The Passive Voice

A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.

~ Liberty Hyde Bailey

From The IP Kat:

The UKIPO (United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office) updated its Formalities Manual on the 28th of October 2019,adding under 3.05  a provision  that “An AI Inventor is not acceptable as this does not identify “a person” which is required by law. The consequence  for  failing to supply this information is that the application is taken to be withdrawn under s. 13(2)”.

Although one could question how important and breathtaking this amendment is,  still,  it signals the intention of the UKIPO and the way that it perceives AIat this point  of time. It is difficult to be sure  what has triggered this new provision,, but it could  be related to the patent applications submitted in the UKIPO, UPSTO and EPO, respectively,  concerning (i) a new form of beverage container based on fractal geometry and (ii) a device for attracting enhanced attention valuable for search and rescue operations. What these patent applications have in common is the inventor, an AI called Dabus.

Naturally, humans are involved in these patent applications, namely in the form of the  applicants, two professors from Surrey University. The question is, of course, why the applications name the AI program as the inventor,  if not to provoke a reaction from major patent offices.

. . . .

Professor Ryan Abott, also a professor at Surrey University, is the head of the application’s project. One of his statements available on the website of Surrey University states,

 “Powerful AI systems could hold the key to some of the mega challenges facing humanity – from the cure for cancer to workable solutions for reversing climate change. But if outdated IP laws around the world don’t respond quickly to the rise of the inventive machine, the lack of incentive for AI developers could stand in the way of a new era of spectacular human endeavor.”

In fact, the patent applications are part of a project, the Artificial Inventor project.

Link to the rest at The IP Kat

PG suggests the OP depicts intellectual publicity-seeking.

From All About Romance:

I started reading romance novels when I was 12 or 13. I remember reading them and thinking they were enjoyable but they weren’t about people like me. Nearly all of the characters were non-disabled, as well as being white, cis and heterosexual, and the few characters that were disabled were villains. When I did finally find romance novels with disabled leads, they were either cured of their disability or their significant other was portrayed as a saint who was willing to look past their disability.

Both of these tropes are so harmful. I was born disabled and I will always be disabled. There’s no option of being cured for me and even if there was, I wouldn’t take it. Being disabled is an intrinsic part of my identity and I wouldn’t be me if I wasn’t disabled. I also don’t think being disabled is anything to be ashamed of and the idea that a partner would have to look past my disability in order to love me is incredibly hurtful.

These attitudes, of course, are a reflection on how society views disabled people. I hear stories all the time from other disabled people who have had complete strangers tell their partner that they must be a wonderful person in order to be with a disabled person. This attitude is dehumanising and suggests that being in a relationship with a disabled person is an act of charity. Most disabled people are surrounded by negative opinions on disability from the moment we’re born, it’s impossible not to internalise that and it’s easy to convince ourselves that we aren’t deserving of love or that we have to minimise our disability in order to get our happily ever after. Ableism is a daily reality for most disabled people but for me romance novels are supposed to be an escape from reality, an idealised version of what life can be like with the right person or people. Romance novels are supposed to be emotionally satisfying for the reader and that includes disabled readers.

Link to the rest at All About Romance

From The Literary Hub:

“The group was named by its best-known member, Dorothy L. Sayers, who would go on to be a famous detective novelist and popular theologian. Let’s call ourselves the Mutual Admiration Society, she suggested, because that’s what people will call us anyway. The name both captures the spirit of the group and misrepresents it. They supported each other boldly and emphatically: no false modesty or feminine shame here. They were willing to be relentless and did not insist on being liked, crucial qualities for taking advantage of the real but tenuous space they had to work within. But they were the exact opposite of the simple echo chamber of praise that the name could imply, in its pejorative sense. They were critical, and they were at odds. They fell apart and came together again, over the course of decades and remarkable careers that ranged from birth control advocacy to genre fiction, from classrooms to the stage.”

. . . .

Charis’s closest friend was Dorothy Rowe, or D. Rowe, the joking trickster of the group, who never missed an opportunity for a wisecrack or a limerick that would skewer the foibles and pretensions of those around her. D. Rowe became a beloved English teacher, as well as the founder of a prominent and progressive amateur theater club in Bournemouth.

They were joined by a few others at points along the way: the spiky, cynical Muriel “Jim” Jaeger; the otherworldly Amphilis T. Middlemore; and the quiet, serious Catherine “Tony” Godfrey, in particular.

. . . .

Their words are preserved in libraries scattered across England and the United States, creating a composite archive that is at once deliberate and accidental. Even though they produced copious and vivid letters, stories, poems, and photographs, the members of the MAS resist any attempt by outsiders to know them completely. Jim would stipulate that her personal papers be burned after her death. DLS probably would have destroyed more of her papers if she hadn’t died suddenly and relatively young. The members of the MAS kept each other’s secrets, too. The question of who knew the truth about DLS’s illegitimate son, and when, has always exercised her biographers, but the members of the MAS are like a wall on this subject: the solidarity of their friendship will not be breached.

. . . .

