Showing 1 - 10 of 698
SCOTUS slaps down YouTube copyright actions
Life, James Hein, Published on 22/04/2026
» Following on from my previous observation of the music industry harassing content creators, the Supreme Court in the US just rewrote the rules of secondary copyright liability. On March 25, the Supreme Court unanimously held that simply knowing your users might infringe copyright is not enough to make you liable. This negated the old theory that "knowledge plus material contribution" was enough.
How YouTube fails its creators
Life, James Hein, Published on 08/04/2026
» YouTube is failing in customer protection, especially in certain categories. As a case study, consider YouTuber Davie504. Unless you are a bass player or interested in bass lines, you probably haven't heard of him. He spends time practising and demonstrating bass playing in a proficient and sometimes amusing fashion. He is unassuming and obviously works hard to present good content. In general, if you are playing any musical selection in a teaching presentation, particularly if you are playing it yourself, or if the section is short and not the full song, then this should be all covered by "fair use". Enter the music industry. When you think about overbearing corporate control, this is the perfect example. Within this, some artists are worse than others, with the absolute worst being whomever represents The Eagles.
A silent threat
Life, Suwitcha Chaiyong, Published on 06/04/2026
» In the past, schools were believed to be safe places for youngsters. However, it has been revealed that many students are victims of bullying there.
Robots get smooth moves
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/03/2026
» The subject of the week is robots. The amount of news on these keeps growing and growing. South Korea is first up here with their KAIST Humanoid. In the field test, the robot was shown running across a soccer pitch, jumping, taking shots on goal, and even doing dance moves akin to the Michael Jackson moonwalk. Many robot demonstrations still look a bit stiff but these moves were quite smooth. The robot can run at about 12kph on flat ground with the next goal at 14kph. It can climb a ladder with 40cm steps and the knees can generate 320 Newton metres of peak torque so it can push heavier objects. The current model is based on the lower human half but the goal is for a full humanoid form that can work with people in industrial environments.
Two artistic support funds now open for applications
Life, Thana Boonlert, Published on 11/03/2026
» Emerging artists and creatives can now apply for professional support through two funding programmes.
Caveat emptor is undefeated in online shopping
Life, James Hein, Published on 11/03/2026
» It is becoming more common to buy things online. The majority of my shopping, not counting groceries, is now done that way. In the past I've warned about prices that are too good to be true, like a 4TB thumb drive for a few dollars from sites like Temu and AliExpress. There is now a kind of middle ground where the price could be correct and it's coming from, say, Amazon. Recently, even though I had some doubts, I bought a 5TB SSD drive from Amazon for around half of what I'd expect it to be. I did this knowing I can easily send things back to Amazon.
The power of community
Life, Suwitcha Chaiyong, Published on 09/03/2026
» According to the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, cities face many complex problems. In particular, domestic violence is a serious issue. In 2024, almost 800 women died from violence, or an average of two women per day, with alcohol and drug abuse being contributing factors.
Retaking the stage
Life, Suwitcha Chaiyong, Published on 04/03/2026
» True Academy Fantasia, better known as AF, was a pioneer of 24-hour reality television in Thailand. The programme was produced by acquiring the rights of La Academia in Mexico. AF was officially launched as UBC Academy in 2004.
Love or lie?
Life, Suwitcha Chaiyong, Published on 27/02/2026
» According to the Royal Thai Police, there were 5,164 cases of romance scams with damages of over 1.6 billion baht from online crimes reported between 2022 and 2024. To raise awareness of romance scams, COFACT (Collaborative Fact Checking) organised the forum “Love Or Lie? Exposing Romance Scams on Valentine's Day”.
AI learning versus human creativity is a real battle
Life, James Hein, Published on 25/02/2026
» If you’ve been reading these columns long enough, you’ll probably know that I write music and I’ve written some books. With the advent of artificial intelligence, the concept of copyright and private property has blurred. The standard rule was, what you have worked hard on to create, belongs to you. As musicians and authors, ideally, we create, we write and we invent. In the world of AI, it will draw a picture, write a book and create music for you based on a simple text prompt that itself may have also been written for you by AI.