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EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

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Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#71
post #65
post #7

Independend of AI I am fully supporting the idea to abolish copyright in general, full stop. Allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innovation and culture changes. Explicit (costly) patents can remain in place to secure industrial-grade research processes, but the general everyday stuff, incluing music and literature and code and so on is something to strip default rights away to allow faster p…

I'm skeptical patents play a significant role at encouraging research. No correlation between stronger patent laws and more innovation has ever been found. I'm also in favor of very light copyright laws, e.g. I don't think anyone should claim they are Coca Cola.

I don't know about you, but in hardware startup land if you don't have a patent and your technology can be reverse engineered, you are most likely dead in the water and will never get investment.

But I guess we can count on the big companies to do the innovation?

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#72
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you really only know about how the affects people who make music and TV. What about illustrators who license their work? Knitters and crocheters who create patterns? There are countless people who sell creative output on a license-basis which would no longer exist in a world without copyright. Already people who make visual art are demotivated by AI, follow literally any visual artist on Instagram and y…

> Knitters and crocheters who create patterns? Wow, is that a thing? If you're willing to share, I'd love to hear more about these vocations and how they make money.

Search "knitting patterns".

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and oh the poor artists: next to none percentage wise gets much royalties anymore, streaming income is close to zero usually even if popular Your argument is that artists aren’t paid enough, so we should go ahead and take it all the way to zero by law?

I'm not an artist and might be entirely wrong, but my understanding is that for 99% of artists, over 99% of their revenue is from concerts tickets, merch and other physical products, rather than digital/broadcast plays, so changing this to zero wouldn't really affect them, but would act to reduce the power of the labels and other intermediaries over them.

Without copyright, artist B could perform artist A's original work without penalty. If artist B is better at astroturfing social media than A (maybe because they pay a firm to do it) , then B makes money and A does not.

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you'll reduce that to just live experiences: abolish copyright, and watch 1 million bootleg Taylor Swift T-shirts suddenly blink into existence

That's a trademark issue, not a copyright issue.

It's either or both, depending on the shirt design

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#75
post #7

Independend of AI I am fully supporting the idea to abolish copyright in general, full stop. Allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innovation and culture changes. Explicit (costly) patents can remain in place to secure industrial-grade research processes, but the general everyday stuff, incluing music and literature and code and so on is something to strip default rights away to allow faster p…

Author: I spent six months writing this story, I hope I can make some money selling it, it would be my dream to be able to keep doing this full time.

You: I will steal this, consume it, reprint it as I see fit and you will earn nothing.

Yeah... I don't think your opinions are worth much.

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#76
post #4
post #3

There might need to be some calibration. The reason for copyright is (ostensibly) to compensate for the enormous cost of production. If the cost goes down, the protection should also logically go down.

The cost of producing decent things hasn't gone down. Also the cost of slop is not that low, just subsidised.

I'm a programmer by trade. I know you're wrong from much personal experience, and the difference between last year and today is dramatic.

If you believe the anti-AI people you will become misinformed, just as much as if you listen to the most pro-AI people.

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#77
post #7

Independend of AI I am fully supporting the idea to abolish copyright in general, full stop. Allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innovation and culture changes. Explicit (costly) patents can remain in place to secure industrial-grade research processes, but the general everyday stuff, incluing music and literature and code and so on is something to strip default rights away to allow faster p…

if copyrigth is abolished. amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers. it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living. Im not a fan of copyrigth and how is being used at the moment but I don't really see an alternative where writers still get paid.

[deleted]

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#78
post #7

Independend of AI I am fully supporting the idea to abolish copyright in general, full stop. Allowing cheap duplication and tweaking is what leads to fast innovation and culture changes. Explicit (costly) patents can remain in place to secure industrial-grade research processes, but the general everyday stuff, incluing music and literature and code and so on is something to strip default rights away to allow faster p…

if copyrigth is abolished. amazon would publish every single boon without giving a cent to writers. it would be reqlly hard for writers to make a living. Im not a fan of copyrigth and how is being used at the moment but I don't really see an alternative where writers still get paid.

If it were to happen I don't think Amazon would sell any books to begin with. And even under the current system, I only buy books to pay writers, and even then they only get very little of the amount I pay. I'd much rather pay them directly through whatever system evolves through the hypothetical change.

They're not paid because access to books is limited by copyright, but because whatever eyeballs they manage to reach are willing to buy their books. I may not be a representative sample, but I think that part wouldn't change much, and discoverability would still be the deciding factor.

I hate the attention economy as much as the next person, but I don't think there's any putting that back in the bottle, the amount of media won't shrink.

Re: EFF to Courts: Don't Rewrite Copyright over AI Hype

#79
Guess it's time to stop donating to the EFF. They're completely off the mark this time.

The random loser generating slop in his bedroom isn't necessarily the one infringing, it's the AI company that took all of our work and is reselling it that is infringing. This is an obvious blind spot in copyright law and no reasonable person would consider that to be fair use. The challenge I think is communicating to a layman how AI training works.

For the people currently in the grips of AI psychosis: new regulation here is good for AI too. AI models will not get more creative without new human training data, but the current exploitative situation means people are not incentivized to keep creating. Human artists who create new things should be rewarded by the market, as copyright law intended. Even if their work only ever ends up feeding some gen AI model, they should still be entitled to compensation in some way (eg royalties). They worked hard so that you don't have to.™

Instead, AI companies are the ones being rewarded for it. That's not sustainable for anyone.

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