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Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

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Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#181

Post by DrScientist »

ahtihn wrote: post #114
ehnto wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree on the last paragraph. It's data online, your data, and it was used for commercial purposes without your consent. In fact, I never consented for anyone to access my server. Just because it has an IP address, does not make it a public service. Obviously in a practical sense that is a silly position to take, and in prior cases there is usually an extenuating factor that got the person charged, eg breaki…

> In fact, I never consented for anyone to access my server. Just because it has an IP address, does not make it a public service. If you don't take any steps to make it clear that it's not public, like an auth wall or putting pages on unguessable paths, then it is public, because that is what everyone expects. Just like you if you have a storefront, if the door is unlocked you'd expect people to just come in and no…

Your shop might be open sure - but aren't we talking about people coming in and taking whatever they like for free?

ie if you were an art gallery, the expectation would be people could come in and look, but you don't expect them to come in, photograph everything and then sell prints of everything online.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#182

Post by omnimus »

DrScientist wrote: post #180
chii wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meta "sublicensed" my image to someone else, I wouldn't have much to say there. but you agreed to this, when agreeing to the TOS. > I post a picture on my site that is then used by a large publisher for ads, I would (at least in theory) have some recourse which you didn't sign any contract, and therefore it is a violation of copyright. But the new AI training methods are currently, at least imho, not a violation of…

> But the new AI training methods are currently, at least imho, not a violation of copyright - not any more than a human eye viewing it Interesting comparison - as if a human viewed something, memorized it and reproduced in a recognisable way to be pretty much the same, wouldn't that still breach copyright? ie in the human case it doesn't matter whether it went through an intermediate neural encoding - what matters i…

This whole AI learns like a human is trajectory of thought pushed by AI companies. They at same time try to humanize AI (it learns like a human would) and dehumanize humans (humans are stochastic parrots anyway). It's if anything a distraction if not straight up anti-human.

But you are right that copyright is complex and in the end decided by human (often in court). Consider how code infringement is not about code itself but about what it does. If you saw somewhat original implementation of something and then you rewrite it in different language by yourself there is high chance its still copyright infringement.

On the other hand with images and art it's even more about cultural context. For example works of pop artists like Andy Warhol are for sure original works (even though some of it was disputed recently in court and lost). Nobody considers Andy Warhols work unoriginal even if it often looks very similar to some output it was riffing off because the essence is different to the original.

Compare that to pepople prompting directly with name of artist they want to replicate. This in direct copyright infringement in both essence and intention no matter the resulting image. Also it's different to when human would want to replicate some artist style because humans can't do it 100% even if they want to. There is still piece of their "essence". There are many people who try to fake some famous artist style and sell it as real thing and simply can't do it. This is of course copyright infringement because of the intent but it's more original work than anything coming from LLMs.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#183

Post by BlueTemplar »

dusted wrote: post #170
BlueTemplar wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a simple way though : have the ISPs provide all of this. If they can provide you a personal website, an email account and a NAS, they can also provide you a a personal website and an email account ON that NAS. (Especially now, with IPv6.) (Which of course assumes that there are laws in place against lock-in, just like there are already laws in place against lock-in for your pick of ISPs and obligations for m…

I think this only shifts the problem, the whole idea with the internet is a distributed network of computers that talk with each other, and if the computers at the edge (end users) can't do that, then it's no longer the internet, it's something else, more akin to cable-tv where there are "providers" and "consumers". The playing field stops being level.

Well, yes, I am specifically calling for ISPs to build this edge infrastructure in people's homes, so I don't understand your point ?

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#184

Post by namaria »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #164
namaria wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've argued years ago based on how LLMs are built that they would only ever amount to lossy and very memory inefficient compression algorithms. The whole 'hallucination' thing misses the mark. LLMs are not 'occasionally' wrong/hallucinating sometimes. They can only ever return lower resolution versions of what was on their training data. I was mocked then but I feel vindicated now.

They can combine two things in a way that never appeared together in the source material.

Youtube compression algorithm also produces lots of artifacts that were never filmed by the video producers

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#185

Post by DrScientist »

omnimus wrote: post #182
DrScientist wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the new AI training methods are currently, at least imho, not a violation of copyright - not any more than a human eye viewing it Interesting comparison - as if a human viewed something, memorized it and reproduced in a recognisable way to be pretty much the same, wouldn't that still breach copyright? ie in the human case it doesn't matter whether it went through an intermediate neural encoding - what matters i…

This whole AI learns like a human is trajectory of thought pushed by AI companies. They at same time try to humanize AI (it learns like a human would) and dehumanize humans (humans are stochastic parrots anyway). It's if anything a distraction if not straight up anti-human. But you are right that copyright is complex and in the end decided by human (often in court). Consider how code infringement is not about code it…

It's both complex and extremely simple for the same reason - it's a human judgement in the end.

Just because you can't define something mathematically, doesn't mean it isn't obvious to most people in 99% of cases.

