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Be a property owner and not a renter on the internet

den.dev

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

#221

Post by yencabulator »

baxtr wrote: post #102
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…

Part of me viscerally agrees because large corporations have monetized UGC. Another part of me though thinks differently. We are a species that builds knowledge from generation to generation. From one person to another. Over years, over centuries. Philosophically this part tends to think that your thoughts and ideas belong to humanity and thus need to be shared with all of us.

The compromise that was supposed to be in place was strong, short term, copyright protection, to help the author (a person) financially during their lifetime. That compromise was destroyed by rich people using corporations as owners and extending copyright duration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act

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

#222

Post by mystified5016 »

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…

Imagine I have a shit ton of data on the books people read, down to their favorite passage in each chapter.

I feed all of that into an algorithm that extracts the top n% of passages and uses NLP to string them into a semi-coherent new book. No AI or ML, just old fashioned statistics. Since my new book is comprised entirely of passages stolen wholesale from thousands of authors, clearly it's a transformative work that deserves its own copyright, and none of the original authors deserve a dime right? (/s)

What if I then feed my book through some Markov chains to mix up the wording and phrasing. Is this a new work or am I still just stealing?

AI is not magic, it does not learn. It is purely statistics extracting the top n% of other people's work.

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

#223

Post by lxgr »

> Social media accounts that just post out-of-context links are of no interest to me and vast majority of people you probably care about. If I see an account do just that, it’s an instant unfollow. If I wanted just links I’d subscribe to a RSS feed.

I strongly disagree. I am subscribed to several "link farm" accounts specifically because I don't use RSS anymore, and because it allows for an immediate discussion if enough people are subscribed to said account.

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

#224

Post by throwaway2371 »

alisonatwork wrote: post #78
matheusmoreira wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can absolutely see why someone rational would want to share a whole lot less, anywhere, in an open fashion, regardless of where it's hosted. I've reached the same conclusion. All data is just bits. Numbers. Once it's out there, trying to control their spread and use is just delusional. People should just stop sharing things publicly. Even things like AGPLv3 are proving to be ineffective against their exploitation…

Who cares? Information wants to be free. You put your stuff out there for free, it's hoovered up and sold back to you by capitalists, that sucks, but you've still made a real contribution to society. Meanwhile a select few will still find your stuff directly. Maybe what you shared will make just one person's life a little bit better, and that was your impact - you made a difference! Capitalists will never have that f…

Everyone who put their stuff out there, on the Internet, has contributed to the AI Leviathan. Maybe the end result will be a utopia, maybe it'll be a dystopia. It's definitely too soon to say producing content for the AI titans to consume is a positive impact on society.

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

#225

Post by throwaway2371 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #217
dend wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's an overly reductive way of looking at it. Artists, are by their definition, creators of art. AI-generated "art" (it's not art at all in my eyes) is effectively a machine-based reproduction of actual art, but doesn't take the same skill level, time, and passion for the craft for a user to be able to generate an output, and certainly generates large profits for those that created the models. So, imagine…

AI-generated "art" (it's not art at all in my eyes) is effectively a machine-based reproduction of actual art, but doesn't take the same skill level, time, and passion for the craft for a user to be able to generate an output, and certainly generates large profits for those that created the models. (Shrug) Artists were wrong when they said the same thing about cameras at the dawn of photography, and they're wrong now…

There is no great career choice when AI can do most intellectual work for a fraction of the cost.

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

#226

Post by [deleted] »

chii wrote: post #51
dend wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to disagree in this statement, for sure. If it's on the open internet, it will almost surely be used for AI training, consent be damned. But it feels like even at a rudimentary level, if 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 to pursue the matter and prevent them from using my content. In contrast, if I uploaded something to…

> 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…

[deleted]

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

#227

Post by Terr_ »

chii wrote: post #51
dend wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing to disagree in this statement, for sure. If it's on the open internet, it will almost surely be used for AI training, consent be damned. But it feels like even at a rudimentary level, if 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 to pursue the matter and prevent them from using my content. In contrast, if I uploaded something to…

> 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…

If they aren't a violation of copyright, then I want to see what happens when people are trading around models and "prompts" that describe recently released movies and music sufficiently that it competes with the original.

Not necessarily because I like either "we monetize public work" or "copyright robber-barons", but I'd like at least one of them to clearly lose so that the rest of us have clear and fair rules to work with.

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

#228

Post by Terr_ »

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…

> This whole AI learns like a human is trajectory of thought pushed by AI companies.

My retort towards the " it would be legal if a human did it" argument is that if the model gets personhood then those companies are guilty of enslaving children.

> Compare that to pepople prompting directly with name of artist they want to replicate.

In that case, I would emphasize that the infringement is being done by the model, It's not illegal or infringing to ask for an unlicensed copyright infringing work. (Although it might become that way, if big corporations start lobbying for it.)

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

#229

Post by Terr_ »

entropi wrote: post #125
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 (which you've implicitly given permission to do so, by putting it up on the internet). I don't understand how that matters. I thought that the whole idea of copyright and licences was that the holder of the rights can decide what is ok to do with the content and what is not. If the ho…

Not quite, it is (at least in the US) a limited privilege to control the copying and reproduction.

If you make a movie poster, and it goes out into the market, and then someone picks it up from a garage sale, copyright still applies, they can't just make tons of duplicates.

But you can't use copyright to force them to display it right side up instead of upside down, to not write on it, to not burn it, and to not make it into a bizarre pseudosexual shrine in their basement.

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

#230

Post by Terr_ »

rpdillon wrote: post #208
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright means the holder does automatically get to prescribe how content can be copied. That's literally the definition of copyright. A typical copyright notice for a book says something like (to paraphrase...) "not to be stored, transmitted, or used by or on any electronic device without explicit permission." That clearly includes use for training, because you can't train without making a copy, even if the copy is…

> Any argument about this is trying to redefine copyright as the right to extract the semantic or cultural value of a document. In reality the definition is already clear - no copying of a document by any means for any purpose without explicit permission. I've studied copyright for over 20 years as an amateur, and I used to very much think this way. And then I started reading court decisions about copyright, and sudd…

I assume the emphasis there is on training, whereas it's totally possible to infringe by running the model in certain ways later.
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