more checks could soon be arriving.

… Earlier this year, more than one million Illinois Facebook users began receiving checks following a $650 million settlement in a class-action suit alleging it violated residents' rights by collecting and storing digital scans of their faces without permission.

… Another lawsuit, which mirrors the one settled with Facebook, claimed Google violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by "collecting and storing biometric data of individuals who, while residing in Illinois, appeared in a photograph in the photograph sharing and storage service known as Google Photos, without proper notice and consent."

… Most recently, a federal judge in Illinois granted final approval for a $92 million class-action lawsuit settlement between the social media network TikTok and users of the platform, with Illinois residents set to receive the largest share of the payout due to BIPA.

… Snapchat The social media company has agreed to a $35 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit in Illinois.

When you are near panic, this may look like a solution. After all, everyone knows AI can do anything!

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d3dw5/the-least-safe-day-rollout-of-gun-detecting-ai-scanners-in-schools-has-been-a-cluster-emails-show

‘The Least Safe Day’: Rollout of Gun Detecting AI Scanners in Schools Has Been a ‘Cluster,’ Emails Show

… There is currently no peer-reviewed research showing that AI gun detection is effective at preventing shootings, and Evolv has offered little evidence supporting claims of its system’s effectiveness in meeting these objectives. Schools have also encountered problems with the scanners confusing laptops and other everyday items with guns.

But the documents obtained by Motherboard provide a more detailed look into how Evolv scanners are actually deployed and the problems they actually face. On the ground, the reality of deploying Evolv scanners is very different than marketing materials suggest. Some school administrators are reporting that the scanners have caused “chaos”—failing to detect common handguns at commonly-used sensitivity settings, mistaking everyday school items for deadly weapons, and failing to deliver on the company’s promise of frictionless school security.

“Today was probably the least safe day,” one principal observed the day scanners were deployed at her school, because the machines were triggering false alarms and requiring manual searches on “almost every child as they walked through” monopolizing the attention of safety officers who would otherwise be monitoring the halls and other entrances.

Will they now come fast and furious?

https://www.insideprivacy.com/ccpa/california-attorney-general-announces-first-ccpa-settlement/

California Attorney General Announces First CCPA Settlement

Today, the California Attorney General announced the first settlement agreement under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”). The Attorney General alleged that online retailer Sephora, Inc. failed to disclose to consumers that it was selling their information and failed to process user requests to opt out of sale via user-enabled global privacy controls. The Attorney General also alleged that Sephora did not cure these violations within the cure period.

Perspective.

https://fpf.org/blog/looking-back-to-forge-ahead-challenges-of-developing-an-african-conception-of-privacy/

LOOKING BACK TO FORGE AHEAD: CHALLENGES OF DEVELOPING AN “AFRICAN CONCEPTION” OF PRIVACY

Few things depend on context, like privacy, which strongly hinges on how people within various communities and other social organizations perceive it. While the need for privacy may be universal, the particularities of its social acceptance and articulation differ depending on cultural norms that vary among communities. Whitman succinctly captured the cultural cause of the diverse forms of privacy when he posited that “culture informs greatly the different intuitive sensibilities that cause people to feel that a practice is privacy invasive while others do not feel that way”. 1

What other labels might Google provide? Home of undercover narc? Law offices: will defend drug dealers?

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/25/google-search-and-maps-will-now-clearly-label-if-a-healthcare-facility-provides-abortions/

Google Search and Maps will now clearly label if a healthcare facility provides abortions

Google will start adding clear labels to Search and Map listings for healthcare facilities that provide abortions. The change comes in light of the Supreme Court’s decision to strip federal abortion rights. The company said on Thursday that if it has received confirmation that a healthcare facility provides abortions, the label for the center will say “Provides abortions.” In cases where Google doesn’t have that confirmation, the label for relevant searches will say “Might not provide abortions.”

The quest continues. Would you reject an AI Mozart?

https://kotaku.com/ai-art-dall-e-midjourney-stable-diffusion-copyright-1849388060

AI Creating 'Art' Is An Ethical And Copyright Nightmare

If a machine makes art, is it even art? And what does this mean for actual artists?

