Throughout her doctoral studies, Amanda Turnbull has grappled with the legal consequences of “machines doing things with words.” Her timely dissertation, Law, Language, and Authority: The Algorithmic Turn, completed in August 2024, offers a measured yet unflinching reflection on how artificial intelligence is transforming society and the law.
Hal Niedzviecki is a prolific novelist and cultural critic, as well as the founder of Broken Pencil. He is in the process of releasing The Archaeologists, his first novel in a decade, in a serialized format online, where it can be read for free prior to publication. We met up for coffee one afternoon to […]
On March 11, the IP Osgoode Speaks Series hosted University of Toronto’s Professor Abraham Drassinower to present his new book, What’s Wrong with Copying? His presentation was followed with comments by Professor Bita Amani from Queen’s University, as well as Osgoode’s own Professor Carys Craig; each of whom offered insightful critiques of Drassinower’s book.
New Year’s Day is synonymous with new beginnings, and 2016 will be no exception. Mein Kampf (“My Struggle”), the manifesto in which Adolf Hitler explains his vision for Germany’s future and his political ideologies, will be falling into the public domain on January 1st, 2016. A French publishing house named Fayard, along with a few German editors, have […]
Jim Bouton, one of the designated hitters represented by the Authors Guild took another swing at Google Books services program in the United States Court of Appeal (2nd Circuit) (“the Court”). The Court rejected the copyright challenge brought forward by the Authors Guild and concluded that Google’s activities were transformative in nature and thus fell […]
At first, a request for royalties by the estate of Nazi propagandist Goebbels was considered a joke by counsel for Random House. But the publisher now finds itself in the middle of a legal controversy after releasing a biography about the notorious World War 2 Nazi, which largely draws from Goebbels’s diaries.
An Ontario Superior Court has rejected a class action settlement between the publisher Thomson Reuters and a collection of Canadian lawyers and law firms, stating that the proposed settlement is not “fair, reasonable, or in the best interests of the Class Members.” The proposed settlement would have seen Thomson Reuters fund a trust for public […]
In common law countries, the term of protection granted by copyright has been steadily growing ever since its advent in the eighteenth century, yet the benefits of these term extensions has been vigorously debated. A new study by Meghan McGarvie and Petra Mosner, however, provides evidence that payment to authors by London publishers significantly increased […]