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

jasonwillems.com

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

#51

Post by anonymous908213 »

avaer wrote: post #48
direwolf20 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not forget the death of Aaron Swartz.

I don't think that was the "tech circles" being pro-copyright though. I've never met someone who wasn't on Aaron's side on that one.

"Tech circles" was never the claim. The original phrase was "tech industry", and that seems to be accurate. The post replying to it may have misread or misinterpreted what "tech industry" means. (Or perhaps the term is simply ambiguous and each person who reads it comes away with a different meaning!)

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

#52

Post by realusername »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #45
realusername wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't do something which looks reasonable within the laws, it means that the laws have to change. I don't see how building such a model of historical documents would impact authors (which most of them are dead anyways).

> If you can't do something which looks reasonable within the laws, it means that the laws have to change. Then change the law. For everyone , consistently, not just massive AI companies. Until then, deal with it . > I don't see how building such a model of historical documents would impact the authors It impacts the authors of new documents, who do not get to copy those historical documents, while an AI competing wi…

I'm personally in favor of a heavily reduced copyright duration similar to patents and so if AI makes people realize how stupid the current laws look, I take it.

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

#53

Post by avaer »

vibedev wrote: post #4

IMHO AI generated content should be treated the same way with how human generated content and I don't see the problem. However as with technology the problem is a bit different, e.g.: When subletting your apartment requires manual effort, this is not a problem. Automated, it became an industry and that's a huge headache. I think this is the key point where the derived work has unlimited possibility that they want to…

> IMHO AI generated content should be treated the same way with how human generated content and I don't see the problem.

The problem is that AIs don't have rights. So you literally can't treat it the same.

If I "make" something in a way I'm not allowed to (e.g. copying), the law will go after me. If AI makes something I'm not allowed to, I can just say "whoopsie doodle", blame the AI, and there are no repercussions for anyone.

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

#54

Post by excalibur »

Copyright law has always been excessively restrictive, and is long overdue for reform. The informal practices that people have been following (i.e. free creation and distribution but no monetization and no confusion with official releases) are pretty close to what a reasonable law would state.

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

#55

Post by Altern4tiveAcc »

Always have been broken.

Hopefully, future legislation will cater less to publishers and copyright trolls. I'm not optimistic though. While certain kinds of publishers are indeed becoming less powerful, sports-related media conglomerates are successfully lobbying for more surveillance.

The general population will likely get the worst of both worlds, with copyright trolls getting to enforce unjust laws against regular people, while big tech gets to pay their way out.

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

#56

Post by lp4v4n »

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 code in the case of GPL.

I don't see any kind of hypocritical stance here honestly. All this time the criticism of the enforcement of copyright law or now the lack of it just reflects the fact that some people are genuinely concerned that bad actors(big corps) are using the law to damage society in order to pursue their own interests.

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

#57

Post by ineedasername »

klustregrif wrote: post #7

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 tech industry? I don’t remember that being the case, at least not in general. Content owners yes— and there’s tech overlap there with Sony and some others. Beside that it’s never been a major hill for tech to die on, except in having to implement systems to deal with DMCA takedowns, and that only as half baked as they could get away with. Which unfortunately has meant “not in favor of users” when it comes to to failure modes and where and how to default actions.

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

#58

Post by Altern4tiveAcc »

happytoexplain wrote: post #12
sharkjacobs wrote: post #2

Most people in my social circles are various flavours of anti-AI, and it drives me crazy how many of them, who were once stridently anti-copyright, are now using copyright as one of the great pillars of AI opposition

Usually when I see this opinion (yours), it leans on an uncharitable coloring of everybody who sees problems with copyright as "anti-copyright", when really those people largely are happy with the concept of protecting an individual's work. I.e. it is the age-old "those people" argument, where "those people" are a made-up conglomerate of opinions that are real, but come from slightly different contexts and from diffe…

> it leans on an uncharitable coloring of everybody who sees problems with copyright as "anti-copyright"

That's the charitable coloring. Owning concepts or ideas, and trying to police others' use of ideas you """own""" is absurd.

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

#59

Post by k__ »

jasonlotito wrote: post #41
sharkjacobs wrote: post #2

Most people in my social circles are various flavours of anti-AI, and it drives me crazy how many of them, who were once stridently anti-copyright, are now using copyright as one of the great pillars of AI opposition

I'm curious what the circle is, because it doesn't match up with my circle. So, I'm genuinely curious what you mean by "anti-copyright".

Anti-copyright usually means, anti big corps who hold culture hostage.

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

#60

Post by ineedasername »

avaer wrote: post #36
Permit wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Copyright infringement use to be the absolute worst crime imaginable if you asked the tech industry Every day hundreds of links to archive.is are posted[1] to this website to get around paywalls. Technologists built file sharing tools to subvert copyright. It has never been one of the worst crimes imaginable in tech circles. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru... (85 instances in the la…

You might be looking at a small time horizon. What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists ?

Maybe the time horizon for a statement like that shouldn’t include the decades before most current tech companies existed, much less at this scale even for the few still kicking around from 50 years ago.
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