… If you haven’t read or seen anything about the subject, AI art—or at least as it exists in the state we know it today—is, as Ahmed Elgammal writing in American Scientist so neatly puts it, made when “artists write algorithms not to follow a set of rules, but to ‘learn’ a specific aesthetic by analyzing thousands of images. The algorithm then tries to generate new images in adherence to the aesthetics it has learned.”

… The worries over young, upcoming and part-time artists is one shared by Karla Ortiz, who has worked for Ubisoft, Marvel and HBO. “The technology is not quite there yet in terms of a finalized product”, she tells Kotaku. “No matter how good it looks initially, it still requires professionals to fix the errors the AI generates. It also seems to be legally murky territory, enough to scare many major companies.”

“However, it does yield results that will be ‘good enough’ for some, especially those less careful companies who offer lower wages for creative work. Because the end result is ‘good enough’, I think we could see a lot of loss of entry level and less visible jobs. This would affect not just illustrators, but photographers, graphic designers, models, or pretty much any job that requires visuals. That could all potentially be outsourced to AI.”

Resources!

https://www.bespacific.com/us-government-to-make-all-research-it-funds-open-access-on-publication/

US government to make all research it funds open access on publication

Ars Technica: “Many federal policy changes are well known before they are announced. Hints in speeches, leaks, and early access to reporters at major publications all serve to pave the ground for the eventual confirmation. But on Thursday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) dropped a big one that seemed to take everyone by surprise. Starting in 2026, any scientific publication that receives federal funding will need to be openly accessible on the day it’s published. The move has the potential to further shake up the scientific publishing industry, which has already adopted preprint archives, similar mandates from other funding organizations, and greatly expanded access to publications during the pandemic. The change was announced by Alondra Nelson, acting head of the OSTP (a permanent Director is in the process of Senate confirmation). The formal policy is laid out in an accompanying memorandum …”

A familiar problem. Technology rushes ahead, everything else follows at its own pace.

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3670576/researchers-warn-of-darkverse-emerging-from-the-metaverse.html#tk.rss_all

Researchers warn of darkverse emerging from the metaverse

The metaverse is seen by many companies as a great business opportunity and for new ways of working. Security provider Trend Micro, however, warns in a recent research report that cybercriminals could misuse the technology for their own purposes.

Security researchers predict that a kind of darknet structure could emerge there, similar to today's Internet. The machinations of the cyber gangsters could even take place in protected rooms that can only be reached from a specific physical location and via valid authentication tokens. This would make their underground marketplaces inaccessible to law enforcement agencies. In fact, it could be years before the police can operate effectively in the metaverse.

Resources. In case I go back to teaching…

https://www.bespacific.com/the-mason-oer-metafinder-mom/

The Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)

“The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources. Unlike other OER discovery sites (e.g, OER Commons, OASIS, MERLOT, OpenStax, etc.) with our Metafinder you aren’t searching a static database that we’ve built. Instead, the OER Metafinder launches a real-time, simultaneous search across 22 different sources of open educational materials as you hit the Search button. Because it is a real-time, federated search, it can take a bit longer than searches of pre-indexed, curated content; however, as compensation the results returned are absolutely up-to-the-minute for each search target. Additional results will continue to trickle in as the search continues running and you begin examining your results. A distinct feature of the Mason OER Metafinder is the scope of our discovery service. We’re searching well-known OER repositories like OpenStax, OER Commons, MERLOT but also sites like HathiTrust, DPLA, Internet Archive and NYPL Digital Collections where valuable but often overlooked (and often “open”) educational materials may be found. Given the many “standards” of metadata in the OER universe, we can’t guarantee that every item retrieved is “Open” in the strictest interpretation of that term…so make it a practice to check the rights of any item you use…”

I doubt this explains everything, but it is a start.

https://www.orfonline.org/research/explainable-a-i-and-its-military-implications/

