#web-to-print technology

[flexiweb2print]

The Evolution of Online Printing Solutions: Empowering Businesses and Individuals

In the computerized age, where accommodation and effectiveness rule, Online Printing Solutions have reformed how organizations and people approach their printing needs. Whether you're a little startup, a developing undertaking, or a singular hoping to customize your tasks, the availability and flexibility of Online Printing have opened up a universe of potential outcomes.

Comfort Readily available

Gone are the times of customary printing processes that necessary different visits to neighborhood print shops or extended calls to orchestrate orders. Online Printing Solutions have smoothed out this whole experience, setting the ability to plan and print straightforwardly under the control of the client. With only a couple of snaps, you can transfer your plans, pick your determinations, and submit your request — all from the solace of your office or home.

Adaptability and Customization

One of the main benefits of Online Printing Solutions is the capacity to modify your prints as per your remarkable prerequisites. Whether you really want business cards, flyers, banners, or even customized gifts, Online Printing administrations offer many items and customization choices. From choosing paper types and wraps up to picking explicit sizes and amounts, the adaptability guarantees that each print meets your accurate details.

Cost-Viability and Time Proficiency

For organizations, overseeing printing needs online frequently demonstrates more savvy than customary strategies. Online Printing administrations normally work with lower above costs, permitting them to offer serious estimating and limits for mass requests. Also, the smoothed out process — from plan to conveyance — lessens completion times altogether, guaranteeing that pressing printing necessities can be met instantly.

Quality and Amazing skill

In spite of confusions, Online Printing Solutions focus on quality and impressive skill in their results. Numerous respectable web-based printers use cutting edge printing innovation and premium materials, guaranteeing that the eventual outcome meets or surpasses customary print quality norms. This devotion to quality stretches out to client care, where experienced help groups are accessible to help with requests and address any worries.

Eco-Accommodating Practices

In a period progressively centered around supportability, numerous Online Printing organizations are embracing eco-accommodating practices. This incorporates utilizing reused materials, limiting waste through proficient creation cycles, and offering choices for earth mindful inks and coatings. For organizations and people looking to diminish their natural impression, these practices present a convincing motivation to pick Online Printing Solutions.

The Eventual fate of Printing: Development and Joining

Looking forward, the fate of Online Printing Solutions proceeded with development and joining with computerized innovations. Progressions, for example, web-to-print stages, computerized work processes, and combination with plan programming are upgrading comfort and productivity further. Also, improvements in 3D printing and on-request printing are extending the extent of what's conceivable, offering new roads for imagination and customization.

Embracing Online Printing Solutions

Taking everything into account, Online Printing Solutions have changed the printing scene, offering unmatched comfort, customization, and cost-adequacy. Whether for business showcasing materials, individual tasks, or concentrated printing needs, embracing internet printing opens a universe of potential outcomes. By utilizing these arrangements, organizations and people the same can accomplish their printing objectives effectively, economically, and with inflexible quality.

Online Printing isn't simply a help; it's an impetus for imagination, effectiveness, and progress in the cutting edge computerized age.

[donotdestroy]

UI Designer: Focuses on the visual elements of a product, creating user interfaces that are aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. They work with color schemes, typography, and layout to enhance usability and engagement.

UX Designer: Concentrates on the overall user experience, conducting research to understand user needs and behaviors. They design the flow of a product, ensuring it’s user-friendly and meets the target audience's expectations.

Graphic Designer: Creates visual content for various mediums, including print and digital. They use typography, imagery, and color to communicate messages, build brand identity, and engage audiences.

[devquester]

Why You Should Use WordPress as Your CMS

[absentlyabbie]

seriously, though. i work in higher education, and part of my job is students sending me transcripts. you'd think the ones who have the least idea how to actually do that would be the older ones, and while sure, they definitely struggle with it, i see it most with the younger students. the teens to early 20s crowd.

very, astonishingly often, they don't know how to work with .pdf documents. i get garbage phone screenshots, sometimes inserted into an excel or word file for who knows what reason, but most often it's just a raw .jpg or other image file.

they definitely either don't know how to use a scanner, don't have access to one, or don't even know where they might go for that (staples and other office supply stores sometimes still have these services, but public libraries always have your back, kids.) so when they have a paper transcript and need to send me a copy electronically, it's just terrible photos at bad angles full of thumbs and text-obscuring shadows.

mind bogglingly frequently, i get cell phone photos of computer screens. they don't know how to take a screenshot on a computer. they don't know the function of the Print Screen button on the keyboard. they don't know how to right click a web page, hit "print", and choose "save as PDF" to produce a full and unbroken capture of the entirety of a webpage.

sometimes they'll just copy the text of a transcript and paste it right into the message of an email. that's if they figure out the difference between the body text portion of the email and the subject line, because quite frankly they often don't.

these are people who in most cases have done at least some college work already, but they have absolutely no clue how to utilize the attachment function in an email, and for some reason they don't consider they could google very quickly for instructions or even videos.

i am not taking a shit on gen z/gen alpha here, i'm really not.

what i am is aghast that they've been so massively failed on so many levels. the education system assumed they were "native" to technology and needed to be taught nothing. their parents assumed the same, or assumed the schools would teach them, or don't know how themselves and are too intimidated to figure it out and teach their kids these skills at home.

they spend hours a day on instagram and tiktok and youtube and etc, so they surely know (this is ridiculous to assume!!!) how to draft a formal email and format the text and what part goes where and what all those damn little symbols means, right? SURELY they're already familiar with every file type under the sun and know how to make use of whatever's salient in a pinch, right???

THEY MUST CERTAINLY know, innately, as one knows how to inhale, how to type in business formatting and formal communication style, how to present themselves in a way that gets them taken seriously by formal institutions, how to appear and be competent in basic/standard digital skills. SURELY. Of course. RIGHT!!!!

it's MADDENING, it's insane, and it's frustrating from the receiving end, but even more frustrating knowing they're stumbling blind out there in the digital spaces of grown-up matters, being dismissed, being considered less intelligent, being talked down to, because every adult and system responsible for them just

ASSUMED they should "just know" or "just figure out" these important things no one ever bothered to teach them, or half the time even introduce the concepts of before asking them to do it, on the spot, with high educational or professional stakes.

kids shouldn't have to supplement their own education like this and get sneered and scoffed at if they don't.

[hexthesystem]

From a comrade:

Since a mass exodus is occurring of people leaving FB & related apps, I'd like to prematurely and imperfectly announce the project I'm working on with help from my partner. Proudly announcing, as a work in progress, The Little Punk Library!

"The Little Punk Library is a project devoted to making information accessible and available pending the obsolescence of the internet (especially social media) and continued censorship online.

