Flags, Statistics and AI Theft!

 Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) development by big corporations the death-knell for copyright law and intellectual rights? If international legislators do not grasp this nettle soon, I fear we may have already lost the battle to keep ownership of anything we create.

On our website we have a useful and interesting application called ‘Flagcounter’ that shows the location of our visitors from the top twenty countries, by displaying their national flags in the right lower margin of our home page. But over the last few years, a worrying trend has developed.

The UK and USA have naturally been the top nations from which our visitors originated, with around 6% of our total visitors coming from these two English-speaking countries. In contrast, in less than two years, Singapore has sped up the visitor list and now accounts for 90% of our visitors! I doubt Singapore has that many cinderella local post devotees.

 After a little delving it appears the Singapore statistics represent internet robots, spiders, or crawlers, designed to “borrow” images for AI resources. In other words, stealing without credit to the image owner or creator.

Image Source: Pixabay

It seems Google Analytics (GA) filters out these visitors from Singapore, as they do not appear in website GA results. Of course, AI crawlers are not only restricted to Singapore, they are being used by all the major (and minor) AI developers targeting the world wide web.

The worst thing is they cannot be stopped from visiting my website even when they are specifically blocked in the site .htaccess file. Other website owners have reported similar futile attempts to protect their sites from these AI thieves. If I had not been using the application ‘Flagcounter’ I would not have noticed this digital burglary at all!

In order to counter this free unattributed use of CILP stamp images by AI bots, CILP is proposing to deface future stamp images with diagonal red lines, as is the custom of stamp issuing authorities worldwide. 

Am I bolting the door after the horse has bolted? Maybe, but a little victory makes me feel better!

 

Postmaster

STAMPEX 2024, London

The Philatelic Traders’ Society (PTS) has announced that Stampex will be held between 23rd – 26th October and will be free to attend this year. The show is hosted at the Business Design Centre at 52 Upper Street, The Angel, London, N1 OQH, and welcomes businesses, societies, hobbyists from all over the world

Stamp enthusiasts will now be free to walk straight into the show across all 4 days and enjoy meeting PTS members from around the world, learn, buy, sell, and soak up the atmosphere. A new streamlined entry process has removed the need for registration and sign-in. 

Stampex 2024 has over 50 stand holders, all of which are verified PTS members, with a range of philatelic material available to buy. Visitors wishing to sell their stamps can take advantage of the valuation services on offer.

Stampex is organised by the PTS and is the largest philatelic collectibles fair in the UK and has been running since 1956.