The women of this generation were well placed to take advantage of the victories won by the previous era of feminist activists. Whereas the women of the late 19th century had to fight to gain access to higher education, the members of the MAS enjoyed nearly all that Oxford had to offer, at least in intellectual terms. In their young adulthood, they saw a raft of legislation passed that transformed British women into citizens. Women over thirty, subject to certain property restrictions, would gain the right to vote in 1918; they were granted the vote on equal terms with men in 1928. Women were allowed to stand for Parliament, to sit on juries, and to become lawyers and magistrates. They had increasing access to birth control and well-paid jobs, as well as scope to smoke cigarettes, wear trousers, and socialize in ways that would have scandalized their grandparents.

Link to the rest at The Literary Hub

From The Guardian:

There are two traditions that are rapidly becoming as good markers to the start of the festive season as an advent calendar: John Lewis releasing its Christmas ad and children’s authors accusing the retailer of ripping their books off.

Five years ago, readers spotted similarities between Oliver Jeffers’ Lost and Found, about a boy and a penguin, and John Lewis’s ad about a boy and his penguin. Last year, it was the turn of former children’s laureate Chris Riddell, who noticed similarities between John Lewis’s blue furry monster that hid under the bed, and his own creation, the blue furry Mr Underbed. “The idea of a monster under the bed is by no means new but the ad does seem to bear a close resemblance to my creation – a big blue unthreatening monster who rocks the bed and snores loudly,” said Riddell at the time; Mr Underbed went on to sell out.

This year, more than one children’s writer is feeling aggrieved about John Lewis’s new ad, Excitable Edgar, in which a small dragon keeps spoiling festivities for a village – burning down the tree, melting a snowman – until a girl finds him a job to do (lighting the Christmas pudding). Author Jen Campbell wrote on Twitter: “If you enjoyed this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert, then you’ll love our book Franklin’s Flying Bookshop, all about a dragon called Franklin (who the locals are scared of) & his best friend, a red-haired girl called Luna. Y’know. Just saying.”

Link to the rest at The Guardian

After spending way too much time, but still failing to get his old contact plugin to work correctly with his current theme, PG has installed a new contact plugin.

He’s using the default contact form in the plugin right now to see how it works. He may modify that form a bit later.

PG is also testing Google’s Recaptcha plugin to reduce the number of spam comments he receives. He may modify the settings or remove Recaptcha if it causes problems.

From Writer Beware:

Founded in 2010, The Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award bills itself as “the richest prize for a single short story in the English language.” And indeed, the prize is major: the winner receives a cool £30,000 (no, I did not add extra zeroes.)

With judges yet to be finalized, the selection process will include a 20-story longlist announced in May 2020, a six-story shortlist unveiled in June 2020, and the winner revealed on July 2. The shortlisted stories will be published in an Audible audiobook, with included writers receiving “an extra £1,000 fee, on top of a prize payment of £1,000”. To be eligible, writers must previously have had at least one work published in the UK or Ireland by an “established print publisher or an established printed magazine”

. . . .

So what’s the catch? — because you know I wouldn’t be writing this post if there weren’t one. Well, as so often happens, it’s in the Terms and Conditions. Specifically:

To summarize this dense paragraph: simply by entering the competition, you are granting a sweeping, non-expiring license not just to Times Newspapers Limited (The Sunday Times‘ parent company), but also to Audible and any other licensees of TNL, to use your story or any part of it in any way they want, anywhere in the world, without payment to or permission from you.

This is far from the first time I’ve written about “merely by entering you grant us rights forever” clauses in the guidelines of literary contests, some of them from major publishers or companies that should know better. Sure, in this case the license is non-exclusive, so you could sell your story elsewhere–but only as a reprint, because by granting non-exclusive rights to one company, you remove your ability to grant first rights to another, at least for as long as the initial rights grant is in force.

It’s not uncommon for literary contests that involve publication to bind all entrants to a uniform license or grant of rights–so that, when winners are chosen, the license is already in place. But ideally, the license should immediately expire for entries that are removed from consideration–or, if the contest sponsor wants to retain the right to consider any entered story for publication (as TNL clearly does–see Clause 4.2, below), rights should be released within a reasonable period of time after the contest finishes–say, three or six months. There’s simply no good reason to make a perpetual claim on rights just in case, at some unspecified point in the future, you might just possibly want to use them.

. . . .

There’s a couple of other things to be aware of. Shortlisted authors enter into a 12-month exclusive contract with Audible, for which they are given a “one-off” lump-sum payment (the £1,000 noted above). But thereafter, Audible retains the right “to record, distribute and market such audio version for at least ten (10) years.” Again, this right is non-exclusive–but there’s no indication that Audible has to pay these authors for potentially exploiting their work for a decade. (If you don’t consent to these terms, you can’t be shortlisted.)

Finally, although publication is guaranteed only for the shortlist, TNL reserves the right to publish longlist and non-listed entries as well. Great! Except…there’s nothing to suggest these writers would be paid either.

Link to the rest at Writer Beware

PG says this is tacky to the max (but, unfortunately, not rare).

You need to read all terms and conditions whenever you submit anything you write online, be it for a contest, consideration for publishing, publishing, etc., etc., etc.

