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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

#101

Post by snohobro »

ITT: Tell me you don’t have anything worth copyrighting without telling me you don’t have anything worth copyrighting.

I worry about some of y’all.

After reading the article, I don’t disagree with the EFF. We shouldn’t rewrite copyright law to ban creative generation of {art}. AI generated images only increases competition, which is good for consumers of {art}. I do agree that copyright should still exist to prevent duplicate {art} being sold by a new individual claiming it as their own.

I think the tricky thing with AI is that as the end user, it’s still your responsibility to identify when you might be infringing on someone else’s copyright. I imagine that will be very difficult to do. Perhaps we need an AI copyright agent that can ingest your {art} and compare against all existing {art} for percent copyright infringement score.

In my opinion, the biggest thing I worry about is small creators having their work stolen, repackaged, and sold by big corporations. Which copyright protects. In fact with AI assisted lawyering, it might actually be even easier for small timers to protect their stuff, just like the big wigs do.

Abolishing copyright altogether is just such a wild, knee jerk take.

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

#102

Post by torstenvl »

msabalau wrote: post #20
boxed wrote: 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 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…

> To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

In what ways does an exclusive right promote the progress of science and the useful arts other than by incentivizing that creative work?

In what way can that incentive work other than by compensating for the cost of production?

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

#103

Post by myrmidon »

armchairhacker wrote: post #88
dageshi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.?

The more successful "self published" authors writing web novels make significant money from patreon (>$20k/month); this relies on copyright protection (but interestingly, just a few months would be sufficient for that business model).

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

#104

Post by sandinmyjoints »

bluGill wrote: post #85
fny wrote: post #80

Under the current state of affairs, copyleft material can be laundered through LLMs without triggering proprietary weights from becoming open. Something feels broken.

You could always do that with copyright programs. The only thing that changed was the cost. The only example of somebody doing this was with the BIOS of the original IBM PC, but it was always possible and since nothing was copied it is legal. Somebody else did all the hard work. Patents are the only protection that should exist for this type of thing. (though finding an algorithm worth patenting is hard - most are ei…

Is "only" doing a lot of work in your second sentence? Sometimes a change in degree is a change in kind.

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

#105

Post by armchairhacker »

kelvinjps10 wrote: post #13
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…

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.

As opposed to today, where big companies never steal from writers, and it’s not very hard for them to make a living?

(Not books, but Amazon has ripped off indie products before: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/amazon-copied-produ..., and books are being ripped off by other companies’ LLMs.)

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

#106

Post by teeray »

I think the asymmetry of fair use is what feels the most wrong about copyright and AI. Forever, fair use has been limited with an iron fist: you can’t rip that DVD because it’s copy-protected; You can only use 10s of that song in your school project. Then these AI companies wield fair use like a sledgehammer in a way that nobody has been able to for decades to enormously profit. Maybe it’s technically correct, but it feels like mass exploitation of a loophole that the legal system has previously taken a dim view towards (see: Aereo).

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

#107

Post by randysalami »

myrmidon wrote: post #103
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.?

The more successful "self published" authors writing web novels make significant money from patreon (>$20k/month); this relies on copyright protection (but interestingly, just a few months would be sufficient for that business model).

This is way too much

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

#108

Post by Lerc »

mistrial9 wrote: post #99
dageshi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

many people commenting have never tried to earn a living from independently created works of authorship. The NAPSTER-fans say "more for me, what is your problem". Other economies (China) do not have commerce law that protects original works of authorship, but the Western tradition has enabled this. Blinded by corporate abuse, calls for removal of copyright law are often naive or ill-willed IMHO

That is not a given. I have earned a living from created works of authorship.

I think copyright suppresses creation and does very little to support creators in general. It has enabled businesses to choose a few winning creators that reap the benefits of copyright. That kingmaker position allows them to dictate what is created.

For the last few decades the median income from a creative work has been nil.

I would much rather have universal basic income and no copyright.

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

#109

Post by fjfkkskdngnf »

bobajeff wrote: post #35
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.

Is it not hard for writers to make a living? If so maybe I should do that.

Some professions should be hard to make a living in. Copyright is objectively immoral, you don’t need to go political to realise that.

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

#110

Post by inglor_cz »

paulddraper wrote: post #42
inglor_cz wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Looking at the cinemas, almost all the top movies are prequels or sequels, milking the same topic for the tenth time. I'd say that at least the movie industry is somehow stuck in a rut.

Getting rid of copyright is going to make that problem worse not better... I'm wondering if you are reasoning correctly about this.

I'd say that random people, if they reuse a copyrighted material, are a lot more likely to veer far off the beaten path than the big studios.

Fan fiction, even if building on previous materials, seems to be much less repetitive to me.

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