AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale • Hacker News Board

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#351

Post by Terr_ » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

StableAlkyne wrote: post #308

deaton wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly naive view of intellectual property. If you cannot own things you create, there is little incentive to create and share those things. Do you think any of your favorite movies and TV shows ever get made without copyright protections? Of course not, because money needs to change hands for those things to be funded.

> If you cannot own things you create, there is little incentive to create and share those things How do you explain the creative works of writing, music, and art that existed in the millennia of human history between the Mesopotamians and the Enlightenment era?

I support copyright reform, but that history has a large portion of "get lucky while sucking-up to the local rich dudes for a patron", which... isn't ideal either.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#352

Post by hgs3 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

quantummagic wrote: post #135

What do people imagine can be done about it at this point? Offer a concrete suggestion. Any law or tax against this will give a huge advantage to other countries. It's already over, there's no going back to a world where this didn't happen. Let's just hope some good comes of it.

How about requiring AI companies to pay creators for training rights? Alternatively, models trained on the commons must be owned by the commons. Right now these AI companies are trying to have it both ways: it’s The People’s Data for training on comrade but ownership is privatized.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#353

Post by epicide » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:48 PM UTC

Jtarii wrote: post #333

epicide wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalists who capitalize on creative outlets need capital to incentivize them to do so. It's basically circular. Those of us who create for creation's sake need no other reason. I create because I want to, not because I want to use it to gain capital. Sure, those lines get muddy when you want to do it professionally, but that's a separate argument.

>Those of us who create for creation's sake need no other reason. I create because I want to, not because I want to use it to gain capital. How do you create without capital? To make a film you need a camera crew, a sound crew, set designers, caterers, a director, scriptwriters. A world without professional creatives is so much poorer than the world we already have. Why would you give it up just for some vague notion…

You absolutely do not need a camera crew, a sound crew, set designers, and caterers to make a film. You need a director and scriptwriters, but those can be the same person. Do many film sets have all those? Absolutely. But one can still make a film without them. Some of the best films ever created were mostly the product of one person with a budget less than half that of the average car.

Would you be able to create big-budget movies without said big budget? Of course not. I obviously like some of those too, but who's to say that the larger budget made them better? It feels like you're conflating art creation with art business, but they are not the same thing.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#354

Post by dpark » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #300

trinari wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

robots.txt is a way of leaving the door unlocked but kindly asking bots to stay outside.

Which in a law-abiding society should be enough. It's also how we do things in the real world in many cases - i.e. here you can just write on your mailbox "no ads" and companies have to respect that. Even when we do actually put physical locks on things they are mostly there to show that someone breaking in did so intentionally and not at all designed to prevent motivated attackers.

> here you can just write on your mailbox "no ads" and companies have to respect that

Where do you live? In the US it’s actually illegal for anyone except the USPS to deliver to a mailbox.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#355

Post by hectdev » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

account42 wrote: post #321

hectdev wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of human knowledge (an exaggeration, I know) at our finger tips. It's the most punk rock, anarchist thing tech has done since the internet and it's funny it's shaped as a product.

Sure, a few mega-corporations of the scale to upset entire markets owning all information and renting it out as they see fit is very punk. A cyberpunk dystopia specifically.

If you consider the local llm scene which is closing the gaps, mega corporations become less possessive of all information.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#356

Post by dpark » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

trinari wrote: post #162

aaarrm wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible able to host your website in a way so that it couldn't be found via search engines (and thus wouldn't be crawlable I hope)? I know this has repercussions on findability, but if that wasn't a concern, I'm curious how one might circumvent getting crawled.

robots.txt is a way of leaving the door unlocked but kindly asking bots to stay outside.

You might be interested to know that entering an unlocked door into a space you do not have permission to be in is still illegal.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#357

Post by badlibrarian » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

drstewart wrote: post #205

badlibrarian wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid tuition. The library bought its books. The theater sold me a ticket. Money changed hands every step, which is the part your analogy skips.

Where did money change hands when you looked at a random image on DeviantArt and got inspired and made a similar image yourself?

Most artists considered it a one to one exchange. They appreciated attribution and were flattered to inspire people. Some got gigs. Some got laid. The money flowed to DeviantArt, hosting providers, and ad providers. The artists were okay with this. They were the ones paying.

Then DeviantArt built a tool to automate the "make a similar image yourself" part and here we are. It removed all the fun parts: the personal contact, the attribution, the inspiration.

Artists realized they unwittingly contributed to the death of not only the community, but the art form they love. Lawsuits pending.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#358

Post by hectdev » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

ses1984 wrote: post #241

hectdev wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of human knowledge (an exaggeration, I know) at our finger tips. It's the most punk rock, anarchist thing tech has done since the internet and it's funny it's shaped as a product.

If you get the impression of punk and anarchy, it's only because you're not looking any deeper than the veneer. Underneath, it's nothing like punk or anarchy.

I'm considering the dispersement of tech. 3D printers disrupt needing to buy widgets from big companies and local llms disrupt needing to buy generalize software when you can make your own bespoke. AI will live on long after the big corporations burn out their money coffers.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#359

Post by jayd16 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

peteforde wrote: post #291

jayd16 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still waiting for this massive wave of cool stuff.

It's not a reach to suggest that if you've used software written in the past 2-3 years, you're enjoying cool stuff. Moreover, all of the tools that the people who build software use are also cool stuff. It's also not just code and software that is benefitting from these new tools. Use of LLMs in engineering tasks is blowing up right now.

I'm not sure that extrapolating the last 2 to 3 years as a sign of things to come is as enticing an argument as you seem to think it is . If you exclude AI for ai's sake, the feature lists of the last 2 years have been incredibly anemic. If you include AI companies bootstrapping themselves with AI, the cash flow has been a nice change but I can't say it's felt fully baked, or flooded with stable software and well-crafted workflows.

I'm really not trying to be a hater but when people tell me that we're already in the AI Nirvana it gives me pause.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#360

Post by jonathanstrange » Thu, May 21, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

epicide wrote: post #323

Jtarii wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is giving a creator millions of dollars to create something if there is no guaranteed path to recouping production costs. Are we going the communist soviet union route where everything is decided by central committee?

Capitalists who capitalize on creative outlets need capital to incentivize them to do so. It's basically circular. Those of us who create for creation's sake need no other reason. I create because I want to, not because I want to use it to gain capital. Sure, those lines get muddy when you want to do it professionally, but that's a separate argument.

The point is that without copyright you can' do it professionally. Someone will just sell whatever you created for you and you will not get a cent from it.