The Internet Archive is doubling down on its position that its digital lending library service operates under the bounds of fair use. Major publishers assert that digitizing books without appropriate licensing amounts to infringement but IA counters that the practice is in the public interest. It also fits copyright’s ultimate purpose; to promote the broad public availability of literature and other arts.
Source: There’s More to Copyright Than Financial Incentives, Internet Archive Argues in Court * TorrentFreak
En masse, the music industry seems to have decided that NFTs were a terrible idea best swept under the carpet and forgotten. And in fairness, many of the industry’s initial experiments with NFTs deserve exactly that fate. However, with the hype having ebbed away the musicians who are still exploring how NFTs and related web3 technologies might be able to serve their art and their fan communities.
Concord launched a USD $1.511 billion bid for the UK-listed company’s assets, at $1.25 per share. That bid very slightly topped a recent $1.50 billion takeover proposal from Blackstone, which valued HSF at $1.24 per share. Today (April 25), Blackstone issued a terse-but-fascinating comment to the markets, and specifically to HSF shareholders, in the wake of Concord’s new offer.
The agreement will lead to the production of audio versions of select deep backlist series books that would not otherwise have been created, using ElevenLabs’s text-to-speech technology. According to ElevenLabs, the tech firm has developed an AI-based tool that can transform text into speech using artificial intelligence and makes it possible to “reflect the emotion, intonation, and pacing of the written word in audio, delivering a high-quality experience that sounds human”.