We aim to collect books, printed articles, magazines/zines, and more, in order to help our community access information. With the help of our trusty printer/scanner, the postal system, and our own creative brains, we hope with the resources we provide we can be an asset to our community both near and far. Some of the resources we’d like to provide include an index of informational and instructional articles, information packets and learning resources, a collection of fiction and nonfiction books for potential lending (still figuring the mechanics out of how this will go), magazines/zines and chapbooks, and more.

We are also interested in potentially creating a lending library for DVDs, CDs, vinyl records, and other physical media, but it is not our current focus.

Please join us on Bluesky @LittlePunkLibrary (our only social media currently, link is below) for updates."

https://bsky.app/profile/littlepunklibrary.bsky.social

I'm working on putting out more information available through Bluesky and a web page that I'm having technological issues with but am hoping to get up and running soon. Ultimately my goal is to create a zine or even just a page of information about how to access The Little Punk Library so that it will be put on paper and not just online and can be exchanged via snail mail. Currently it is not yet accessible but with what resources I have available I'm hoping it will be soon.

[theambitiouswoman]

Hobby Ideas 🎨💻🎵🧁🪴

💰 Hobbies to Make Money:

Freelance Writing

Photography

Graphic Design

Web Development

Online Selling (e.g., Etsy, Amazon, eBay, Shopify)

Blogging

Stock Trading

Real Estate Investing

Affiliate Marketing

Freelance Consulting

💪 Fitness Hobbies:

Running

Yoga

Weightlifting

Cycling

Swimming

Martial Arts

CrossFit

Hiking

Rock Climbing

Dance (e.g., Zumba, Hip-hop)

☀️ Outdoor Hobbies:

Camping

Fishing

Birdwatching

Gardening

Geocaching

Kayaking

Mountain Biking

Backpacking

Stargazing

Horseback Riding

💻 Technology Hobbies:

Programming

Robotics

3D Printing

Virtual Reality (VR) Gaming

Home Automation

Drone Flying

Cybersecurity

App Development

Electronics DIY

PC Building

🎵 Music Hobbies:

Playing an Instrument (e.g., Guitar, Piano)

Singing

DJing

Music Production

Songwriting

Music Recording

Karaoke

Music Theory

Joining a Band or Choir

Vinyl Collecting

📚 Brainy Hobbies:

Chess

Sudoku

Crossword Puzzles

Board Games

Reading

Learning a New Language

Brain Teasers

Logic Puzzles

Math and Mathematical Puzzles

Astronomy

✨ Other Hobbies:

Cooking and Baking

Painting and Drawing

Pottery and Ceramics

Woodworking

Knitting or Crocheting

DIY Home Improvement

Model Building (e.g., model trains, airplanes)

Collecting (e.g., stamps, coins, vintage items)

Volunteer Work

Meditation and Mindfulness

[focusssb]

As we all know Wednesday is terrible with technology she doesn’t have a clue on how to use any technology. So when she gets a phone at the end of s1 (by a person who shall not be named) the only reason she uses it is to talk to Enid and go in the dark web (Yoko told her about that) but she doesn’t use it for anything else she refuses to. So when Enid takes photos of them together or a pic of herself she prints them out and gives them to Wednesday so she can put it in a photo album that only they know about (she doesn’t want anyone to know how soft she is for Enid). That photo album is one of Wednesday prize possessions.

A/N: this thought popped into my head I just had to write it down

[celticbotanart]

I'm now offering a no-revision style of commissions (or "skeb"), looking like the examples above!

52 USD - you can order it via Ko-Fi [x] or VGen [x]!

Single character, bust

Sketch/unfinished lines, flat colors

No background (white bg)

Intricate details and jewelry will be simplified

No WIP corrections or feedback for this tier; I'll draw the character in one go and deliver the illustration already finished to you!

I won't do the character design - you must have a clear visual reference (ex: screenshots of your Tav / WoL; previous commissions or illustrations of your OC, etc).

Let me know what kind of expression you want the character to have!

NON-COMMERCIAL USE!

I'll deliver you a High-Resolution version [300dpi, printing quality]; Web-sized, watermarked version, ran through Glaze [anti-AI technology]

WILL DO:

Human or humanoid (any gender)

Humanoid with animal parts (horns, scales, cat ears, etc) Intricate armor, jewelry, clothes, accessories, etc (will be simplified)

Alien-looking characters (I might decline it if I feel I can't do them justice!)

Bruises, injuries, scars, a little bit of blood is OK

WON'T DO:

Mecha, full furry characters

NSFW, incest

Real people

If you have any questions, just send me message here or an email to celticbotan@gmail.com ~

commission info | patreon | Ko-fi | VGen | bluesky

[ifcomp]

IFComp Seeking an Artist for the 2024 Logo

We are looking for art for this year’s IFComp logo! We will pay a $250 commission.

Artists should express interest by sending us a link to their past work/portfolio via email: ifcomp@ifcomp.org by July 15; the artist will be selected by the end of July.

More info:

We will request one rough draft for review / edit before the final logo is produced.

We must have the final art in hand by August 25th.

We will need three versions of the logo: one with no text, one that says ‘IFComp’, and one that says ‘IFComp 2024’.

The final image file will be created or scanned at 3600 x 3600 px, and the design should still be clearly legible when reduced for display at 250 x 250 px for the web.

If you incorporate a person (optional) we ask that you make the person’s gender ambiguous.

We ask that you integrate the IFTF logo into the art in some way.

The IFComp logo should imply / be inspired by the many genres of games people make.

We will also request an invoice from the artist that the includes the following terms:

The Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation has the right to use the image in whole or in part, in world-wide publishing, print, or on any merchandise for an unlimited time. The artists reserves the right to use or edit the work to be used in their portfolio. The artist will be paid $250 US dollars, sent by PayPal or Venmo, upon receipt of final image file. IFComp will cover currency conversion fees charged by PayPal.

If you are an artist thinking about making something for this year's competition (e.g. cover art or a game), the logo may not be or have an obvious reference to an entry submitted this year. We are still open to artists participating in any way, whether it be submitting a game or doing art for an author, in this year's competition.

Here are the last few years’ logos, just to give you an idea of what we’re looking for…

Please feel free to share this info far and wide - and with any great artists you know! The artist does not have to be part of the interactive fiction community.

[princesslucky]

Hello!♡

I am Athena or Nana. I am 22 and Greek. I'm studying to be a preschool teacher!☆ I made this account to look at and reblog whatever I like!