Managing Expectations: Explainable A.I. and its Military Implications

The potential for military use has often been the driving force of technological innovation around the world. In recent years, there has been a notable increase in the development and deployment of highly advanced disruptive technologies for defence purposes, and artificial intelligence (AI) has become the poster child for this trend. Only a few years ago, the current gamut of applications of AI in military operations would have been dismissed as fodder for fiction. Today, with advances in emerging technologies in the area of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) and the continuous integration of AI and machine learning (ML) into the back-end of existing military computing systems, military applications of AI systems around the world are only set to increase in number and intensity.[1] This surge is accompanied by new ideas of ensuring that the deployed military AI systems are more compatible with human use and have smaller margins of error. One such idea is the development of what is called eXplainable AI (XAI), i.e. AI and ML systems that make it possible for human users to understand, appropriately trust, and effectively manage AI.[2]

This brief explains why such systems are a necessity in the military, what XAI is and how it functions, examples of where and how it has been applied so far, and evaluates its use and regulation. The brief uses both primary and secondary research sources, including interviews with expert stakeholders from different geographies and disciplines, either currently or formerly from government, defence services, civil society, and academia. It aims to analyse the current status of XAI in the military, and pave the way for more targeted research.

“Look! I’ve still got the email you sent me ordering me to send $100,000 to that lawyer in Outbackistan!”

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3670548/why-business-email-compromise-still-tops-ransomware-for-total-losses.html#tk.rss_all

Why business email compromise still tops ransomware for total losses

While businesses are busy trying to protect themselves against ransomware attacks that spark headlines news, threat actors are sticking to one of the oldest and most effective hacking techniques—business email compromise (BEC).

Enterprise security has skewed toward ransomware in recent years, but FBI data highlights that  enterprises in aggregate are losing 51 times more money through BEC attacks. In 2021, BEC attacks in the US caused total losses of $2.4 billion, a 39% increase from 2020. In contrast, at the same time, companies in the US lost only $49.2 million to ransomware.

What guidelines or tests will be applied before software like this is used?

https://futurism.com/the-byte/professor-ai-predicts-crimes

PROFESSOR SAYS HE FORESEES NO ISSUES WITH HIS AI THAT PREDICTS CRIMES BEFORE THEY HAPPEN

A crime-prognosticating AI now exists, and it's been implemented in a number of American cities. But don't worry, it definitely won't be misused by city police forces — at least according to its lead creator, University of Chicago professor Ishanu Chattopadhyay.

Chattopadhyay recently sat down with BBC Science Focus to discuss the AI system, which, as a study published in the journal Human Behavior claims, can predict where and when a crime might occur with 80 to 90 percent accuracy. But whether the predictions hold up in the real world, while of course important, isn't necessarily the core question here: really, the question is whether AI can be successfully incorporated into a police force without abuses — and while Chattopadhyay believes his system can be, AI's track record in policing says otherwise.

There must be money in it…

https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/24/amazon_ring_surveillance/

Amazon has repackaged surveillance capitalism as reality TV

… A world of pervasive observation by invisible authorities with the power to judge, sentence and enforce their verdicts without appeal or even making themselves visible to the accused – maybe that's all just a source of endless comedy?

That's clearly what Amazon believes. It recently announced the launch of its MGM-branded series, "Ring Nation" – a light-hearted look at some of the funniest footage gathered by Amazon's vast network of spy eyes. According to Hollywood insider website Deadline, "The series will feature clips such as neighbors saving neighbors, marriage proposals, military reunions and silly animals."

This announcement – made just a few weeks after Amazon's admission of Ring footage being given to legal authorities without a warrant – simultaneously reads as both a failure to read the room, and the ultimate troll. "See what we've done here? We've turned Nineteen Eighty-Four's Room 101 into The Benny Hill Show!"

I wonder if we could tune it to give everyone an Australian accent? Irish? Japanese?

https://futurism.com/startup-ai-remove-call-center-accents

Cursed Startup Using AI to Remove Call Center Workers' Accents

When Boots Riley's "Sorry To Bother You" dropped in 2018, we knew it was only a matter of time before some of the film's dystopian predictions started to come true. But we've gotta admit, AI technology that converts realtime speech into a cookie cutter, white-coded accent is pushing it.

