BadlyDrawnRhino

If you have an original Paperwhite, your device is going to lose internet access next month, so make sure you make a backup of all your ebooks before then.

Luckily I have the Paperwhite 2 from 2013 so I’ll be able to keep using mine for now. But I’ll be backing up everything anyway because it’s only a matter of time before Amazon comes for my device too. I’ll not be buying another Kindle once mine is no longer functional.

You say that, but who do you think the AIs will go after first if they ever do develop actual intelligence? In that scenario, simple manners can go a long way!

If you’re a newsletter subscriber, check to see if you have received a voucher for a slightly higher discount. Couldn’t tell you the difference, I have to wait for my refund request to be processed.

But the large corporations are handling that side of things already. If the lawsuit goes in the favour of copyright holders, AI companies would in theory have to do something to avoid using copyrighted material, or pay for the usage. Of course, there’s every chance that they may end up avoiding using copyrighted material from anyone big enough to fight back, and just profit off of the works of artists without the resources to stop them doing so.

You’re not wrong, but if they win against AI, all artists will benefit because of the precedent that it would set.

What I think will actually happen if this is looking to not go in the tech bros’ favour is that they’ll settle and make a potential deal with large copyright holders for ongoing usage, and that would screw individual artists.

Wonder if they’ll be recommending content from all sides of the political spectrum, or just the right-wing content…

The thing about the corporation paying less taxes is a myth. The extra contribution you make counts as revenue in their books, and that revenue is then offset as a donation, making no overall difference to their tax benefits.

That said, it does help them in other ways, mostly around marketing. They can then say they’ve made a massive amount of charitable contributions, when really it was their customers that did so.

As others have said, by making that donation at the checkout, you haven’t really made an informed decision about whether the charity is one you would donate to otherwise, so if that’s important to you you should stop doing so.

The way I look at it, if you are going to make a conscious decision to donate to charities you support, there’s no real reason to round up at the checkout. But if you aren’t really going to be donating otherwise and you’re not struggling financially, you may as well make that small contribution at the checkout.

Thanks for this, I’m going to try this out on my way home. My main use for Gmaps is to determine the quickest way to and from work during peak hour, so keen to see how Magic Earth’s traffic data compares.

Trebuchets aren’t really a tool for defence. They have tremendous range and aren’t exactly speedy to load, aim, and launch.

Unless you meant defence in the same way that a country’s military operations are known as “defence forces” regardless of intent, in which case carry on.

That’s an oversimplification. All works are derivative to some extent. There’s a huge difference between taking inspiration from something, to taking the characters and setting from something. Particularly if you’re intending to make a profit.

If an author makes something that a large number of people enjoy, why shouldn’t they be able to make money off it for the rest of their life? Why exactly should an individual give up the rights to their creation simply so that someone else can use their characters and their worlds?

To be clear, I’m talking solely on an individual level. I think the system we have where a corporation can own an idea is very broken. I’m also talking about this from a perspective of the world we currently live in. In an ideal world where money wasn’t the endgame for survival, ideas would flow more freely and nobody would need to care. But that’s not the world we live in.

I think an argument could be made to set it to the date of death of the author. I agree with the other guy that it should only apply to commercial works though.

I also don’t think that the copyright should be transferable. The trading of ideas is an absurd concept to me. But then us humans do a lot of absurd things so I guess it’s just par for the course.