Things I L ♡ V E :

Geocities/neocities, web graphics, old web, 2000s technology

Frutiger aero, dreamcore, surrealcore, weirdcore, everything 90's, 00's and early 10's nostalgia

Magic, mystical/ magical creatures, fairycore, witchcraft, nature, goblincore, elfcore, animals, folklore

Vaporwave, illustrations, cyberpunk, pixel art, lofi

Gyaru, twee, kawaiicore, harajuku, 2014 tumblr, 2000s fashion, cutecore

Collecting things like coins, buttons, shells, rocks, sea glass, and anything pretty you can find on the floor

Colours, rainbows, kidcore, wholesome things, pure things, toys, stimboards, games, amusement parks, playgrounds, sparkles, glitter

Everything water, the ocean, the beach, the summer, sea life, mermaids, lakes and rivers, aquariums, waterparks, fishing, swimming

Cartoons, anime, animations, video games, animated sceneries, studio ghibli

Village life, cottagecore, grandmacore, diy, crafts, kitchen stuff, cooking, gardens, herbs, tea, comfortcore, softcore, farms, flowers

Food, friends, yummy drinks, playing, working out, drawing, learning things, studying

Music!! Mainly Lana Del Rey, Fiona Apple, Kate Bush, Tame Impala, Arctic Monkeys, Melanie Martinez, Grimes, Marina, Greek Folk music, hyperpop, vocaloid and nightcore

Favourite shows: Arcane, House MD, yellowjackets, h2o

Favourite movies: ponyo, httyd 1, tangled, kiki's delivery service, Shrek 1/2/3, neighbor totoro, mean girls

Things I H A T E:

Mean people. I couldn't care less what your political, philosophical, whatever views are, I don't care how much you want to stand by these views and how right you think you are, if you come on the internet to be a rude piece of trash to everyone you disagree with you can fuck right the fuck off

Anything to do with porn. Nudes, horny posting, paraphilias, ddlg, yaoi, sexual memes, you name it. You will not see it on my feed, ever. The exposure I've had on content like this from a young age has made me view sex as something perverted and dirty instead of one of the highest forms of connection.

People that are offended by me hating porn for some completely fucked up reason I don't care to know

Specific colour themes like beige, gray or the red/black combo

People who kill bugs. I don't care.

Creepy stuff, horror, Halloween, Satanism and all that shit. Not in the Christian way I'm just scared shitless or i just dont enjoy the vibe. I love paranormal stories though because of The Curiosity for The Unknown

People promoting ANY unhealthy behaviors

People that are anti abortion. I will not interact with you but know that I don't like you.

Salads

People faking mental disorders

Animal prints

Bbl and bimbo fashion

Cosmetic surgeries

Any kind of violence

Bullies

TWs:

No TWs! I want this place to feel like a small summer breeze that smells like sea and something sweet, like putting your feet in a river on a hot day(^з^)-☆

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

I will respect you even if I disagree with you about mostly everything, as long as I get the same energy from you. You can't change my opinion on anything if I dont allow you to. English is obviously not my first language so sorry for any misunderstandings. I love people who are kind and respectful (not only to those who are like them) and I loveee making online friends. You can interact anytime !! I answer all friendly dms:) ☆☆☆☆

[flexiweb2print]

Embrace the Future with W2P Technology

The printing business is going through a computerized change, and W2P Technology is at the front line of this upheaval. Known as Web2Print or Web 2 Print, this inventive methodology is reshaping how organizations and people communicate with printing administrations, consolidating comfort with state of the art arrangements.

What is W2P Technology?

W2P Technology, short for Web to Print, is a state of the art arrangement that overcomes any barrier between conventional printing administrations and computerized stages. It empowers clients to configuration, tweak, and request print materials internet, offering unmatched comfort and adaptability. From business cards to leaflets and customized stock, Web2Print stages enable clients to assume command over their printing needs without the problem of visiting an actual print shop.

Key Elements of Web2Print Solutions

Easy to use Point of interaction: Current W2P stages come furnished with instinctive plan instruments that permit even non-fashioners to make proficient quality print materials.

On-Request Printing: With Web2Print, organizations can limit squander by printing just what they need, diminishing stock and expenses.

Personalization Choices: W2P Technology upholds variable information printing, making it simple to modify content for designated advertising efforts.

Consistent Joining: Web2Print Solutions can incorporate with online business stages, CRMs, and other business instruments to smooth out work processes.

How Web2Print is Altering the Business

The reception of Web 2 Print solutions is changing the print business in more ways than one:

Improved Availability: Clients can put orders every minute of every day from anyplace on the planet, breaking the limits of conventional business hours.

Cost Productivity: By digitizing the requesting and configuration process, organizations can decrease functional expenses and give the investment funds to clients.

Further developed Client Experience: Continuous sneak peaks, moment quotes, and quicker times required to circle back go with Web2Print a favored decision for the two people and organizations.

Maintainability: On-request printing and computerized confirmations decrease squander, making W2P Technology an eco-accommodating choice.

Enterprises Profiting from W2P Technology

While W2P arrangements are adequately adaptable to take special care of different areas, a few businesses have seen momentous advantages:

Retail: Customized bundling and special materials.

Training: Custom course materials and graduation memorabilia.

Showcasing Organizations: Speedy and practical creation of marked materials.

Corporate: Smoothed out creation of interior records and client introductions.

The Eventual fate of W2P Technology

As innovation keeps on advancing, so does the capability of Web 2 Print solutions. Future headways might incorporate simulated intelligence driven plan devices, expanded reality sees, and, surprisingly, more vigorous reconciliations with business frameworks. For organizations hoping to remain serious, embracing an Internet to Print arrangement is as of now not discretionary — it's fundamental.

Last Contemplations

W2P Technology is changing the print business by making it more available, productive, and client driven. Whether you're an entrepreneur, an advertiser, or a person with exceptional printing needs, Web2Print stages offer the adaptability and comfort to rejuvenate your thoughts. The period of Web 2 Print is here, and it's having an impact on the manner in which we ponder printing.

Is it true that you are prepared to embrace the fate of printing? Investigate the conceivable outcomes with Web to Print arrangements and take your print tasks to a higher level.

[sarahdawnsdesigns]

So I'm on an (unintentional!) roll with the pattern release this month, and the Mosaic Hat is now available on Ravelry, in my Web Shop, on Etsy, and as a download for the Pattern Muses on Patreon!

It’s designed to be the perfect weight for a lightweight spring hat, and the Mosaic Knitting technique means that it’s an easy knit without the fear of taming colourwork floats!

This hat comes in 3 sizes (Adult Small, Medium, and Large), with a full head circumference of 24 to 29 inches, though, if that sounds too big, please don't panic, as the brim of the hat pulls in quite a bit!

