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Nicolas Suzor

Nicolas Suzor

@nicsuzor.bsky.social

220 followers 230 following 15 posts

Law prof, working to make tech more fair. Future Fellow @ QUT Digital Media Research Centre; Chief Investigator @admscentre.org.au; Member @ Oversight Board.
He/him. All views are my own.
https://nic.suzor.net

Business 28%

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Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

What I can't get over is just how terrible a strategy this is when Google has been fighting so hard for so long to avoid being pushed into licensing deals for snippets, governments imposing link taxes, and coming soon to a country near you, brand new weird and made up AI training data dividends!

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

tl;dr: cry me a river, Google. This looks terrible, it goes against its own long-argued claims, it sucks Google even more towards a paid and licensed-search future, and makes it look even more anti-competitive. And it's just _not necessary_; it's just not that much of a threat.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

If users are allowed to read books, copy facts for research, or run their own text mining, can a company build a massive digital library to enable that? Google was on the side of helping people get access to information for non-infringing uses. Maybe it still is, but the optics here are terrible.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

And then the proxy problem: so many copyright cases are fought over whether a company can profitably help users do things they're entitled to. Can a library copy a chapter on my behalf? Can a web-pvr record tv on my behalf? If I'm allowed to access search results, can someone help me automate it?

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

Serp Api fills a niche that Google has REFUSED to service: programmattic access to search. That's really important for anyone who wants to, say, make sure their robots are well-grounded in current knowledge -- kindof a big deal, and you just can't afford to build that from scratch.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

What makes this worse is just how tightly Google has fought to protect its scraping based business model by making it so hard for others to access its hoards of other people's data. It's just not a sympathetic plaintiff, and the suit is unlikely to get us useful, thoughtful precedent.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

Regardless of the merits of the case, suing here makes Google look like it's pulling the ladder up after itself. It's also completely unnecessary; I'd be that someone would have sued Serp API or Perplexity or another target relatively soon. Google could have waited that out.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

Google has historically been on the other side of this fight. It's the poster child for amazing innovation underpinned by making public information hard to lock up, not protecting facts with copyright, and not protecting 'non consumptive' uses of copyright material.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

Best case, Google looks like a multi-billion dollar company that grew up before there were rules and developed a sweet little (massive) market advantage from its data. With robots.txt and a lot of technical control, it has pioneered an industry standard that protects that advantage.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · 7d

In dumb news of the day, Google has filed suit against SerpAPI: blog.google/technology/s...

I've said this before: Google is not the right plaintiff for these cases. There's some important issues to work out about robots.txt and proxy uses and scraping facts. But Google looks real bad here.

Why we’re taking legal action against SerpApi’s unlawful scraping

We filed a suit today against the scraping company SerpApi.

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor, Kate Starbird

Lawfare @lawfaremedia.org · 21d

At 11am, watch @klonick.bsky.social and @noupside.bsky.social discuss the European Commission's announcement that they are fining X 120 million Euros for impersonation scams with “verification,” broken advertising transpaency system, and blocking researchers from its platform.

LIVE SOON: Lawfare Live: The EU Fines X 120 M Euros - What Comes Next?

Starting Dec 5 at 11:00 AM EST

open.substack.com

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor

Chris Marsden @chrismarsden.bsky.social · Nov 13

Tomorrow 10am AEST (midnight Brussels) is our #digitallaw25 symposium, 2nd of its kin. Packed programme, exceptional abstracts & slides! With @mariaosullivan.bsky.social @nicsuzor.bsky.social hosted at the Law Chambers @monashuniversity.bsky.social with Deakin Law. Any Oz tech law profs can follow

Reposted by Shannon Vallor, Rebecca Solnit, Margaret Mitchell , and 21 more Shannon Vallor, Rebecca Solnit, Margaret Mitchell, Will Jennings, Brendan Nyhan, Nicolas Suzor, Peter Campbell, James Grimmelmann, Rebecca Tushnet, Adrian Daub, Jacob T. Levy, Scott A. Imberman, Graham Webster, Bessma Momani, David Murakami Wood, Aurélien Mondon, Jesús García, Woodrow Hartzog, Aleksandra Urman, Tim Stephens, Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Debora Weber-Wulff, Nathan P. Kalmoe, Elise Thomas

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · Sep 30

OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor, Kate Starbird

Kate Klonick @klonick.bsky.social · Sep 30

BREAKING
@knightcolumbia.org just won their case against Trump admin’s policy arresting/deporting noncitizen stud. & fac. participating in pro-Palestinian activism

This is a threat mailed to chambers of the 84yo Reagan appointed judge. He started the opinion with it and this is how he ended.

