Dominic Young

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about

I’ve been around the news media and the internet since the beginning. I am interested in copyright as the basis for a thriving and balanced creative sector and society. Also interested in how the failure of copyright and other laws has led to terrible outcomes for the internet and everyone who uses it. I’ve done a lot of things around these issues.

Category: Copyright

  • Are you certain about that uncertainty?

    The UK government’s consultation on AI and copyright is prefaced by an un-named minister. In it they say that copyright law related to AI is “uncertain”. Removing that uncertainty they hope, will attract AI investment to the UK. I’ll pick this apart below, but to summarise: Here’s what the minister said: “The copyright framework provides right holders…

  • Waking up, I think I smell coffee…

    It has been a while. Hello again. I’m back talking about copyright. Can’t shake my geeky obsession. But why now? The specific thing which has got my goat is a proposal from the UK government to take a wrecking ball to what is left of copyright law by largely exempting AI companies from it. It…

  • Actually doing it

    As some people will notice, my flurries of activity on this blog and elsewhere are somewhat random. I am deeply passionate about the issues around copyright, because they impinge so heavily on so many other things – economic, cultural, political, personal. One of the reasons I have written about it is to try to explain…

  • So, saving the media. How?

    How to save the media and transform the internet, part one

  • Rebooting copyright (blog)

    Ah hello hello hello. Long time no, um, blog. I’ve been busy going back to first principles and working out how we can adapt to a world in which the failure of copyright seems to be collapsing the media ever more quickly. I’m still obsessive about copyright, of course, but I have begun to wonder…

  • Fake news and the faded idealism of the web

    Tim Berners Lee issued an epistle recently, a call to action to save the web from some dangers which concern him. One of them “misinformation” (or “fake news” as it rather more commonly and hysterically known). It’s a problem, he says. Everyone says it, and they’re right. Tim doesn’t identify the solution but he does…

  • The free flow of hypocrisy

    I’ve been hearing this phrase “the free flow of information” a lot lately. It’s been in the context of the “Publishers Right” and it is usually preceded by the phrase “will restrict”. The heart of the concern seems to be the idea that if permission is needed before digital publications can be exploited by others,…

  • The European Commission’s manifesto for The Copyright Hub

    As you may know, I stepped down from The Copyright Hub earlier this year, two-and-a-half years into my planned one year tenure. The Hub is a fantastic, exhilarating, project which stands to create massive and positive change for creators. That is why it has attracted the wide-ranging support from an enormously diverse group of people, organisations,…

  • The CJEU goes bonkers again…?

    I am very much not a fan of the European Court of Justice and their whimsical way of making up laws which bear little relation to anything actually legislated. Last week they were at it again, “banning” open wifi hotspots because they make copyright infringement too easy. The court said that if users need a…

  • About that photo on Facebook… we’re blaming the wrong people

    Not long ago there was an eruption of anger and indignation about Facebook’s repeated censorship of Nick Ut’s upsetting and famous picture of a Phan Thi Kim Phuc running from napalm in Vietnam. The thing that surprised me about it wasn’t what Facebook did, but that news organisations went to the trouble of inviting them to do…