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AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

jasonwillems.com

121–130 of 138 posts

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#121
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, not really - there's no "they" in general. Copyright law is constructed by design for large institutions, lobbying, case law, and attendant legislation allow it to be abused by data hoarders. It was never built to protect individual creators or authors or artists, despite the PR campaigns and marketing for it. There are just companies big enough to ignore those institutions for which copyright law was creat…

> 99% of commercial profits come from the first 5 years after any piece of media gets published - book, music, film, artwork, etc. Many songs make far more profits when they are featured in popular movies or TV shows decades or more after their first publication than they do in their first 5 years. It is also not uncommon for songs released before a future big star becomes a big star to make much money (or even lose…

> Many songs make far more profits when they are featured in popular movies or TV shows decades or more after their first publication than they do in their first 5 years.

Pop culture has to contend with two things that strongly work against its broad memetic power: social media bubbles, and the ease at which someone can scroll or flick up and not give even 1 full second of attention to something they are not immediately in the mood for.

Social media companies make billions per year, they aren't going anywhere. So nothing's going to change any time soon.

So this means trends don't stick the way they used to. The 10 or 20 year pop-culture nostalgia cycle isn't going to be a thing in the next generation.

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What do the rest of us get out of going along with your demand?

The thing, which would have not been created otherwise. Why pretend like you didn't know that?

> which would have not been created otherwise

Claim not supported. You haven't established that absolutely no one else could create the thing. People create things all the time under such liberal conditions as public domain, so having dictatorial power over a thing is not a necessary condition to create it.

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#123
post #66

Copyright infringement use to be the absolute worst crime imaginable if you asked the tech industry, that is until they started doing it themselves at scale and now they are claiming it’s the law that’s broken, it’s crazy.

I think this is part of a recurring pattern in tech of pushing boundaries around copyright. In the last few years, we had Google scanning books, Google threatening to shut down News in Canada rather than pay publishers, LLMs summarizing articles on social platforms, crawlers bypassing paywalls, and so on. Each time, the industry frames it as their interpretation of the current law, which were usually not written with…

i still dont see why google should pay news publishers for each reader google sends to the publisher. like the publisher is getting that view already and can monetize it how they see fit

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? What do the rest of us get out of going along with your demand?

The thing, which would have not been created otherwise. Why pretend like you didn't know that?

We often only get the thing for a limited time period after it is lost forever because copyright has prevented the thing from being archived.

A lot of things that are copyrighted would have also been created anyway, often by multiple people, because there is an actual need for them to exist or an inherent human drive to create them. We have been creating things, both with practical applications or as art, long before we had copyright. And with the ability to effortlessly copy works at effectively no cost we do (or would) have an ever increasing library of them which reduces the need to encourage even more creation than what would happen anyway, especially when the cost of that encouragement is not only excessive but ends up impeding many creative endeavors.

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#125

Copyright infringement use to be the absolute worst crime imaginable if you asked the tech industry, that is until they started doing it themselves at scale and now they are claiming it’s the law that’s broken, it’s crazy.

"The laws are valid as long as they serve us". Regards, The Ruling Party.

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I create something, I should get to dictate how it is used not just until I die but for eternity.

Why? What do the rest of us get out of going along with your demand?

After you have owned a car for five years, can I come steal it?

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#127
post #5

> If you paint a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog in your living room, you are technically creating an unauthorized derivative work Is this even true? It might violate a trademark, but I don't think it would violate copyright law unless it was a copy of an existing picture.

Characters are copyrightable, its a similar situation to song compositions vs song masters. There is the copyright of the original picture/song master but separately there is the copyright of the song composition/character. Making your own work derived from the same character or song composition is still a derivative work even if it doesn't directly copy the song master/original picture.

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#128
post #56

In the past, many developers were against copyright law because they saw it as a way for big corps to stifle competition and curb creativity in order to increase their profits. A lot of people right now invoke the violation of the same copyright law because the tide has changed and now companies, by ignoring copyright law, are hurting artists/smaller companies and/or not contributing back or unlawfully closing the co…

Developers in the past were strongly for copyleft. The promise of copyleft is how we got all the great software that underlies the Internet today, starting with Linux itself.

The fact to keep in mind is that, despite what the name might suggest, copyleft is not at odds with copyright! The core feature of copyright is having a degree of control over what you have authored, and copyleft is ingeniously using copyright to prevent corporations from just taking open code, volunteer contributions, and modifying and using it for profit without giving anything back to the community.

Death of copyright would be the death of copyleft.

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing, which would have not been created otherwise. Why pretend like you didn't know that?

We often only get the thing for a limited time period after it is lost forever because copyright has prevented the thing from being archived. A lot of things that are copyrighted would have also been created anyway, often by multiple people, because there is an actual need for them to exist or an inherent human drive to create them. We have been creating things, both with practical applications or as art, long before…

>We often only get the thing for a limited time period after it is lost forever because copyright has prevented the thing from being archived.

That's not inherent to copyright, though copyright does grant the author the power to control distribution of its work. Nevertheless, it all eventually becomes public domain.

>A lot of things that are copyrighted would have also been created anyway, often by multiple people, because there is an actual need for them to exist or an inherent human drive to create them.

Such as?

> And with the ability to effortlessly copy works at effectively no cost we do (or would) have an ever increasing library of them which reduces the need to encourage even more creation than what would happen anyway, especially when the cost of that encouragement is not only excessive but ends up impeding many creative endeavors

That's a lot of words but nothing actual. Do you think you'd see David Lynch movies if there was no copyright? What do you think the world today would be like if there was no copyright? Some sort of magical world where authors create for free, without any regard for the finances required to do so? It's a bit ridiculous.

Re: AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing, which would have not been created otherwise. Why pretend like you didn't know that?

> which would have not been created otherwise Claim not supported. You haven't established that absolutely no one else could create the thing. People create things all the time under such liberal conditions as public domain, so having dictatorial power over a thing is not a necessary condition to create it.

Your claim isn't supported either.

> People create things all the time under such liberal conditions as public domain

And people are free to, even under the duress of copyright. What's the problem there?

What was the last movie you saw?

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