1/2

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor

Alan Rozenshtein @alanrozenshtein.com · Aug 7

A little late, but my thoughts on the "Woke AI" Executive Order, in @lawfaremedia.org. www.lawfaremedia.org/article/eval...

The short answer is that the order is likely constitutional, its principles are normatively reasonable (if imperfectly articulated), and its structure shows the compromises necessary when trying to make rational policy under an irrational regime.

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor

Dave Willner @dwillner.bsky.social · Jul 18

A year ago at #TrustCon, I ran around like a maniac showing people something on my laptop. We'd just gotten CoPE - our policy interpretation model - working. It felt like a huge achievement, validating our ideas about LLM-powered labeling. 🧵 1/7

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor

Henry Fraser @henrylfraser.bsky.social · Jul 3

Great panel yesterday on 'Governing automated decision-making for positive social services' with @kimweatherall.bsky.social , Samantha Floreani, Jake Goldenfein, and Kath Albury, organised and chaired by Christine Parker at @admscentre.org.au . The highlights of the conversation (in thread):

Reposted by David Lazer, Nicolas Suzor, Alice Marwick , and 1 more David Lazer, Nicolas Suzor, Alice Marwick, Aleksandra Urman

rasmuskleis.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social · Jun 24

Working on platform governance?

Join for PlatGovNet 2025
Free online conference Dec 1-2
Extended abstracts (800-1000 words) due Sep 2

Amazing community, opportunity to share work, get feedback, meet others working in this area.

Glad to be part of organizing it
Details: platgov.net/conferences/...

2025 Conference Call for Submissions — PlatGovOpen MenuClose Menu

2025 Conference Call for Submissions

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor, Thomas Poell

Christian Katzenbach @ckatzenbach.bsky.social · May 14

I am getting excited! 3 weeks to go until our AoIR Symposium 2025 in Bremen will kick-off! The line-up of plenary speakers is wonderful, and the program so promising. If you are able to join in early June, don't miss to register for the few remaining seats. platform-governance.org/aoir-flashpo...

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · Feb 22

why did nobody tell me python 3.10 introduced a match/case syntax? WHAT ELSE HAVE I BEEN MISSING?

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · Nov 29

Very happy to see this work come out from the amazing @klonick.bsky.social and team — measuring relationship between outrage and the spread of false information

Kate Klonick @klonick.bsky.social · Nov 29

I’m super excited to announce I'm part of an amazing team (<3 @williambrady.bsky.social @killianmcloughlin.bsky.social @mjcrockett.bsky.social) that just published a paper in @science.org on the role of outrage in spread of misinformation

Link here:
science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Summary in🧵🔽
1/

Reposted by Amy Bruckman, Lisa M. Given, Nicolas Suzor , and 4 more Amy Bruckman, Lisa M. Given, Nicolas Suzor, Martin Husovec, Marshall Van Alstyne, Scott L. Althaus, João Pedro Quintais

Kate Klonick @klonick.bsky.social · Nov 29

I’m super excited to announce I'm part of an amazing team (<3 @williambrady.bsky.social @killianmcloughlin.bsky.social @mjcrockett.bsky.social) that just published a paper in @science.org on the role of outrage in spread of misinformation

Link here:
science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Summary in🧵🔽
1/

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · Nov 26

From the most excellent Tegan Cohen: www.uottawa.ca/en/news-all/...

Automating housing (in)justice: The promise and limits of ‘fair’ rent tech | University of Ottawa

The AI + Society Initiative is excited to continue amplifying the voices of emerging scholars from around the world through our bilingual blog series Global Emerging Voices in AI and Society, stemming...

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · Nov 26

omg i did this last week and woke up at 1pm, i kid you not.

Nicolas Suzor @nicsuzor.bsky.social · Nov 26

Ok, I'm here, hello world!

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor, Bianca Fileborn

ARC Tracker @arc-tracker.bsky.social · Nov 26

🚨 #DiscoveryProjects #DP25 announcement:

❗️Outcomes announced publicly for Discovery Projects 2025❗️

See ARC's RMS for list ➡️ rms.arc.gov.au/RMS/Report/D...

/bot

Research Management System - Scheme Round Statistics for Approved Applications - Discovery Projects 2025 round 1

RMS is the ARC's Research Management System, a web-based system used by eligible researchers to prepare and submit research proposals and assessments under the ARC National Competitive Grants Program ...

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor

ysabel @ysabel.bsky.social · Oct 21

I feel so proud to announce that my first book - The Kids Are Online: Confronting the Myths and Realities of Young Digital Life - will be published in March 2025, by @ucpress.bsky.social 🫶🏼

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor

Reposted by Nicolas Suzor