SRI Seminar Series: Pamela Samuelson

Schwartz Reisman Institute

Join us for a seminar featuring UC Berkeley's  Pamela Samuelson on Wednesday, February 5th.

SRI Seminar Series

The SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society.

Our weekly SRI Seminar Series welcomes <a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/pamela-samuelson/" title="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/pamela-samuelson/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Pamela Samuelson</a>, Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley. Samuelson is co-director of the Berkeley Center for Law &amp; Technology, co-founder and chair of the board of Authors Alliance, and a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She is a recognized pioneer in digital copyright law, intellectual property, cyberlaw, and information policy.Samuelson’s research focuses on the legal and policy challenges posed by emerging technologies, particularly in the areas of copyright, software protection, and cyberlaw. Samuelson has been honored with the Anita Borg Institute’s Women of Vision Award for Social Impact and Public Knowledge’s IP3 Award for her contributions to Internet law and policy.Moderator: Lisa Austin Talk title: "Will copyright derail generative AI technologies?" Abstract: At last count, thirty-five lawsuits in the U.S. and two in Canada are challenging the legality of using in-copyright works to train generative AI models. While the lawsuits are still in early stages, fair use/fair dealing defenses are likely to be the main focus of judicial analyses of their merits. This talk will explain the issues that judges have decided so far and what issues have yet to be addressed. Although generative AI developers point to some precedents that support their fair use defenses, this talk will explain why judges may find them not as helpful as the developers hope. At this point, some cases seem stronger than others. Not only are the plaintiffs seeking very large damage awards, but also some want courts to order models trained on the plaintiffs' data to be destroyed, and courts have power to issue such orders. The broader impacts of these lawsuits for academic research and development are at present invisible to the courts. About the speaker<a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/pamela-samuelson/" title="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/pamela-samuelson/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Pamela </a><a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/pamela-samuelson/" title="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/our-faculty/faculty-profiles/pamela-samuelson/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Samuelson</a> is the Richard M. Sherman Distinguished Professor of Law and Information at the University of California, Berkeley. She is recognized as a pioneer in digital copyright law, intellectual property, cyberlaw and information policy. Since 1996, she has held a joint appointment at <a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/" title="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Berkeley Law School</a> and <a href="https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/" title="https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">UC Berkeley’s School of Information</a>. Samuelson is a director of the internationally-renowned <a href="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/" title="https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Berkeley Center for Law &amp; Technology</a>. She is co-founder and chair of the board of <a href="https://www.authorsalliance.org/" title="https://www.authorsalliance.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Authors Alliance</a>, a nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in access to knowledge. She also serves on the board of directors of the <a href="https://www.eff.org/" title="https://www.eff.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Electronic Frontier Foundation</a>, as well as on the advisory boards for the <a href="https://epic.org/" title="https://epic.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Electronic Privacy Information Center</a>, the <a href="https://cdt.org/" title="https://cdt.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Center for Democracy &amp; Technology</a>, and Public Knowledge.Samuelson began her legal career as an associate with Willkie Farr &amp; Gallagher in New York. She began her career as a legal academic at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, from which she visited at Columbia, Cornell, and Emory Law Schools. While on the Berkeley faculty, she has been a distinguished visiting professor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law, as well as a visiting professor at the University of Melbourne and Harvard Law School. She was named an honorary professor at the University of Amsterdam in 2002.Samuelson has written and published extensively in the areas of copyright, software protection, and cyberlaw. Since 1990, Samuelson has been a contributing editor of <a href="https://cacm.acm.org/" title="https://cacm.acm.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Communications of the ACM</a>, a computing professionals journal respected for its coverage of existing and emerging technologies, for which she has written more than seventy “Legally Speaking” columns. From 1997 through 2002, Samuelson was a fellow of the John D. &amp; Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is also a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery. The <a href="https://anitab.org/" title="https://anitab.org/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Anita Borg Institute</a> honored Samuelson with its Women of Vision Award for Social Impact in 2005, and the public interest organization Public Knowledge awarded her its IP3 Award for her contributions to Internet law and policy in October 2010.

About the SRI Seminar SeriesThe SRI Seminar Series brings together the Schwartz Reisman community and beyond for a robust exchange of ideas that advance scholarship at the intersection of technology and society. Seminars are led by a leading or emerging scholar and feature extensive discussion.To register for all seminar events in the Winter 2025 season, please contact us directly at sri.research@utoronto.ca. About the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and SocietyThe Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is a research institute at the University of Toronto that explores the ethical and societal implications of technology. Our mission is to deepen knowledge of technologies, societies, and humanity by integrating research across traditional boundaries to build human-centred solutions.Explore each session in advance by visiting <a href="https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/events" title="https://srinstitute.utoronto.ca/events" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">SRI’s Events page</a>.Missed an event? Visit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSq8_q4SCU3rYFwnA2bDxyQ" title="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSq8_q4SCU3rYFwnA2bDxyQ" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">SRI’s YouTube channel </a>to watch previous seminars.

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SRI Seminar Series: Pamela Samuelson

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