 Sample is knit in Stitch Please's Amethyst Label, now sadly, discontinued.  Pretty much any sock or fingering-weight yarn would work up well here, though I wouldn't recommend anything with a lot of fuzz, since that would obscure the colourwork.  My yarn suggestions include: Sweet Georgia Yarns Tough Love Sock, Knit Picks Twill Fingering, or Malabrigo Ultimate Sock. (yarn links are affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you make a purchase - there's no additional cost to you!)

The Mosaic Hat pattern has both written and charted instructions for the Mosaic Stitch pattern, and also has a large print version that's compatible with screen-reading technology that's included as a secondary download. No hiding additional accessibility features behind a paywall here!

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A link-clump demands a linkdump

Cometh the weekend, cometh the linkdump. My daily-ish newsletter includes a section called "Hey look at this," with three short links per day, but sometimes those links get backed up and I need to clean house. Here's the eight previous installments:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/

The country code top level domain (ccTLD) for the Caribbean island nation of Anguilla is .ai, and that's turned into millions of dollars worth of royalties as "entrepreneurs" scramble to sprinkle some buzzword-compliant AI stuff on their businesses in the most superficial way possible:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/ai-fever-turns-anguillas-ai-domain-into-a-digital-gold-mine/

All told, .ai domain royalties will account for about ten percent of the country's GDP.

It's actually kind of nice to see Anguilla finding some internet money at long last. Back in the 1990s, when I was a freelance web developer, I got hired to work on the investor website for a publicly traded internet casino based in Anguilla that was a scammy disaster in every conceivable way. The company had been conceived of by people who inherited a modestly successful chain of print-shops and decided to diversify by buying a dormant penny mining stock and relaunching it as an online casino.

But of course, online casinos were illegal nearly everywhere. Not in Anguilla – or at least, that's what the founders told us – which is why they located their servers there, despite the lack of broadband or, indeed, reliable electricity at their data-center. At a certain point, the whole thing started to whiff of a stock swindle, a pump-and-dump where they'd sell off shares in that ex-mining stock to people who knew even less about the internet than they did and skedaddle. I got out, and lost track of them, and a search for their names and business today turns up nothing so I assume that it flamed out before it could ruin any retail investors' lives.

Anguilla is a British Overseas Territory, one of those former British colonies that was drained and then given "independence" by paternalistic imperial administrators half a world away. The country's main industries are tourism and "finance" – which is to say, it's a pearl in the globe-spanning necklace of tax- and corporate-crime-havens the UK established around the world so its most vicious criminals – the hereditary aristocracy – can continue to use Britain's roads and exploit its educated workforce without paying any taxes.

This is the "finance curse," and there are tiny, struggling nations all around the world that live under it. Nick Shaxson dubbed them "Treasure Islands" in his outstanding book of the same name:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780230341722/treasureislands

I can't imagine that the AI bubble will last forever – anything that can't go on forever eventually stops – and when it does, those .ai domain royalties will dry up. But until then, I salute Anguilla, which has at last found the internet riches that I played a small part in bringing to it in the previous century.

The AI bubble is indeed overdue for a popping, but while the market remains gripped by irrational exuberance, there's lots of weird stuff happening around the edges. Take Inject My PDF, which embeds repeating blocks of invisible text into your resume:

https://kai-greshake.de/posts/inject-my-pdf/

The text is tuned to make resume-sorting Large Language Models identify you as the ideal candidate for the job. It'll even trick the summarizer function into spitting out text that does not appear in any human-readable form on your CV.

Embedding weird stuff into resumes is a hacker tradition. I first encountered it at the Chaos Communications Congress in 2012, when Ang Cui used it as an example in his stellar "Print Me If You Dare" talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njVv7J2azY8

Cui figured out that one way to update the software of a printer was to embed an invisible Postscript instruction in a document that basically said, "everything after this is a firmware update." Then he came up with 100 lines of perl that he hid in documents with names like cv.pdf that would flash the printer when they ran, causing it to probe your LAN for vulnerable PCs and take them over, opening a reverse-shell to his command-and-control server in the cloud. Compromised printers would then refuse to apply future updates from their owners, but would pretend to install them and even update their version numbers to give verisimilitude to the ruse. The only way to exorcise these haunted printers was to send 'em to the landfill. Good times!

Printers are still a dumpster fire, and it's not solely about the intrinsic difficulty of computer security. After all, printer manufacturers have devoted enormous resources to hardening their products against their owners, making it progressively harder to use third-party ink. They're super perverse about it, too – they send "security updates" to your printer that update the printer's security against you – run these updates and your printer downgrades itself by refusing to use the ink you chose for it:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

It's a reminder that what a monopolist thinks of as "security" isn't what you think of as security. Oftentimes, their security is antithetical to your security. That was the case with Web Environment Integrity, a plan by Google to make your phone rat you out to advertisers' servers, revealing any adblocking modifications you might have installed so that ad-serving companies could refuse to talk to you:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

WEI is now dead, thanks to a lot of hueing and crying by people like us:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/02/google_abandons_web_environment_integrity/

But the dream of securing Google against its own users lives on. Youtube has embarked on an aggressive campaign of refusing to show videos to people running ad-blockers, triggering an arms-race of ad-blocker-blockers and ad-blocker-blocker-blockers:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/where-will-the-ad-versus-ad-blocker-arms-race-end/

The folks behind Ublock Origin are racing to keep up with Google's engineers' countermeasures, and there's a single-serving website called "Is uBlock Origin updated to the last Anti-Adblocker YouTube script?" that will give you a realtime, one-word status update:

https://drhyperion451.github.io/does-uBO-bypass-yt/

One in four web users has an ad-blocker, a stat that Doc Searls pithily summarizes as "the biggest boycott in world history":

https://doc.searls.com/2015/09/28/beyond-ad-blocking-the-biggest-boycott-in-human-history/

Zero app users have ad-blockers. That's not because ad-blocking an app is harder than ad-blocking the web – it's because reverse-engineering an app triggers liability under IP laws like Section 1201 of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which can put you away for 5 years for a first offense. That's what I mean when I say that "IP is anything that lets a company control its customers, critics or competitors:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

I predicted that apps would open up all kinds of opportunities for abusive, monopolistic conduct back in 2010, and I'm experiencing a mix of sadness and smugness (I assume there's a German word for this emotion) at being so thoroughly vindicated by history:

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

The more control a company can exert over its customers, the worse it will be tempted to treat them. These systems of control shift the balance of power within companies, making it harder for internal factions that defend product quality and customer interests to win against the enshittifiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

The result has been a Great Enshittening, with platforms of all description shifting value from their customers and users to their shareholders, making everything palpably worse. The only bright side is that this has created the political will to do something about it, sparking a wave of bold, muscular antitrust action all over the world.

