Workforce and skills shortages in the arts, US Big Tech lobby targets foreign laws it doesn’t like and how did Australian universities become bad places to work?
This week's round-up comes to you from a hotel room in Den Haag (The Hague)! I am here to participate in the Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage (TAROCH) Workspaces meeting. ⟨ It is still technically Sunday here in Central European Time! ⟩
Over more than 500 pages Creative Australia and Service and Creative Skills Australia (SaCSA) lay out what many of us in the arts sector have known for awhile; there are gaping holes in lots of needed skills and recruiting certain roles is difficult. Technical and production roles across the board, and in some areas there's a shortage in skilled staff in management and leadership, finance and accounting, marketing and communications and business support.
The American Big Tech lobby group the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) have used Trump’s US trade review to let fly at a number of countries and their regulatory regimes CCIA claims are hurting poor old Big Tech. It is hard to have too much sympathy for the big tech players, but, behind all the overstated ‘discrimination’ and hyperbolic claims, CCIA’s submission does give one of the most comprehensive overviews of global tech regulation I've seen. And the numbers they are throwing around will leave you saying WTF now?!
Also, a rise in domestic university enrollments is a welcome trend for our beleaguered universities, but there is concern mismanagement is undermining student life, staff satisfaction and the good standing of our universities. Upper leadership across many campuses are being called out for horrendous restructures, poor transparency, no accountability, hostility, noncompliance with employment laws and more.
Mariah Carey and Miley Cyrus have both received verdicts from courts related to copyright claims against them. Carey’s Christmas wish came true, but not so for Cyrus. Her legal team made an error proving they were right ‘til they weren't. It looks like the ‘Flowers’ copyright case will be heading to court.
Plus the bit on the side: Another court reaffirmed the need for human authorship to attract copyright protection of AI-generated content, the Resale Royalty expands to more countries, CommonsDB has ambitious plans for increasing the reuse of Public Domain and openly licensed content online, Bluesky makes marketers happy and more.
What's been going on?
Here’s WTF happened this week:
Workforce report confirms critical workforce and skills shortages in the arts
Sadly it comes as no surprise that the Creative Workforce Scoping Study found critical workforce and skills shortages.
