(Un)read in the ledger

Weekly reading list: Monday 13–Sunday 19 May 2024

Performing arts takes lion's share of arts mone in the Budget, Gina Rinehart challenges artistic freedome and why we need to be mindful of questionable copyright and IP practices.

My reading list this week comes to you from a hotel in Lisbon {so it is still technically Sunday where I am!}

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What I've been reading the week:

Budget 2024-25: what’s in it for the arts?

The performing arts are the big winner in the Budget in terms of arts and culture. The Arts8 national performing arts training organisations picked up $115.2 million while the new $8.6 million Revive Live package for music festivals and live music venues and $5.2 million will go to the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and the Darwin Symphony Orchestra. Also on the Budget books this time around is $14.5 million for children’s screen content and $9.3 million will got to the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) so they can store highly flammable nitrate-based cultural heritage material.

Richard Watts – Wednesday 15 May 2024

ArtsHub

The Maker of Stable Diffusion Is Collapsing, Considering Sale

The Byte is one of number of media organisations reporting that Stability AI has significant debts and is considering selling the company off. Stability AI created popular AI image generator Stable Diffusion which has seen its competitive increase significantly recently, along with being a party to two copyright and AI cases. CEO controversies haven’t helped either. Perhaps Stability will be the first notable AI company to go under?

Victor Tangermann – Thursday 16 May 2024

The Byte, Futurism

Gina Rinehart pressures NGA to remove portrait by Vincent Namatjira – now the whole net is searching for it

I got to see Vincent Namatjira’s Australia in Colour (2021) at Tarnanthi at the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) last year. It is worrying that someone like Rinehart would attempt to censor the National Gallery of Australia (NGA) like this. We must always remain vigilant to challenges to artistic freedom {regardless of whether Rinehart got her just desserts by enticing her own Streisand effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect!} Why does Rinehart assume her likes (or in this case dislikes) are more important than artistic freedom and freedom of experssion?

Celina Lei – Thursday 16 May 2024

ArtsHub

Shopify sues rival for copyright infringement over e-commerce platform

E-commerce giant Shopify is taking on Chinese e-commerce platform Shopline for allegedly copying Shopify’s code. According to Shopify the rival’s code is all a copy: "From the highest level of overarching organization to the smallest level of individual lines of code, the evidence of Shopline's copying is overwhelming," with "large swaths" of matching filenames and other elements. I can understand why a company may want to assert their copyright over the code but the way software is protected is complicated. How and when should functionality (in the past I have referred to ‘pinch to zoom’ as an example) be considered commonplace enough that it should be exempt from such protection? Imagine if one company could control the workflow of adding an item to a cart, for example?

Blake Brittain – Tuesday 14 May 2024

Reuters

Popeyes battle shows how big businesses protect their trademarks – even when they have no plans to come to NZ

For international brands seeking to maintain a trade mark in New Zealand without setting up shop don’t need to do much to maintain their claim: run a pop-up store or similar every three years or so and you can effectively keep a registration alive for decades.

Alexandra Allen-Franks – Thursday 16 May 2024

The Conversation