The Google antitrust case is certainly the most important corporate lawsuit of the century (so far), but Judge Amit Mehta's deference to Google's demands for secrecy has kept the case out of the headlines. I mean, Sam Bankman-Fried is a psychopathic thief, but even so, his trial does not deserve its vastly greater prominence, though, if you haven't heard yet, he's been convicted and will face decades in prison after he exhausts his appeals:

https://newsletter.mollywhite.net/p/sam-bankman-fried-guilty-on-all-charges

The secrecy around Google's trial has relaxed somewhat, and the trickle of revelations emerging from the cracks in the courthouse are fascinating. For the first time, we're able to get a concrete sense of which queries are the most lucrative for Google:

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/1/23941766/google-antitrust-trial-search-queries-ad-money

The list comes from 2018, but it's still wild. As David Pierce writes in The Verge, the top twenty includes three iPhone-related terms, five insurance queries, and the rest are overshadowed by searches for customer service info for monopolistic services like Xfinity, Uber and Hulu.

All-in-all, we're living through a hell of a moment for piercing the corporate veil. Maybe it's the problem of maintaining secrecy within large companies, or maybe the the rampant mistreatment of even senior executives has led to more leaks and whistleblowing. Either way, we all owe a debt of gratitude to the anonymous leaker who revealed the unbelievable pettiness of former HBO president of programming Casey Bloys, who ordered his underlings to create an army of sock-puppet Twitter accounts to harass TV and movie critics who panned HBO's shows:

https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-features/hbo-casey-bloys-secret-twitter-trolls-tv-critics-leaked-texts-lawsuit-the-idol-1234867722/

These trolling attempts were pathetic, even by the standards of thick-fingered corporate execs. Like, accusing critics who panned the shitty-ass Perry Mason reboot of disrespecting veterans because the fictional Mason's back-story had him storming the beach on D-Day.

The pushback against corporate bullying is everywhere, and of course, the vanguard is the labor movement. Did you hear that the UAW won their strike against the auto-makers, scoring raises for all workers based on the increases in the companies' CEO pay? The UAW isn't done, either! Their incredible new leader, Shawn Fain, has called for a general strike in 2028:

https://www.404media.co/uaw-calls-on-workers-to-line-up-massive-general-strike-for-2028-to-defeat-billionaire-class/

The massive victory for unionized auto-workers has thrown a spotlight on the terrible working conditions and pay for workers at Tesla, a criminal company that has no compunctions about violating labor law to prevent its workers from exercising their legal rights. Over in Sweden, union workers are teaching Tesla a lesson. After the company tried its illegal union-busting playbook on Tesla service centers, the unionized dock-workers issued an ultimatum: respect your workers or face a blockade at Sweden's ports that would block any Tesla from being unloaded into the EU's fifth largest Tesla market:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-sweden-strike/

Of course, the real solution to Teslas – and every other kind of car – is to redesign our cities for public transit, walking and cycling, making cars the exception for deliveries, accessibility and other necessities. Transitioning to EVs will make a big dent in the climate emergency, but it won't make our streets any safer – and they keep getting deadlier.

Last summer, my dear old pal Ted Kulczycky got in touch with me to tell me that Talking Heads were going to be all present in public for the first time since the band's breakup, as part of the debut of the newly remastered print of Stop Making Sense, the greatest concert movie of all time. Even better, the show would be in Toronto, my hometown, where Ted and I went to high-school together, at TIFF.

Ted is the only person I know who is more obsessed with Talking Heads than I am, and he started working on tickets for the show while I starting pricing plane tickets. And then, the unthinkable happened: Ted's wife, Serah, got in touch to say that Ted had been run over by a car while getting off of a streetcar, that he was severely injured, and would require multiple surgeries.

But this was Ted, so of course he was still planning to see the show. And he did, getting a day-pass from the hospital and showing up looking like someone from a Kids In The Hall sketch who'd been made up to look like someone who'd been run over by a car:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53182440282/

In his Globe and Mail article about Ted's experience, Brad Wheeler describes how the whole hospital rallied around Ted to make it possible for him to get to the movie:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/music/article-how-a-talking-heads-superfan-found-healing-with-the-concert-film-stop/

He also mentions that Ted is working on a book and podcast about Stop Making Sense. I visited Ted in the hospital the day after the gig and we talked about the book and it sounds amazing. Also? The movie was incredible. See it in Imax.

That heartwarming tale of healing through big suits is a pretty good place to wrap up this linkdump, but I want to call your attention to just one more thing before I go: Robin Sloan's Snarkmarket piece about blogging and "stock and flow":

https://snarkmarket.com/2010/4890/

Sloan makes the excellent case that for writers, having a "flow" of short, quick posts builds the audience for a "stock" of longer, more synthetic pieces like books. This has certainly been my experience, but I think it's only part of the story – there are good, non-mercenary reasons for writers to do a lot of "flow." As I wrote in my 2021 essay, "The Memex Method," turning your commonplace book into a database – AKA "blogging" – makes you write better notes to yourself because you know others will see them:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

This, in turn, creates a supersaturated, subconscious solution of fragments that are just waiting to nucleate and crystallize into full-blown novels and nonfiction books and other "stock." That's how I came out of lockdown with nine new books. The next one is The Lost Cause, a hopepunk science fiction novel about the climate whose early fans include Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, Bill McKibben and Kim Stanley Robinson. It's out on November 14:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/05/variegated/#nein

[nczaversnick]

Project Gemini: Worldbuilding

Let me just take a moment to shout out my amazing writing partner Rachelle for being so meticulously anal about some of this. I wouldn’t have this information if it weren’t for her googling shit at 3 am

You can follow her on instagram @panda.panduh

Setting

Setting: Cyberpunk adjacent. Definitely advance technology in a city

Country: Utristan

Capital city: Eltrax in Aurora District

Caspian’s home city: Dreake in Titania District

Currency:

Seols - fully digital currency only accessed through PINs and SERiALs

Utristan uses Seol currency (§XX UTS)

Because of the incredibly high inflation, 5.8k Seol (§5800 UTS) is worth 1 US dollars ($1 USD) during Caspian’s generation

Any living costs and salaries will be based off of Illinois and doubled–

Minimum hourly wage [legally allowed]: $24 USD

(Nursing assistant wage: $28 - $52 USD)

Monthly rent: $1138 USD

Monthly phone: $50 USD until $1200 USD [first gen phone]; $70 USD until $1600 USD [upgrade]

Clothing style:

The general public does not lean so hard into true cyberpunk fashion but you can see traces of it there.

Military and Medical uniforms are strictly regulated.

