#creative workers

Studio execs love plausible sentence generators because they have a workflow that looks exactly like a writer-exec dynamic, only without any eye-rolling at the stupid “notes” the exec gives the writer.

All an exec wants is to bark out “Hey, nerd, make me another E.T., except make the hero a dog, and set it on Mars.” After the writer faithfully produces this script, the exec can say, “OK, put put a love interest in the second act, and give me a big gunfight at the climax,” and the writer dutifully makes the changes.

This is exactly how prompting an LLM works.

A writer and a studio exec are lost in the desert, dying of thirst.

Just as they are about to perish, they come upon an oasis, with a cool sparkling pool of water.

The writer drops to their knees and thanks the fates for saving their lives.

But then, the studio exec unzips his pants, pulls out his cock and starts pissing in the water.

“What the fuck are you doing?” the writer demands.

“Don’t worry,” the exec says, “I’m making it better.”

- Everything Made By an AI Is In the Public Domain: The US Copyright Office offers creative workers a powerful labor protective

THIS IS THE LAST DAY FOR MY KICKSTARTER for the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

That means that for a work to be eligible for copyright in the USA, it must satisfy three criteria:

1. It must be creative. Copyright does not apply to non-creative works (say, a phone book listing everyone in a town in alphabetical order), even if the work required a lot of labor. Copyright does not protect effort, it protects creativity. You can spend your whole life making a phone book and get no copyright, but the haiku you toss off in ten seconds while drunk gets copyright’s full protection. 2. It must be tangible. Copyright only applies to creative works that are “fixed in a tangible medium.” A dance isn’t copyrightable, but a video of someone dancing is, as is a written description of the dance in choreographers’ notation. A singer can’t copyright the act of singing, but they can copyright the recording of the song. 3. It must be of human authorship. Only humans are eligible for copyright. A beehive’s combs may be beautiful, but they can’t be copyrighted. An elephant’s paintings may be creative, but they can’t be copyrighted. A monkey’s selfie may be iconic, but it can’t be copyrighted.

The works an algorithm generates —be they still images, audio recordings, text, or videos — cannot be copyrighted.

For creative workers, this is huge. Our bosses, like all bosses, relish the thought of firing us all and making us homeless. You will never love anything as much as your boss hates paying you. That’s why the most rampant form of theft in America is wage theft. Just the thought of firing workers and replacing them with chatbots is enough to invoke dangerous, persistent priapism in the boardrooms of corporate America.

- Everything Made By an AI Is In the Public Domain: The US Copyright Office offers creative workers a powerful labor protective

THIS IS THE LAST DAY FOR MY KICKSTARTER for the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

There is only one thing our bosses love more than the thought of not paying us: getting copyright on their products.

The relentless, 40-year campaign to extend copyright’s duration, scope, and penalties has vastly increased the profitability and revenues of the entertainment sector (even as creative workers’ wages have fallen).

Studio execs and other creative industry bosses would rather drink a gallon of warm spit before breakfast, every day for the rest of their lives, than give up a single molecule of copyright.

That’s where the US Copyright Office’s rule that AI-created works, just affirmed by a DC Circuit judge, comes in.

When faced with the choice of never paying us again, and having no copyright on the things they sell, our bosses will pay us all day long.

- Everything Made By an AI Is In the Public Domain: The US Copyright Office offers creative workers a powerful labor protective

THIS IS THE LAST DAY FOR MY KICKSTARTER for the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

When you’re a novelist bargaining with five publishing houses, or a filmmaker bargaining with four studios, or a musician bargaining with three labels, or a games author bargaining with two mobile app stores, or an audiobook creator bargaining with one audiobook store, then getting more copyright doesn’t make you any better off.

Giving more copyright to a creative worker under those circumstances is like giving your bullied schoolkid extra lunch money. It doesn’t matter how much lunch money you give your kid — the bullies are just going to take it.

In those circumstances, giving your kid extra lunch money is just an indirect way of giving the bullies more money. Give the bullies enough money and they’ll be able to afford an international ad campaign:

Think of the hungry children!

Give them more lunch money!

The idea of protecting creators with individual, bargainable rights reframes us not as workers but as businesses: LLCs with MFAs. Our negotiations with our bosses are B2B: just two artificial persons, each with its own EIN, facing each other down across a board-room table.

But the individual creative worker who bargains with Disney-ABC-Muppets-Pixar-Marvel-Lucasfilm-Fox is not in a situation comparable to, say, Coca-Cola renewing its sponsorship deal for Disneyland.

For an individual worker, the bargain goes like this: “We’ll take everything we can, and give you as little as we can get away with, and maybe we won’t even pay you that.”

- Everything Made By an AI Is In the Public Domain: The US Copyright Office offers creative workers a powerful labor protective

THIS IS THE LAST DAY FOR MY KICKSTARTER for the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:

http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

To Take Charge of Your Career, Start by Building Your Tribe

Courtesy of @SwiftTheBilly

By Gianpiero Petriglieri, hbr.org

Show me a person who sees uncertainty as opportunity, and I’ll show you a person who has mastered the new world of work.

A person like Juliet (not her real name), for example, who described a stressful stretch of her career as “disgustingly exciting.”

Juliet had left full-time employment in the public sector to pursue her passion for…

People Having Fun When They are Bored At Work

Funny Things People Do When They are Bored At Work.Why not spark up the day with some good old fun to break through that boring day!? We decided to make a compilation of people having fun at work because they are too bored at their job. Be it wrapping your colleague into plastic and pretending you are Spider man, building arches out of computer screens, or building an arrow out of coat hangers:…