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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

#121

Post by inglor_cz »

dageshi wrote: post #75
anonyfox wrote: 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.

A variant where the copyright would be automatic but very limited (say, 10 years), with a necessity to pay some growing fee for extended protection, would solve most situations.

The vast majority of stories do not make any money ever. Some do, but only briefly so. The true money makers should have no problem paying the fees.

Only very rare cases of authors who get discovered decades later would not be covered by this, and this is less likely to happen with the Internet. There are no publishing gatekeepers anymore.

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

#122

Post by drdexebtjl »

criddell wrote: post #22
kelvinjps10 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe the strategy is to try to build up some steam behind the abolish copyright movement to move the Overton window a bit. If IP owners see actual support behind abolishing copyright, maybe rolling back to min(30, life of author) years of protection would seem like a more reasonable compromise.

min(30, life of author) kinda makes a perverse incentive to kill the author, no?

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

#123

Post by dgellow »

anonyfox wrote: 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…

FLOSS only exists because of copyright. Without it you don’t get a utopia where everything can be read and copied, you get the opposite, companies not sharing their work, artists not releasing their work. Sacrificing the whole culture built on top of copyright for a maybe faster technical progress is incredibly myopic

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

#124

Post by Topfi »

anonyfox wrote: 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 struggling to see how the issues regarding low compensation from streaming services is going to be positively affected by abolishing copyright wholesale. That'd take the one way a creative can truly claim a stake towards their art.

Before the advent of LLMs, as now, my position on copyright is that what was had prior to Disneys lobyying efforts (which also then lead to similar laws being adopted outside the US showcasing the type of soft power and legislative inspirations the States previously could cause/the US does something so then Western Europe did the same) of roughly 25 years plus one extension was a fair compromise. One could also mirror patents and their length, seems like a solid avenue as well.

Lest we forget, while enforcement is far to limited, any success in defending FOSS projects and their licenses are only possible because we have copyright.

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

#125

Post by bux93 »

bpodgursky wrote: post #55
msabalau wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of copyright under the US Constitution, a text relevant to the courts the EFF is addressing here, is to "promote the progress of science and useful arts by giving creators temporary exclusive rights to their works" It is not to "compensate for the cost of production", nor is it to ensure that business plans of major music publishers happen to be successful. The EFF is correct to say here that copyright sh…

Why are you being argumentative? "Promote" and "exclusive rights" was always about compensation for the time and effort invested. You just rephrased what the OP said while claiming to disagree.

It's substantively different. The level of compensation you could expect from copyright needs to be high enough that creators/inventors in general feel that it may be worthwhile to create/invent stuff. That level of compensation may be exactly enough to pay for a musician to make a track. We know this is not the case, it's more like a lottery ticket; some musicians make millions (much more than would be needed to entice them to choose this line of work) and many make almost nothing, but still persist. If you relax copyright provisions so that average compensation is halved, this would presumably have a non-linear impact. Maybe a 50% decrease in expected compensation only results in -10% new works. Maybe in -80%. For example, it is completely implausible that retroactively extending copyright (as has been done) results in any additional works being created at all - just higher profits for existing owners. This also applies to the costs; a higher cost of production (e.g. cost of living) doesn't necessarily need to lead to more stringent copyright restraints, nor lower costs to more lax restrictions.

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

#126

Post by Planktonne »

The EFF has managed to keep to the letter of its principles while discarding the spirit of them; it's now defending enormous commercial concerns that hoover up and hoard data, at the expense of people creating and sharing information.

A small number of huge corporations keeping tight control of data and access to data is not a pro-freedom stance.

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

#127

Post by inglor_cz »

dageshi wrote: post #100
armchairhacker wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What % of new authors today make full-time salary on writing? And what % of those do by selling, vs giving away their work for free (to get non-negligible attention) then getting their real money through donations, merch, etc.?

What does it matter? I don't think anyone has the right to take work I create, for free. In the same way I have no right to walk into your house and use it for free. In the same way you cannot expect me to turn up and work at your business for free. I don't care what half delusional rubbish you come up with to justify your theft. It's theft, you want to steal something you put zero effort into creating and use it as…

I am not a fan of complete removal of copyright, but I also consider its current duration absurd and extreme - saying this as someone who wrote 10 books so far, so I have actual skin in the game. Some person in 2130 should not be able to profit from something I am writing now, that is just feudalism in a new cloak.

Any creative person whose ego is not overinflated accepts the fact that no art emerges from a vacuum, that they themselves were inspired by others and their work, and that they should pay this forward to the coming generations.

For me, the worst aspect of long copyright is the de-facto ban on derived works. Work derivation is how civilization and culture came to be.

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

#128

Post by rpdillon »

clickety_clack wrote: post #120
rpdillon wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part this analysis misses is that the author's "dream" of doing that full time is almost never realized -- 25% percent of authors identify as "full-time", but only 10% of those authors can actually make ends meet. Only 30% of books ever pay back the advance. The best shot is to be a "romance" author, which earns more than other genres, pretty much because sex sells. Copyright isn't doing a great job at its stated…

Novels aren't the only thing with copyright, and aren't really even the main thing that copyright protects. It also covers engineering reports, technical specs, journalism, blog posts, emails, internal memos, marketing copy, academic papers, user manuals, legal briefs, and a lot more. Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no…

I understand copyright covers lots of things. It doesn't do a good job with any of them, sadly.

> Even in the particular case of novels, I would prefer to live in a world where some authors are making money than live in one with no novels at all.

That's not the choice. Novels will be written regardless, and there are ways to make money that are not copyright-related: Substack and Patreon are doing more to fund small authors than the publishing industry as a whole, and people pay because they want to support the author, and to get early, exclusive access to the author's work. None of those authors are surviving and making money because someone can't copy their work and distribute it. Piracy is a fact, and that people give money to these authors in the presence of piracy shows that copyright is not necessary to support these artists.

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

#129

Post by drdexebtjl »

pid-1 wrote: post #65
anonyfox wrote: 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.

That would be trademark law.

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

#130

Post by inglor_cz »

andsoitis wrote: post #53
falcor84 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can assure you that people had original ideas before the invention of copyright 300 years ago.

> people had original ideas before the invention of copyright 300 years ago Not in dispute but that's also not the point being argued. The argument is: a) whether copyright kills original ideas. I don't think it does but would love to understand what the mechanism is if you think otherwise. b) whether removing copyright would lead to more "milking of same old topics" in movies. I think the answer is self-evidently ye…

Whether removing copyright would lead to more "milking of same old topics" in movies. I think the answer is self-evidently yes.

This is not self-evident to me, at least as far as "milking" goes. Inspiration is not the same as milking. I specifically use the word "milking" for the sort of low-level repetitive quasi-effort that the cinemas are full of.

OTOH if someone takes, IDK, Don Quijote and rewrites it into a space opera, it might actually be genuine fun, even though the old idea was there as a foundation.

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