The [Rebel Group Name] have the closest to cyber punk style, having more liberties to express themselves as such

the cyberpunk aesthetic combines 40s film noir fashion, gothic styles of the 90s, military uniforms, and gear, and more experimental and futuristic cybernetic details. While the cyberpunk look might seem incredibly unique, its essence is composed of many incredibly varied sources.

Names:

Normals/Non-Deviants/etc: those who were born without elemental powers

Deviants: those who were born with elemental powers

The Zodiacs: those who were created within the Operation Crimson Army (OCA) program

Technology

PIN (Particle Infused Nanochip):

available as a unique combination of numbers and letters for non-electronic access. Infants are instantly chipped and tested for elemental identification

Who has them: Humans and Deviants

When is it introduced in the story: Book 1

Public knowledge about them: only about the functions, except GPS tracking and power suppression

Properties: a small, square device that has been surgically implanted within the dermis layer of the right or left wrist, depending on the dominant hand the user uses.

Its embedded, replicate copper oxide particles improve the skin's well-being and since it is not made of real metal, will not be likely to cause any allergic reactions. If it detects an abnormal amount of carbon dioxide (either due to intentionally cutting out the chip or CO2 poisoning), the chip will release a silent alarm that will alert the authorities.

Normal adult concentrations: 23 - 30 mmol/L

Atmospheric CO2: 21,050 mmol/L

Alert ranges: 35 - 21,050 mmol/L

Functions: access to all modes of transportation, monetary funds, and certain buildings, GPS tracking, power suppression [in later books]

SERiAL (Serial Etched Reference in Anterior Limbs):

Who has them: Civilian and military personnel Deviants, the Zodiacs

When is it introduced in the story: in the later books

Public knowledge about them: only about the properties, but not about the Zodiacs

Properties: a medium-sized tattoo etched into either the inner forearms or napes of necks.

The ink is made with a substance known as xylothane, a fire- and scratch-resistant ink that penetrates the dermis layer of skin.

Civilian and military personnel Deviants have the SERiAL printed on their inner forearms

All Zodiacs have the SERiAL and their zodiac symbol printed on the back of their necks

Functions: identification, access to criminal records

ROB (Radical Operational Bots): those who can afford small animatronic assistants have access to them.

Properties: most basic forms of androids and come as a 2x2-inch boxes

Function: entertainment, reminders of events, basic web search

Features: reforming personalities depending on who owns them, will perform basic commands, GPS tracking device

The [Rebel Group Name]: Quinn has officially renamed the ROB acronym to Radical Operational Buddies. These assistants have been torn apart and reconstructed without the GPS tracking device and made to look like animals, personalities reformed to match their owners’, will perform more advanced commands, and are personally customized to the needs of their owner

Adrian: dragon with a dog-like personality, programmed with PTSD and de-escalating training

Iris: bison with a stern and stable personality, creates blueprints and diagrams of buildings it's scanned and projects images

Aurelia: snake with a sneaky personality, often hides amongst the plants and dispenses water to help with watering

Athena: gecko with a sneaky personality, can blend into the background and often acts as a “fly on the wall” with advanced listening capabilities

Mason: rabbit with a grumpy, protective personality, has non-lethal lasers. Quinn put them there as a joke/convinced Iris to help him do that

Quinn: standard cube with a smiley face [if a cube could be high this cube is it], helps with programming

Caspian: small bird with a bubbly personality, able to record and playback music and recordings

Tablets (HSP Tab: Holographic Screen Projector): those who can afford tablets have access to them.

Depending on the region will depend on the type of tablet one might have. Can range from the most basic to the most advanced.

Basic form (HSP Tab BF1-4 and S): palm-sized, touch screen with a frame

Function: basic web search, call and text with 2-D images, fragile glass surface

Advanced form (HSP Tab AF5-9 and S): standard magazine-size, glass screen with a frame and holographic imaging

Function: advanced web search, call and text with 3-D imaging projection, indestructible glass surface

Monorails (MPA: Magnetically-Propelled Antiquitrain): hovers in the air by magnets. Lack of friction achieves fast speeds.

Publicly accessed and publicly owned by the government

Taxis (PEP: Particle-Effused Pulsecar): hovers in the air by the high magnetic field in the area. The effusion rate of the particles needs time to create a short burst of propelling, kinetic energy to move.

Publicly accessed and can be publicly or privately owned

Jets (SSCJ: Supersonic Stratospheric Concealment Jetstream)

Privately owned by the military

Deviants

Scientific background:

Humans have 4 bases for DNA: guanine, adenine, cytosine, and thymine. Deviants have 4 bases and 4 extra bases that determine their element: ignisine (fire), aquanine (water), terranine (earth), ventinine (wind). Certain combinations of the 8 bases will determine the Deviant’s elements:

Father/Mother

Aquanine: Water

Water/Water: Cyclone

Water/Earth: Plant

Water/Air: Weather

Water/Fire: [Invalid]

Terranine: Earth

Earth/Water: Crystal

Earth/Earth: Earthquake

Earth/Air [Invalid]

Earth/Fire: Metal

Ventinine: Air

Air/Water: Fog

Air/Earth [Invalid]

Air/Air: Aero-Telekineses

Air/Fire: Light

Ignisine: Fire

Fire/Water: [Invalid]

Fire/Earth: Lava

Fire/Air: Electrity

Fire/Fire: Inferno

Although opposing Deviants are able to mate like Humans, their offspring will only inherit and express one gene of either element from the mother or the father.

Rarely there will be offspring that express both genes from both parents due to mutation, but these often die in the early onset of pregnancy.

Those who survive express one element and have one “silent” element [meaning they will only be able to control one element] and are taken by the [Government Program] for further experiments.

Male babies will inherit their father’s genes, and female babies will inherit their mother’s.

Every baby that is born undergoes genetic testing to see which genes are expressed.

The Government

Utristan is held in a military state, with military members making up all branches of government and law enforcement. Those within the military are part of a group known as the Emissaries of Utristan.

Military consists of multiple other branches similar to: Army (combat), Air Force (air), Navy (water), Seals (secret ops) in early books

Military will crumble and become one giant branch: Army (everything) in later books

Army Ranks:

Class 1: lower-class military; doesn’t know aything about anything (grub work)

Private (Athena, Caspian and Aurelia)

Everyone who has ever graduated high school is a private since it’s a requirement to do at least 2 years of military service in Utristan

Corporeal (Iris)

Sergeant

Master Sergeant (Quinn)

Sergeant Major

Sergeant Major of the Army (steps up when General of the Army goes down)

Class 2: upper-class military; works closely with Zodiacs and OCA in general

Warrant Officer

Chief Warrant Officer

Lieutenant

Captain (Mason)

Major

Colonel (Adrian)

Major General

General (Lucia)

General of the Army

Operation Crimson Army (OCA)

Purpose: to weaponize the Deviants in order to have a one-up in any future wars

Deviants will develop normally and cannot be distinguished from Humans. Deviants that have been experimented on to have 2 or more expressed elements will develop more body mutations.