As SFGATE reports, a startup called Sanas is offering "accent translation" that makes call center employees — many of whom are hired overseas, where labor is cheaper, and hence have non-American accents — sound more palatable to American ears.

In case you are (also) curious…

https://www.bespacific.com/the-mar-a-lago-search-warrant-a-legal-introduction/

The Mar-a-Lago Search Warrant: A Legal Introduction

Follow up to previous posting, Trump Had More Than 300 Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago, which included links to government documents pertaining to the FBI search and NARA’s repeated requests to secure the return of classified government documents, please see CRS Legal Sidebar The Mar-a-Lago Search Warrant: A Legal Introduction. August 23, 2022: “The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) recently executed a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida. A magistrate judge of the U.S.District Court for the Southern District of Florida later unsealed the warrant at the Department of Justice’s request. which the former President did not oppose. The warrant authorized government officials to seize all “documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation” of three federal statutes—18 U.S.C. §§ 793, 2071, and 1519. In addition to the warrant itself and its attachments, the court unsealed other material related to the search, including the cover sheet to the warrant application and an inventory of property seized. Proceedings are underway to unseal a redacted version of the affidavit supporting the warrant, and former President Trump filed a motion asking the court, among other things, to appoint a special master to oversee the government’s handling of the seized material. This Sidebar describes the process for and implications of obtaining a search warrant. It then examines the criminal offenses identified in the Mar-a-Lago warrant. Finally, this Sidebar analyzes presidential authority to declassify documents and the role of declassification for the crimes at issue…”

A way with words…

https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/22/oracle-us-privacy-class-action/

Oracle’s ‘surveillance machine’ targeted in US privacy class action

Enterprise giant Oracle is facing a fresh privacy class action claim in the U.S.

The suit, which was filed Friday as a 66-page complaint in the Northern District of California, alleges the tech giant’s “worldwide surveillance machine” has amassed detailed dossiers on some five billion people, accusing the company and its adtech and advertising subsidiaries of violating the privacy of the majority of the people on Earth.

… The key point here is there is no comprehensive federal privacy law in the U.S. — so the litigation is certainly facing a hostile environment to make a privacy case — hence the complaint references multiple federal, constitutional, tort and state laws, alleging violations of the Federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Constitution of the State of California, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, as well as competition law, and the common law.

It remains to be seen whether this “patchwork” approach to a tricky legal environment will prevail — for an expert snap analysis of the complaint and some key challenges this whole thread is highly recommended. But the substance of the complaint hinges on allegations that Oracle collects vast amounts of data from unwitting Internet users, i.e. without their consent, and uses this surveillance intelligence to profile individuals, further enriching profiles via its data marketplace and threatening people’s privacy on a vast scale — including, per the allegations, by the use of proxies for sensitive data to circumvent privacy controls.

A remote learning desktop is not a schoolroom?

https://www.pogowasright.org/cleveland-state-student-wins-federal-lawsuit-against-university-on-breach-of-fourth-amendment/

Cleveland State student wins federal lawsuit against university on breach of Fourth Amendment

Alec Sapolin reports:

A U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio ruled in the favor of a student from Cleveland State University on Aug. 22 after the school used the student’s webcam to search his room before a class test.

The ruling appears to be the first in the nation to state the Fourth Amendment protects students from ‘unreasonable video searches of their homes before taking a remote test’, according to a press release from civil rights attorney Matthew Besser.

Cleveland State student Aaron Ogletree was subjected to a ‘warrantless room scan’ prior to a chemistry exam in February 2021, which prompted Ogletree to sue the university, the release said.

Read more at Cleveland19.

Yes, its easy. Ask these questions anyway.

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/before-starting-your-own-business-ask-these-four-questions/

Before Starting Your Own Business, Ask These Four Questions

This past June saw more than 425,000 new business applications in the United States, more than double the number of businesses started the same month 10 years ago. Economists have speculated that the combination of easily accessible new technologies plus pandemic-era home confinement might have catalyzed many of the new businesses being launched.

