Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 309 posts

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#181

Post by lordnacho »

mlsu wrote: post #43

Copyright is not a real thing. It's a fiction. Subverting copyright law is not like subverting the laws of physics. What happens when you subvert copyright law is some guys with guns, in either an overt way or a subtle one, force a trade of your imaginary resource (copyright) for the real resource (money), through licensing or fines. Debate about what AI means for copyright is really a debate about what we choose to…

The thing that separates copyright from the other fictions mentioned is that there are pretty good reasons to think this particular fiction is not useful.

Property and debt have much longer histories and seem more clearly defensible.

Of course there is one really big fiction out there that a lot of people no longer really believe, but that doesn't mean longevity isn't a thing to consider.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#182

Post by naet »

robertlagrant wrote: post #58
thot_experiment wrote: post #8

No subscription and archive.is is broken on 1.1 but it seems like the conversation is finally moving in a good direction. I'm very very tentatively hopeful that we might see some reduction of IP rights in my lifetime. It's going to be a long hard fight but maybe, just maybe we will see people wake the fuck up and realize how important the building up the fucking commons is to the progress of all humanity.

Is that from the perspective of a reader of novels or a writer of novels? Readers love free stuff.

It can end up being bad for both readers and writers in the long term.

If writers aren't able to find profit in writing then there will be less people spending the time and effort to produce good writing, which in turn means less quality material for readers to read (and, as an aside, less quality material for an AI to train on in the future).

We could arguably reach some type of feedback loop where less quality writing leads to less interest in reading, which leads to smaller reading audiences, which leads to less quality writing being produced, etc.

People do love free stuff, but free stuff often isn't sustainable under our current economic system.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#183

Post by [deleted] »

fulladder wrote: post #118
mlsu wrote: post #43

Copyright is not a real thing. It's a fiction. Subverting copyright law is not like subverting the laws of physics. What happens when you subvert copyright law is some guys with guns, in either an overt way or a subtle one, force a trade of your imaginary resource (copyright) for the real resource (money), through licensing or fines. Debate about what AI means for copyright is really a debate about what we choose to…

Contracts are not a real thing. It's a fiction. Subverting contract law is not like subverting the laws of physics. What happens when you subvert contract law is some guys with guns, in either an overt way or a subtle one, force a trade of your imaginary resource (a contract) for the real resource (money), through licensing or fines.

[deleted]

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#184

Post by rhystmills »

silveira wrote: post #160

I find it revealing that some decades ago when teenagers were copying mp3s in their rooms for their own enjoyment it was piracy, crime, reprehensible, police, prisons, etc. When corporations are doing mass copyright infringement, we are talking about death of IP or changing the copyright laws to accommodate them.

There are plenty of articles from major news orgs about we shouldn't accept LLMs infringing copyright. The New York Times are suing OpenAI.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#185

Post by k__ »

throwboatyface wrote: post #82
k__ wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they have a point. Copyright law is already different from country to country.

Some countries have roundabouts. Some countries let you make a right turn on a red light. Traffic law isn't any more universal than copyright law. All law is made up but that doesn't make it less real.

I didn't mean to imply that they aren't real.

I just wanted to say that laws are subject to change.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#186

Post by yokem55 »

noitpmeder wrote: post #141
suoduandao3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it 'stolen' if it was part of a public dataset? Is the argument that OpenAI was scraping data that should have been behind a paywall?

Just because it's publicly viewable does not mean it's free for reuse. Imagine an author who uploads chapters of their book to their own website. You cant take that and claim it's yours. Similarly with all the publically viewable source codes on GitHub/Lab. Just because you can view the code doesn't mean there aren't licenses in play for how you are able to use it. Further, what happens if stolen information is poste…

That 'usage' is taking statistical notes about the work (creating factual statements about the work) and imputing those notes into a database, averaged with a few billion other notes about other works. That is a usage that copyright under current law simply doesn't cover or protect for. It doesn't even need the analysis if 'fair use' because, there's no copying or public performance happing in the creation/training of the model.

Where infringement arguably can happen is when that model is used in the generation of content - and if the user is prompting regenerate a protected work, then that is where the infringement happens. But not before. Maybe the various ai services can adequately guard against that illicit usage. Maybe not. And if not, its those live services that would need to be shut down.

But the creation and training of a model, and even distributing that model for people to use with their own computers in private does not engage in copyright infringement.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#187

Post by ricardo81 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #176
silveira wrote: post #160

I find it revealing that some decades ago when teenagers were copying mp3s in their rooms for their own enjoyment it was piracy, crime, reprehensible, police, prisons, etc. When corporations are doing mass copyright infringement, we are talking about death of IP or changing the copyright laws to accommodate them.

> when teenagers were copying mp3s in their rooms for their own enjoyment it was piracy, crime, reprehensible, police, prisons, etc. When corporations are doing mass copyright infringement, we are talking about death of IP or changing the copyright laws to accommodate them It's been over a decade since an individual was prosecuted for digital piracy [1]. Longer since anyone was threatened with jail time. When it was…

I think the GP's point was it's different rules for big co vs individuals breaching the same idea.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#188

Post by gaganyaan »

mschuster91 wrote: post #34
ricardo81 wrote: post #18

It's been dead a while because of big tech. YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter - they have no way of effectively managing IP and so you basically see people's stolen content and they monetise it, so TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle. Purely IMO, big tech normalised the taking of other people's content, and it's getting to the point where content creators (as in, ones that are capable of producing…

> TBF Napster and torrents are another and earlier angle. Napster didn't kill the music industry, torrents didn't kill the movie industry because people still want to see movies on a big screen experience. And so, actors, directors, VFX artists, cutters, riggers, lighting staff, costume/mask people, they all continue to have jobs. But now, with AI being already able to do very realistic photos, and in a few years lik…

Completely unfounded fear, fortunately. AI will enable more people to be creative than ever before. People won't stop telling stories because of capitalism, they'll just continue the tradition of storytelling that predates capitalism by many millenia.

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#189

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ricardo81 wrote: post #187
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when teenagers were copying mp3s in their rooms for their own enjoyment it was piracy, crime, reprehensible, police, prisons, etc. When corporations are doing mass copyright infringement, we are talking about death of IP or changing the copyright laws to accommodate them It's been over a decade since an individual was prosecuted for digital piracy [1]. Longer since anyone was threatened with jail time. When it was…

I think the GP's point was it's different rules for big co vs individuals breaching the same idea.

> GP's point was it's different rules for big co vs individuals breaching the same idea

My point is it isn't. Individual copyright infringement is virtually unenforced today. To the extent it was in the last decade, the penalty was a fine. Meanwhile, OpenAI is being sued by the New York Times [1] and various writers [2].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-t...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/technology/more-writers-sue-openai-c...

Re: Is A.I. The Death of I.P.?

#190

Post by ricardo81 »

visarga wrote: post #171
ricardo81 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be a good ethos but you can't simply undermine people's life work for your ethos especially when there's laws protecting their life work. Put yourself in their shoes. Maybe you use some AI derivative work for your own life's work and then when you've finally accomplished what you want to do, someone else duplicates it, or uses the majority of your work? What do you expect out of it. If you don't expect to be p…

Use AI to build things for yourself. You get the benefit in those things, it doesn't matter if anyone else copies, as long as you're not selling content.

Sounds fine to me, just if the AI abides.
Post reply on HN