141–150 of 256 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a tough one for the HN crowd. It's like that man not sure which button to push meme. 1) RIAA is evil for enforcing copyrights on lyrics? 2) OpenAI is evil for training on lyrics?
I think you mean the RIAA RAII is a different kind of (necessary) evil
The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?
The composition and lyrics are owned separately from the recorded performance.
The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?
The only thing funnier than that is when they do have the lyrics to a song that probably doesn't need them, like Hocus Pocus by Focus: https://open.spotify.com/track/2uzyiRdvfNI5WxUiItv1y9?si=7a7...
The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?
This is a tough one for the HN crowd. It's like that man not sure which button to push meme. 1) RIAA is evil for enforcing copyrights on lyrics? 2) OpenAI is evil for training on lyrics?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think having the lyrics reproducible in text form isn't the problem. Many sites have been doing that for decades and as far as I know record companies haven't gone after them. But these days with generative AI, they can take lyrics and just make a new song with them, and you can probably see why artists and record companies would want to stop that. Plus, from TFA, "GEMA hoped discussions could now take place with O…
Had a couple of drive-by downvotes... Is it that stupid an opinion? Granted I know nothing about the case except for what's in TFA
The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?
This is a tough one for the HN crowd. It's like that man not sure which button to push meme. 1) RIAA is evil for enforcing copyrights on lyrics? 2) OpenAI is evil for training on lyrics?
The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?
It's a good decision because it must be an incredible minority of people who only listen to music when the lyrics can be displayed. I'd imagine most people aren't even looking at the music playing app while listening to music. Regardless, they are copyrighted and they get license fees from parties that do license them and they make money that way. Likely much more money than they would make from the streams they are…
The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?
Simon Willison had an analysis of Claude's system prompt back in May. One of the things that stood out was the effort they put in to avoiding copyright infringement: https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/25/claude-4-system-prompt... Everyone knows that these LLMs were trained on copyrighted material, and as a next-token prediction model, LLMs are strongly inclined to reproduce text they were trained on.
All AI companies know they're breaking the law. They all have prompts effectively saying "Don't show that we broke the law!". That we continue to have tech companies consistently breaking the law and nothing happens is an indictment of our current economy.
the code models should also be banned, and all output they've generated subject to copyright infringement lawsuits
the sloppers (OpenAI, etc) may get away with it in the US, but the developed world has far more stringent copyright laws
and the countries that have massive industries based on copyright aren't about to let them evaporate for the benefit of a handful of US tech-bros
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All AI companies know they're breaking the law. They all have prompts effectively saying "Don't show that we broke the law!". That we continue to have tech companies consistently breaking the law and nothing happens is an indictment of our current economy.
And it's a question of do we accept breaking law for the possibility to have the greatest technological advancement of the 21st century. In my opinion, legal system has become a blocker for a lot of innovation, not only in AI but elsewhere as well.