Privacy, the last dinosaur?

https://www.engadget.com/hitting-the-books-machines-behaving-badly-toby-walsh-la-trobe-university-press-150017213.html

Hitting the Books: How can privacy survive in a world that never forgets?

As I write this, Amazon is announcing its purchase of iRobot, adding its room-mapping robotic vacuum technology to the company's existing home surveillance suite, the Ring doorbell and prototype aerial drone. This is in addition to Amazon already knowing what you order online, what websites you visit, what foods you eat and, soon, every last scrap of personal medical data you possess. But hey, free two-day shipping, amirite?

The trend of our gadgets and infrastructure constantly, often invasively, monitoring their users shows little sign of slowing — not when there's so much money to be made. Of course it hasn't been all bad for humanity, what with AI's help in advancing medical, communications and logistics tech in recent years. In his new book, Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Dr. Toby Walsh, explores the duality of potential that artificial intelligence/machine learning systems offer and, in the excerpt below, how to claw back a bit of your privacy from an industry built for omniscience.

Sure to be a major field of study.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/22/information-warfare-in-the-ukraine-russia-conflict/

Information Warfare in the Ukraine-Russia Conflict

In the lead-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and throughout the ongoing conflict, social media has served as a battleground for states and non-state actors to spread competing narratives about the war and portray the ongoing conflict in their own terms. As the war drags on, these digital ecosystems have become inundated with disinformation. Strategic propaganda campaigns, including those peddling disinformation, are by no means new during warfare, but the shift toward social media as the primary distribution channel is transforming how information warfare is waged, as well as who can participate in ongoing conversations to shape emerging narratives.

Examining the underlying dynamics of how information and disinformation are impacting the war in Ukraine is crucial to making sense of, and working toward, solutions to the current conflict. To that end, this FP Analytics brief uncovers three critical components:

• How social media platforms are being leveraged to spread competing national narratives and disinformation;

• The role of artificial intelligence (AI) in promoting, and potentially combating, disinformation; and,

• The role of social media companies and government policies on limiting disinformation.

Eventually we will figure this out.

https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2022/08/22/white-paper-offers-ethics-advice-for-use-of-ai-in-the-us

White paper offers ethics advice for use of AI in the US

A new white paper seeks to help government and other groups build a responsible future for artificial intelligence as the technology continues to evolve, specifically stressing the importance of creating redress mechanisms that can handle flaws as they emerge.

Published by the University of California, Berkeley, the paper is titled AI's Redress Problem, and it joins an accelerating, cross-sector conversation about how to ensure that ethics and responsibility are part of artificial intelligence's future. Government is no stranger to this conversation, with New York City, for example, having released a 116-page strategic vision for how to responsibly benefit from AI. This new white paper encourages all stakeholders — government among them — to consider potential harm that AI can do, and to plan for addressing that.

[The paper: https://cltc.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/AIs_Redress_Problem.pdf

Perspective. A dragon that thinks its powers are failing may appear to act irrationally.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/08/21/china-decline-us-great-power-competition-theory-economy/

Is China Declining?

“Xi Jinping’s China is about to give the world an education in the nuances of decline,” Hal Brands wrote in April, contributing to a heated debate on Beijing’s trajectory and what it means for the United States.

In this collection from our archives are essays at the heart of the debate, exploring the cracks in China’s economic miracle, Beijing’s prospects vis-à-vis Washington’s over the next decade, and the question of whether great-power competition is a useful framework for thinking about the U.S.-China relationship at all.

Maybe Cory has a point? After all, which side has more lawyers?

https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/08/21/193221/cory-doctorow-launches-new-fight-against-copyrights-creative-chokepoints-and-big-techs-chokepoint-capitalism

Cory Doctorow Launches New Fight against Copyrights, Creative Chokepoints, and Big Tech's 'Chokepoint Capitalism'

"Creators aren't getting paid," says Cory Doctorow. "That's because powerful corporations have figured out how to create chokepoints — that let them snatch up more of the value generated by creative work before it reaches creative workers."

