The tide is turning

A copyright win, for now. Plus, seaside with soul—St Leonards makes The Sunday Times' Best Places to Live.

Ciao bella,

Happy Solstice! I’m having a clear out—got piles and papers all over the floor. I keep moving them around to feel productive but not taking the time to sit and sort through i.e. read. I have a stack of old journals too. What do you do with yours? Be good to burn them, so I need to find somewhere to do that.

We’re having external works done so it’s all go here. Painting, gutters cleared (my balcony keeps flooding). New tiles and screen. It’s noisy but nice to watch men at work. I thought I’d find it difficult to wfh but it’s been energising. I’ve realised I thrive in chaos. Also love working to live music in coffee shops - it’s childhood stuff.

And early this morning, a vision in overalls sweeping my balcony (like George Clooney but with tattoos) so I popped out to say thanks. Next time I’ll offer him a Nespresso ;)

I’m celebrating with a candlelit sound bath tonight at the Humble Hub—a new wellness / biz collective in St Leonards, which Jo Allen started during the pandemic.

Pic from the unisex loo - good to know who’s got your back!

Spring is my absolute favourite season—sweet, chaotic and breathtakingly beautiful. A time for new beginnings (and cake) ✨

Nika xo

PS St Leonards in the Sunday Times’ Best Places to Live guide as “the acceptable face of seaside gentrification. It’s managed to up-and-come without losing its seaside soul.” Agree but it’s Hastings & St Leonards - we’re a double act and complement each other.

Hit me up if you want a tour!

Copyright & AI progress

The government’s Copyright & AI report is out.

We’ve won a big argument, for now. They’ve dropped the opt-out proposal as their preferred option – just 3% of respondents supported it. (Opt-out would’ve allowed AI developers to scrape creators’ work without permission or pay).

In light of the strong views from the consultation, the gaps in evidence and the rapidly evolving AI sector and international context, a broad copyright exception with opt-out is no longer the government’s preferred way forward.

There’s always a BUT…

Instead, we propose to gather more evidence on how copyright laws are impacting the development and deployment of AI across the economy and the economic benefits of reform.

In other words, they need more time to get their heads round it all.

All our lobbying has paid off - a win to be celebrated. But they’re still planning to reform copyright law, as per Matt Clifford’s 2025 AI Action Plan.

The work programme focuses on AI Labelling, Digital Replicas, Creator Control and Transparency, and a working group for indie creatives.

It’s been a long time coming. I agree with SoA CEO Anna Ganley that “the pace of progress needs to match the excessive speed at which AI is developing and encroaching on creative industries.”

Also appreciate it’s not easy balancing workers’ rights and fair pay for creatives with economic growth and attracting AI companies to the UK. But we don’t want to be in US tech pockets either—we needs our own world class AI companies.

Keep banging the drum—it makes a difference.

Happy reading!

Really Simple Licensing (RSL)

I wrote about RSL last week. Got a reply from Matt Mullenweg - “On WordPress.com you can install plugins to do this or whatever else you want.” 🙂

From James LePage, Head of AI, Automattic - he’s on the RSL Technical Steering Committee.

WordPress.com continually reviews emerging standards to ensure it remains a strong platform for creators as the open web evolves, including efforts like the Really Simple Licensing standard. We’re evaluating what platform-level support for RSL could look like over time.

Today, WordPress.com site owners already have several relevant customization paths available depending on plan, including installing plugins, adding code to site headers or footers, and modifying robots directives to support this, and other emerging web standards relevant to AI.

For creators interested in experimenting with RSL-style approaches today, plugin-based implementations are already possible. We see initiatives like RSL as part of a broader effort to give publishers clearer control over how automated systems access and license their content.

DONE. Installed and active so let’s see - asserting my legal rights :)