Whose content is it, really?

SOMEWHAT LATE in the day, but, it is to be hoped, not too late, concern about the activities of the artificial intelligence industry is finding expression across the creative community.

Writers, musicians and publishers have realised that – yet again – Big Tech is taking us for a ride. Perhaps this time their protests of innocence will be taken more cyuically

When the internet was in its infancy Big Tech got away with murder – almost literally – by protesting that they were merely acting as conduits for the material – often as we now realise very damaging material – that users put out.

While conventional publishers must take responsibility for everything they put out, Big Tech would have none of it. Their specious claim to be defending 'free speech' has proved sufficient cover for them to hide behind and escape any responsiblity for what has turned out all too often to be very damaging.

The advertising revenue they have 'stolen" from more conventional media has proved to be highy detrimental to many media enterprises, particularly newspapers.

With the raids they have made on the creative community – 'stealing' content from writers, composers and artists to 'train' their creations – they have done and are doing immense damage to copyrighted material.

A number of lawsuits are now in train. Might it be possible to mount one enormous class action with the muscle to counter the mega power of Big Tech and their legal friends?

The storage of, especially creative, material in a digital age is of further concern. As these columns never tire of painting out, 'the Cloud' is not some cuddly, fluffy concept up there in the heavens, but an earth-based industry consuming vast amounts of energy and holding enormous amounts of valuable intellectual property in often dubious circumstances.

Have we finally got the measure of these self-styled 'public benefactors'? Maybe.

All hands to the (oil) pump?

ONE SMALL chink of sanity has appeared in Holyrood's climate change thinking: wood burning stoves will no longer be banned from installation in new buildings.

A small step in the right direction? It remains to be seen whether the election of a rabid climate change denier to the White House will bring any further signs of policy moderation.

Mr Trump has made it plain that he will encourage America's oil producers to pump, pump, pump as much of the black stuff as they can.

So Britain's virtual withdrawal from the North Sea will be made to seem still more precipitous and self-damaging.

This is not to suggest that Trump has got it right in any sense, but what it will do is underline the perils of the rush into a very poorly thought through global warming reduction policy.

Wildly unrealistic promises of a "jobs bonanxa" from a lurch into renewables will be shown up still more starkly by the American 'elephant's' presence in the room.

There has been no convincing explanation of where the promised jobs boom will come from.

Offshore windmills will presumbly not have any on board employees counting the revolutions. Jobs, certainly will come from covering the countryside with pylons - but at what cost financially and aesthetically.

In our last issue we quoted the words of sanity of John Busby, a retired engineer who has given a lot of thought to the subject. His very challenging agenda can be found at his website https://www.after-oil. co.uk/articles.htm.

If the election of Mr Trump promises one redeeming feature might it be a far more critical look at the lurch towards net zero?

Teacher knows best

IT WAS ALL so, so predictable. A response from the literary community to the heartbreaking carnage being in icted on the residents of Gaza would be met by a pained response from the pro-Netanayahu Israel solidarity campaign.

A call by more than 400 leading authors for a boycott of Israel's– mainly literary – cultural institutions they clam are "complicit in genocide" brought forth the usual counter accusations. People in the arts should not take sides They are attempting to silence their fellows. This is censorship - etc. etc.

Howard Jacobson, a one-time Booker prize winner, expressed "disbelief' that "one writer, that one person from the artistic community, should dream that he or she has a right to silence another."

Lionel Shriver, another award winning author, wrote that it was "not in the larger interest of any writer for publishers, agents and festivals to be the preserve of a narrow ideological position on any issue."

So the message to those concerned about the apparent Clearing of northern Gaza would appear to be: "Mind your own business. Artists should leave political matters to the politicians. `Mr Netanyahu knows best,"

Time will tell.