In the beginning, the OCA tried creating test tube babies that were genetically engineered to have 2 or more expressed elements, but since the DNA was not set like in older birthed babies, the DNA would often unravel and reject non-compatible bases.

Over time, those who survived having two expressed elements underwent “gene activation” in which 2 or more elements would be expressed, however, they would be more susceptible to developing physical mutation.

The ‘Zodiacs’

Physical mutations:

When genetically modified Deviants are created, depending on which elements are expressed, will undergo physical mutations such as:

glowing windpipes and coughing up cinders for fire elements

cold to the touch with skin feeling like cracking ice for water elements,

bones cracking and swiveling unnaturally with deformed skeletal structures and crystals growing in their pores for earth elements,

ghostly skin with shifting voices from whispering to booming roars for wind elements

Adrian is colder to the touch compared to other fire Deviants, which forces him to bundle up more than others. He would be extremely cold like other water Deviants, but since he hasn’t used his water powers as much, he’s not as affected. Because he’s used his fire powers so much in the past, his throat has started to become affected to where he prefers staying quiet and talks only when necessary.

The Zodiacs and their elements:

Capricorn:

Amped Electric

[Solider Group of 5+]

[Privates]

Aquarius:

Prophecy [Failed/Will Fail?]

[Colonel]

Pisces:

Poison

[Leader]

[Colonel]

Aries:

Amped Lava

[Small Group 2-3]

[Corporeals]

Taurus:

Stone Skin

[Soliders]

[Privates]

Gemini:

Adrian

[Leader]

[Colonel]

Cancer:

Telepathy

[Leader]

[Major]

Leo:

Amped up Inferno [Failed]

Virgo:

Invisibility

[Small Group]

[Corporeals]

Libra:

Speed

[Solider]

[Privates]

Scorpio:

Blood

[Leader]

[Colonel]

Sagittarius:

Oblivion [Failed]

The [Rebel Group Name]

Purpose: to gather the Deviants together to overthrow the government

Characters

🚧This section will eventually contain links to individual character posts🚧

Caspian Álvarez

Adrian Harlowe

Athena Álvarez

Aurelia Harlowe

Iris Dagon

Quinn Russo

Mason Hayes

Lucia Atore

Tags for Project Gemini in general; as usual, comment to be +/- from this list

@honeybewrites @the-letterbox-archives @the-golden-comet @the-ellia-west @yourpenpaldee

[salemoleander]

Comics - Web Weaving Resource

To return to the main Web Weaving Resources post, click here.

catcrumb - Daily digital drawings of cats Experiencing Emotions. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, often deeply relatable.

deep dark fears - Colorful ink illustrations of people's submitted deep dark fears, ranging from silly to horrific.

alison zai - Deeply saturated colored pencil comics of amorphous characters Experiencing Things.

A Softer World - A long-running, now finished collaborative comic between two deeply insightful and poetic writers. The 'voice' of the work can range from lovestruck to deeply jaded to downright cruel.

Obelisk & Metronome - Black and white single-panel comics of an obelisk and a metronome speaking to each other. Their exchanges are brief, often about fear, change, and the self.

Niche Stand-Alone Blogs

mountainqoats - The Mountain Goats lyrics typeset over classic art.

themeerkatsofmeerkatmanor - Brief gimmick blog of 'the meerkats of meerkat manor [do a thing]". Posts are hilarious and compelling in turns, with the repetition of the subject making reading it a kind of lulling rhythm.

screenshots of despair - Screenshots of the dramatic, sad, and depressing things technology and applications sometimes say.

AO3 Tag Of The Day - Now-ended blog posting daily humorous or interesting AO3 comments.

That's Believable - Hard to explain. Feels like reading internet comics written in 1902. Often absurd or horror-based humor, with all text and images looking like they were made on a printing press.

[mariacallous]

Connecting the dots of recent research suggests a new future for traditional websites:

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered search can provide a full answer to a user’s query 75% of the time without the need for the user to go to a website, according to research by The Atlantic.

A worldwide survey from the University of Toronto revealed that 22% of ChatGPT users “use it as an alternative to Google.”

Research firm Gartner forecasts that traffic to the web from search engines will fall 25% by 2026.

Pew Research found that a quarter of all web pages developed between 2013 and 2023 no longer exist.

The large language models (LLMs) of generative AI that scraped their training data from websites are now using that data to eliminate the need to go to many of those same websites. Respected digital commentator Casey Newton concluded, “the web is entering a state of managed decline.” The Washington Post headline was more dire: “Web publishers brace for carnage as Google adds AI answers.”

From decentralized information to centralized conclusions

Created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, the World Wide Web redefined the nature of the internet into a user-friendly linkage of diverse information repositories. “The first decade of the web…was decentralized with a long-tail of content and options,” Berners-Lee wrote this year on the occasion of its 35th anniversary.  Over the intervening decades, that vision of distributed sources of information has faced multiple challenges. The dilution of decentralization began with powerful centralized hubs such as Facebook and Google that directed user traffic. Now comes the ultimate disintegration of Berners-Lee’s vision as generative AI reduces traffic to websites by recasting their information.

The web’s open access to the world’s information trained the large language models (LLMs) of generative AI. Now, those generative AI models are coming for their progenitor.

The web allowed users to discover diverse sources of information from which to draw conclusions. AI cuts out the intellectual middleman to go directly to conclusions from a centralized source.

The AI paradigm of cutting out the middleman appears to have been further advanced in Apple’s recent announcement that it will incorporate OpenAI to enable its Siri app to provide ChatGPT-like answers. With this new deal, Apple becomes an AI-based disintermediator, not only eliminating the need to go to websites, but also potentially disintermediating the need for the Google search engine for which Apple has been paying $20 billion annually.

The Atlantic, University of Toronto, and Gartner studies suggest the Pew research on website mortality could be just the beginning. Generative AI’s ability to deliver conclusions cannibalizes traffic to individual websites threatening the raison d’être of all websites, especially those that are commercially supported.  

Echoes of traditional media and the web

The impact of AI on the web is an echo of the web’s earlier impact on traditional information providers. “The rise of digital media and technology has transformed the way we access our news and entertainment,” the U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2022, “It’s also had a devastating impact on print publishing industries.” Thanks to the web, total estimated weekday circulation of U.S. daily newspapers fell from 55.8 million in 2000 to 24.2 million by 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.

