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The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

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Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#121
post #94

On the list of things that make this possible, AI comes after the anonymity of web sites and of companies (per another comment, Prompt Digital Inc (DBA Qontour) - which is who exactly?), and the fact that the infringer has complete control over their reach. The asymmetry between stealing and getting caught or stopped was baked in long before AI, but this will become much more prevalent because the cost of infringing…

>I personally have halted any projects where I can't completely control access to the product

Good! That gives someone else the room to come in with a better, freer solution!

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sell the program or give it away for free, to me both is fine. But to release the source code for free, then complain that other people take it and sell it - that's ridiculous. If I give away my secret sauce recipe, I have no right to complain if somebody puts it in a bottle and sells it. Either you keep it to yourself or you don't.

Every book contains all of its content. It's "open source" by necessity. Are you saying that if you buy a book, you can do with the contents of the book whatever you want?

Computer code is not comparable to a book. A better comparison would be a blueprint or a recipe. If Coca-Cola publishes their recipe wide and far for anybody to read, would you rage together with them when another beverage company starts selling drinks together with them?

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because businesses need to run and make money, I doubt they will just stop building because users can replicate their work easily.

But in this future you described where we can magically one shot stuff, why would anyone use services from businesses and keep paying them? Why not just zero shot it with LLM and keep your money? Businesses will not keep building if they don't have users, so why would they? I think you are criminally underrating what goes in a business other than just product or tech. It is extremely hard to write or create a company…

This is why OpenAI, Adobe, et al, are trying to take away personal computing, putting much of it into the cloud and squeezing component costs. Why they're trying to get us to accept guardrails on AI for moral hazard reasons. Why Anthropic intentionally gimps its models if it detects AI research.

They are the monopolists and we are the paypigs! NEVER SUBSCRIBE!

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#124
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. This is especially egregious in Google's case given how trigger happy they are with pulling YouTube videos with a simple claim that something is infringing. I guess unless you can lobby them at the level of the music industry, their default policy is to do nothing.

reminds me of this woman who had copyright filed against her for playing moonlight sonata. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27004577 if not for the complete hassle and threat to her livelihood, it might be laughable.

Rick Beato[0] is famous for some of his rants on the topic.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/RickBeato

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every book contains all of its content. It's "open source" by necessity. Are you saying that if you buy a book, you can do with the contents of the book whatever you want?

Computer code is not comparable to a book. A better comparison would be a blueprint or a recipe. If Coca-Cola publishes their recipe wide and far for anybody to read, would you rage together with them when another beverage company starts selling drinks together with them?

Computer code is also not comparable with a wallet thrown onto a busy street corner.

Can you decide, whether you are OK with unfit comparisons or not, instead of trying to have it both ways?

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#126

A similar thing is happening to me. I worked on something for 3 years which I give away for free to help people and a thief took my software, ran it through ai to rebrand everything and relaunched as their own app. Unfortunately the ai missed a few Easter eggs I had hidden so the theft is undeniable. Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. They refuse to look at or arbitrate. So now I'm o…

You can't steal something which is free. This is what you should expect if you give away stuff for free to anybody who happens on it. To me it seems that FOSS people take perverse pleasure in these kind of things. It's easy to prepare for what is ahead: Get yourself out of the filthy FOSS swamp and start charging a fair price for your work from real customers. That is something everybody benefits from and it is also…

> the filthy FOSS swamp

Now, be nice. This isn't Reddit, and I don't think the HN mods are really into "engagement"*

I tend to release a lot of stuff MIT. I don't give a shit, if anyone takes it and gets rich (which I seriously doubt will happen). It's just that I don't want people coming after me, if they misuse it.

If, however, someone rereleases my stuff with a "gift," and makes it appear that I was behind it, then that's a Bozo no-no. I think that kind of thing is going on at GitHub, right now.

*Mud-wrestling in a cesspool

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#127
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they stealing from Amazon? They delivered a sale to Amazon, which Amazon has a program to reward the effort of delivering that sale. In no way should this be misconstrued as my supporting of the action, but I'm also not delusional making baseless accusations.

Consider the counter factual. The site does not exist, the people who found it (probably via search) end up at Amazon directly with no referral fee.

Things need to be advertised. Most advertising is not free. The amount of money spent on an affiliate link is less than what it would to advertise to the same customer the affiliate is sending.

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's consider an independent dev making claims vs the army of lawyers from RIAA/MPAA type claimants. Which one do you think evilCorps will pay attention to?

This is why awards need to be based on % of total assets or revenue of the defendant. If little guy beats the big guy defendant, little guy should walk away with millions or billions. If big guy wins against the little guy defendant, it's just hundreds or thousands. It makes relatively poor individuals who can't afford a team of effective lawyers lawsuit proof, while making those who can wage effective lawfare juicy…

> with the outside of their shoes!

But it's the outside of the boot that lets you bend it. (yeah, I'm watching a World Cup match as I type this)

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's applied Cunningham's law: > the best way to get correct answers on HN isn't to ask questions, but to post LLM's answers so people will eagerly fact check them to prove LLMs wrong.

I used to do this type of thing a lot. Boldly state something I knew to be wrong, so I'd get correct answers. Dang asked me not to do it. Now, when I boldly state wrong stuff (a not-infrequent occurrence), it's because I really am wrong.

I’ve tried this (not on HN) but usually it just results in downvotes or mockery.

Re: The Wholesale Plagiarism of Obscure Sorrows

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Either you keep it to yourself or you don't. Governments have presented us with a third option, intellectual property, which allows a creator to release their intellectual contributions publicly while preventing someone else from reproducing it. Violating the terms of an open source license are generally considered intellectual property violations and allow the creator to seek damages.

Good luck with that. If you throw your wallet onto a busy street corner, then by the law nobody is allowed to take it either. But cops will tell you that they have more important things to take care of than victims who take every measurable action at hand to make themselves victims.

There are a lot of things that are immoral (or just rude) to do but not explicitly illegal

Personally I would prefer to live in a society filled with people who are better than thinking "well there's no law against it so it's 100% fine"

Edit: I also don't want to live in a society where every tiny piece of social decency must be encoded in laws to get people to actually be decent

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