Reminds me of the endless games in tax law/avoidance/evasion and the almost pointless attempt to define something absolutely in words. To be honest you could simplify the whole thing by having a 'taking the piss' test - if the jury thinks you are obviously 'taking the piss' then you are guilty - and if you whine about the law not being clear and how it's unfair because you don't know whether or not you are breaking the law - well don't take the piss then - don't pretend you don't know whether something is an agressive tax dodge or not.

If you create some fake IP, and license it from some shell company in a low tax regime to nuke your profits in the country you are actually doing business in - let's not pretend we all can't see what you doing there - you are taking the piss.

Same goes for what some tech companies are doing right now - every reasonable person can see they are taking the piss - and high paid lawyers arguing technicalities isn't going to change that.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#186

Post by RicoElectrico »

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #17

This all sounds like renting to me. Instead you should: - put a rack in your home - buy an IPv4 block - buy dark fibre - start your own ISP - advertise routes over BGP - host your own email - found a registrar and transfer your domains over All easily obtainable for less than a million dollars in capital. Though once your FTTH and undersea cable operations ramp up you'll need further access to capital.

The difference is that if you're not in a walled garden, all the elements of the stack could be replaced. Obviously one needs to avoid big3 clouds and adversarial domain registrars who make it difficult to transfer domains.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#187

Post by [deleted] »

rpcope1 wrote: post #44

> Exploiting user-generated content. You know, if I've noticed anything in the past couple years, it's that even if you self-host your own site, it's still going to get hoovered up and used/exploited by things like AI training bots. I think between everyone's code getting trained on, even if it's AGPLv3 or something similarly restrictive, and generally everything public on the internet getting "trained" and "transfor…

[deleted]

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#188

Post by ToucanLoucan »

DrScientist wrote: post #180
chii wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meta "sublicensed" my image to someone else, I wouldn't have much to say there. but you agreed to this, when agreeing to the TOS. > I post a picture on my site that is then used by a large publisher for ads, I would (at least in theory) have some recourse which you didn't sign any contract, and therefore it is a violation of copyright. But the new AI training methods are currently, at least imho, not a violation of…

> But the new AI training methods are currently, at least imho, not a violation of copyright - not any more than a human eye viewing it Interesting comparison - as if a human viewed something, memorized it and reproduced in a recognisable way to be pretty much the same, wouldn't that still breach copyright? ie in the human case it doesn't matter whether it went through an intermediate neural encoding - what matters i…

The difference is an image generation algorithm does not consume images the way a human does, nor reproduce them that way. If you show a human several Rembrandt's and ask them to duplicate them, you won't get exact copies, no matter how brilliant the human is: the human doesn't know how Rembrandt painted, and especially if you don't permit them to keep references, you won't get the exact painting: you'll get the elements of the original that most stuck out to them, combined with an ethereal but detectable sense of their original tastes leaking through. That's how inspiration works.

If on the other hand you ask an image generator for a Rembrandt, you'll get several usable images, and good odds a few them will be outright copies, and decent odds a few of them will be configured into an etsy or ebay product image despite you not asking for that. And the better the generator is, the better it's going to do at making really good Rembrandt style paintings, which ironically, increases the odds of it just copying a real one that appeared many times in it's training data.

People try and excuse this with explanations about how it doesn't store the images in it's model, which is true, it doesn't. However if you have a famous painting by any artist, or any work really, it's going to show up in the training data many, many times, and the more popular the artist, the more times it's going to be averaged. So if the same piece appears in lots and lots of places, it creates a "rut" in the data if you will, where the algorithm is likely going to strike repeatedly. This is why it's possible to get full copied artworks out of image generators with the right prompts.

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#189

Post by atribecalledqst »

blahblah23 wrote: post #119
rpcope1 wrote: post #44

> Exploiting user-generated content. You know, if I've noticed anything in the past couple years, it's that even if you self-host your own site, it's still going to get hoovered up and used/exploited by things like AI training bots. I think between everyone's code getting trained on, even if it's AGPLv3 or something similarly restrictive, and generally everything public on the internet getting "trained" and "transfor…

There's a neat little thing some discords I've seen use, where they honeypot spam bots into a channel-- if someone posts into it, their messages in the last 5 minutes get deleted and their account gets kicked. Is there a meaningful way to make it so a website shares a resource that automatically updates their blacklist to block the IP address? Knowing that you will lose X but hopefully you'll retain everyone who can…

I saw a Discord server use this but it never actually caught anything. Turns out all the spammers were just human idiots!

Re: Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

#190

Post by dusted »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #183
dusted wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this only shifts the problem, the whole idea with the internet is a distributed network of computers that talk with each other, and if the computers at the edge (end users) can't do that, then it's no longer the internet, it's something else, more akin to cable-tv where there are "providers" and "consumers". The playing field stops being level.

Well, yes, I am specifically calling for ISPs to build this edge infrastructure in people's homes, so I don't understand your point ?

Ah, I took it as you suggesting the ISPs providing VPS services for people..

Thing is, that edge infrastructure has been there from the beginning of broadband and is only recently beginning to slip away, with the advent of ISP NAT, agressive IP rotations, blocking of ports and not providing public IPs at all.

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