The World Wide Web also pulled the rug out from under the economic foundation of traditional media, forcing an exodus to proprietary websites. At the same time, it spawned a new generation of upstart media and business sites that took advantage of its low-cost distribution and high-impact reach. Both large and small websites now feel the impact of generative AI.   

Barry Diller, CEO of media owner IAC, harkened back to that history when he warned a year ago, “We are not going to let what happened out of free internet happen to post-AI internet if we can help it.” Ominously, Diller observed, “If all the world’s information is able to be sucked up in this maw, and then essentially repackaged in declarative sentence in what’s called chat but isn’t chat…there will be no publishing; it is not possible.”

The New York Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft alleging copyright infringement from the use of Times data to train LLMs. “Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism,” the suit asserts, “to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.”1

Subsequently, eight daily newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital, the nation’s second largest newspaper publisher, filed a similar suit. “We’ve spent billions of dollars gathering information and reporting news at our publications, and we can’t allow OpenAI and Microsoft to expand the Big Tech playbook of stealing our work to build their own businesses at our expense,” a spokesman explained.

The legal challenges are pending. In a colorful description of the suits’ allegations, journalist Hamilton Nolan described AI’s threat as an “Automated Death Star.”

“Providential opportunity”?

Not all content companies agree. There has been a groundswell of leading content companies entering into agreements with OpenAI.

In July 2023, the Associated Press became the first major content provider to license its archive to OpenAI. Recently, however, the deal-making floodgates have opened. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, home of The Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and multiple other publications in Australia and the United Kingdom, German publishing giant Axel Springer, owner of Politico in the U.S. and Bild  and Welt in Germany, venerable media company The Atlantic, along with new media company Vox Media, the Financial Times, Paris’ Le Monde, and Spain’s Prisa Media have all contracted with OpenAI for use of their product.

Even Barry Diller’s publishing unit, Dotdash Meredith, agreed to license to OpenAI, approximately a year after his apocalyptic warning.  

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson described his company’s rationale this way in an employee memo: “The digital age has been characterized by the dominance of distributors, often at the expense of creators, and many media companies have been swept away by a remorseless technological tide. The onus is now on us to make the most of this providential opportunity.”

“There is a premium for premium journalism,” Thomson observed. That premium, for News Corp, is reportedly $250 million over five years from OpenAI. Axel Springer’s three-year deal is reportedly worth $25 to $30 million. The Financial Times terms were reportedly in the annual range of $5 to $10 million.

AI companies’ different approaches

While publishers debate whether AI is “providential opportunity” or “stealing our work,” a similar debate is ongoing among AI companies. Different generative AI companies have different opinions whether to pay for content, and if so, which kind of content.

When it comes to scraping information from websites, most of the major generative AI companies have chosen to interpret copyright law’s “fair use doctrine” allowing the unlicensed use of copyrighted content in certain circumstances. Some of the companies have even promised to indemnify their users if they are sued for copyright infringement.

Google, whose core business is revenue generated by recommending websites, has not sought licenses to use the content on those websites. “The internet giant has long resisted calls to compensate media companies for their content, arguing that such payments would undermine the nature of the open web,” the New York Times explained. Google has, however, licensed the user-generated content on social media platform Reddit, and together with Meta has pursued Hollywood rights.

OpenAI has followed a different path. Reportedly, the company has been pitching a “Preferred Publisher Program” to select content companies. Industry publication AdWeek reported on a leaked presentation deck describing the program. The publication said OpenAI “disputed the accuracy of the information” but claimed to have confirmed it with four industry executives. Significantly, the OpenAI pitch reportedly offered not only cash remuneration, but also other benefits to cooperating publishers.    

As of early June 2024, other large generative AI companies have not entered into website licensing agreements with publishers.

Content companies surfing an AI tsunami

On the content creation side of the equation, major publishers are attempting to avoid a repeat of their disastrous experience in the early days of the web while smaller websites are fearful the impact on them could be even greater.

As the web began to take business from traditional publishers, their leadership scrambled to find a new economic model. Ultimately, that model came to rely on websites, even though website advertising offered them pennies on their traditional ad dollars. Now, even those assets are under attack by the AI juggernaut. The content companies are in a new race to develop an alternative economic model before their reliance on web search is cannibalized.

The OpenAI Preferred Publisher Program seems to be an attempt to meet the needs of both parties.

The first step in the program is direct compensation. To Barry Diller, for instance, the fact his publications will get “direct compensation for our content” means there is “no connection” between his apocalyptic warning 14 months ago and his new deal with OpenAI.

Reportedly, the cash compensation OpenAI is offering has two components: “guaranteed value” and “variable value.” Guaranteed value is compensation for access to the publisher’s information archive. Variable value is payment based on usage of the site’s information.

Presumably, those signing with OpenAI see it as only the first such agreement. “It is in my interest to find agreements with everyone,” Le Monde CEO Louis Dreyfus explained.   

But the issue of AI search is greater than simply cash. Atlantic CEO Nicolas Thompson described the challenge: “We believe that people searching with AI models will be one of the fundamental ways that people navigate to the web in the future.” Thus, the second component in OpenAI’s proposal to publishers appears to be promotion of publisher websites within the AI-generated content. Reportedly, when certain publisher content is utilized, there will be hyperlinks and hover links to the websites themselves, in addition to clickable buttons to the publisher.

Finally, the proposal reportedly offers publishers the opportunity to reshape their business using generative AI technology. Such tools include access to OpenAI content for the publishers’ use, as well as the use of OpenAI for writing stories and creating new publishing content.

Back to the future?

Whether other generative AI and traditional content companies embrace this kind of cooperation model remains to be seen. Without a doubt, however, the initiative by both parties will have its effects.

One such effect was identified in a Le Monde editorial explaining their licensing agreement with OpenAI. Such an agreement, they argued, “will make it more difficult for other AI platforms to evade or refuse to participate.” This, in turn, could have an impact on the copyright litigation, if not copyright law.

We have seen new technology-generated copyright issues resolved in this way before.2 Finding a credible solution that works for both sides is imperative. The promise of AI is an almost boundless expansion of information and the knowledge it creates. At the same time, AI cannot be a continued degradation of the free flow of ideas and journalism that is essential for democracy to function.

Newton’s Law in the AI age

In 1686 Sir Isaac Newton posited his three laws of motion. The third of these holds that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton described the consequence of physical activity; generative AI is raising the same consequential response for informational activity.

The threat of generative AI has pushed into the provision of information and the economics of information companies. We know the precipitating force, the consequential effects on the creation of content and free flow of information remain a work in progress.