Audible should know better. PG recommends loud complaints directed to anyone you know in Amazon or anyone you don’t know who has an Amazon email address. Jeff@amazon.com is one (no, PG doesn’t know if he ever reads email that comes to this address.).

From Creative Future:

Here we are … again.

Mark Zuckerberg was chewed out (again) on Capitol Hill.

Google enraged their employees (again) by trying to spy on them and for siding with China (again).

Cloudflare was outed (again) for refusing to crack down on criminal behavior on their network.

In other words, here is the latest installment in our ongoing coverage of the dumpster fire engulfing the world’s most powerful internet platforms.

And though these behemoths are now being scrutinized, investigated, and generally crapped on like never before, they just keep on raking in money. In the third quarter, Facebook’s earnings rose 29 percent from a year earlier, to $17.7 billion, while Google’s earnings report showed their profits rising by 20 percent to $40.5 billion. Meanwhile, Cloudflare’s IPO disappointed investors, but still created staggering wealth for the people responsible for the company becoming the service of choice for bad internet actors.

When will the cycle in which harm to society translates to big bucks for these companies end? Only when they are finally held accountable for their actions. The governments of the world are (much too) slowly catching on. But, they will only act if all of us keep the heat turned up.

To bring you up to date, here are 21 more reasons why we need #PlatformAccountability now, culled from across the spectrum of political, cultural, and sociological discourse.

. . . .

1. Because “accuracy and fairness” are not core to their mission.
“It is high time that we directly address the stark difference between legacy newspapers, radio, and television and today’s dominating digital technology companies. Traditional media companies have long accepted the burden — along with the significant cost and time — required to verify the words, images, and videos they publish. Accuracy and fairness are core to their mission. But not today’s digital media giants. Wrapping themselves in legal immunities that apply to no one else, digital publishers accept zero responsibility for the amplified fabrication, viral insanity, and dangerous untruths they routinely empower users to publish. Doing so would undermine their business model, which depends on monetizing users with targeted ads.”

– Julie Bernard, Chief Marketing Officer for Verve, a mobile marketing platform

2. Because they are publishers, but they don’t act like it.
“I am the owner of TIME magazine, and we’re a publisher. And, we’re responsible for the content on our platform… Well, Facebook is also a publisher. They need to be held responsible for what’s on their platform.”

– Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff

3. Because they have “zero incentive” to care about abuse by bad actors.
“The ramifications of Section 230 immunity don’t just impact those harmed. Section 230 harms us all as a society. We are entering an era of greater surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, self-driving cars, facial recognition technology. Companies developing this have ZERO incentive to be thinking about how their products will be abused and exploited by bad actors. Why? First and foremost because there is no pressure on them from the threat of litigation.”

– Carrie A. Goldberg, author of Nobody’s Victim: Fighting Psychos, Stalkers, Pervs, and Trolls

. . . .

7. Because their business model is “overestimating humanity.”
“Zuckerberg greatest mistakes have come from overestimating humanity. Unfortunately, not everyone wants to bring the world closer together. Without safeguards, Facebook’s tools can help tear it apart. It’s time for Facebook and Zuckerberg to recognize the difference between free expression and paid expression.”

– Josh Constine, Editor-At-Large, TechCrunch

. . . .

10. Because it’s 2019 and slavery is “booming…” on these platforms.
“An undercover investigation by BBC News Arabic has found that domestic workers are being illegally bought and sold online in a booming black market. Some of the trade has been carried out on Facebook-owned Instagram, where posts have been promoted via algorithm-boosted hashtags, and sales negotiated via private messages.”

– BBC News

. . . .

14. Because when they aren’t enabling child abuse, they are busily hard-wiring kids’ brains toward addiction.
“More than twice as many young people watch videos every day as did four years ago, and the average time spent watching videos — mostly on YouTube — has roughly doubled, to an hour each day… Usage has surged despite mounting concerns from parents and consumer groups about the grip that smartphones and screens have on kids’ lives and development. Advocates worry that features hard-wired into certain tech platforms, such as YouTube’s default autoplay setting, reinforce the impulse to keep watching.”

– The Washington Post, reporting on a study released by Common Sense Media

15. Because they are infested with fake, stolen, and dangerous goods.
“Google is among the search engines that show fake and possibly dangerous counterfeit goods in as much as 60% of their search results, putting consumers at risk… The potentially dangerous fake goods include car parts, pharmaceuticals, toys, appliances and safety equipment… Counterfeiting and piracy are estimated to cost brands billions of dollars in lost revenue worldwide, while also hampering their efforts to generate brand awareness and customer loyalty.”

– Marketing Dive, reporting on a study by intellectual property and brand protection company Incopro

. . . .

19. Because the size and scale of the platforms’ problems have lulled us into a state of helplessness.
“We are at an extraordinary crossroads. We have sufficient information to know that Facebook’s platform was used to subvert and undermine elections in the US, the UK and many other countries. But we pretend to be helpless to prevent it happening again. We’re not. We’re simply hamstrung by a government and an opposition that have chosen to ignore it.”

– Carole Cadwalladr, British journalist who exposed the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal

Link to the rest at Creative Future