But he's doing something about it.

Doctorow's teamed up with Melbourne-based law professor Rebecca Giblin, the director of Australia's Intellectual Property Research Institute, for a new book that first "pulls aside the veil on the tricks Big Tech and Big Content use ..." But more importantly, it also presents specific ideas for "how we can recapture creative labor markets to make them fairer and more sustainable." Their announcement describes the book as "A Big Tech/Big Content disassembly manual," saying it's "built around shovel-ready ideas for shattering the chokepoints that squeeze creators and audiences — technical, commercial and legal blueprints for artists, fans, arts organizations, technologists, and governments to fundamentally restructure the broken markets for creative labor."

Or, as they explain later, "Our main focus is action." Lawrence Lessig says the authors "offer a range of powerful strategies for fighting back." Anil Dash described it as "a credible, actionable vision for a better, more collaborative future where artists get their fair due." And Douglas Rushkoff called the book "an infuriating yet inspiring call to collective action."

The book is titled "Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back." And at one point their Kickstarter page lays down a thought-provoking central question about ownership. "For 40 years, every question about creators rights had the same answer: more copyright. How's that worked out for artists?" And then it features a quote from Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. "Copyright can't unrig a rigged market — for that you need worker power, antitrust, and solidarity."

A Kickstarter campaign to raise $10,000 has already raised $72,171 — in its first five days — from over 1,800 backers.

Because we don’t like the real ones?

https://www.bespacific.com/how-can-policymakers-encourage-more-robo-lawyers/

How Can Policymakers Encourage More Robo-Lawyers?

Webinar – A discussion about the potential for AI-enabled robo-lawyers to provide legal services: “Advances in digital automation could enable many individuals and businesses to access better and cheaper legal services. Robo-lawyers—tech-enabled legal services—could help clients review contracts, draft patent applications, write legal briefs, and more. Unfortunately, state laws and professional licensing requirements significantly limit the development of technology-enabled legal services that would compete with existing legal services. These restrictions on robo-lawyers ultimately hurt consumer welfare, especially for many Americans who do not have access to adequate legal representation. Join the Center for Data Innovation for a panel discussion about the potential for AI-enabled robo-lawyers to provide legal services, the challenges in providing these services today, and steps policymakers can take to allow the development of tech-enabled legal services.”

• Date and Time: September 21, 2022, from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM (EDT) – Register for the webinar here.

I would have loved this as a kid. “There is something you don’t want me to know? How dare you!”

https://www.bespacific.com/brooklyn-public-library-gives-every-teenager-in-the-u-s-free-access-to-books-getting-censored-by-american-schools/

The Brooklyn Public Library Gives Every Teenager in the U.S. Free Access to Books Getting Censored by American Schools

Open Culture: “…In response to this concerning trend, the Brooklyn Public Library has made a bold move: For a limited time, the library will offer a free eCard to any person aged 13 to 21 across the United States, allowing them free access to 500,000 digital books, including many censored books. The Chief Librarian for the Brooklyn Public Library, Nick Higgins said:

A public library represents all of us in a pluralistic society we exist with other people, with other ideas, other viewpoints and perspectives and that’s what makes a healthy democracy — not shutting down access to those points of view or silencing voices that we don’t agree with, but expanding access to those voices and having conversations and ideas that we agree with and ideas that we don’t agree with.

And he added:

This is an intellectual freedom to read initiative by the Brooklyn Public Library. You know, we’ve been paying attention to a lot of the book challenges and bans that have been taking place, particularly over the last year in many places across the country. We don’t necessarily experience a whole lot of that here in Brooklyn, but we know that there are library patrons and library staff who are facing these and we wanted to figure out a way to step in and help, particularly for young people who are seeing, some books in their library collections that may represent them, but they’re being taken off the shelves.

As for how to get the Brooklyn Public Library’s free eCard, their Books Unbanned website offers the following instructions: “individuals ages 13-21 can apply for a free BPL eCard, providing access to our full eBook collection as well as our learning databases. To apply, email booksunbanned@bklynlibrary.org.” In short, send them an email.”