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AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

axelk.ee

691–700 of 783 posts

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in favor of severely limiting both copyright and advertising, but for the benefit of everyone, not just for the benefit of a few "AI" companies.

The answer is to simply pay for stuff. There is no viable model where "have stuff but not pay for it" works out.

Remember early internet? The time when it actually cost non-trivial amount of money to post stuff on the web, and there was no expectation that webpage authors would get any money back?

This worked pretty well. Websites were hobby - one might spend their money buying comic books, and someone else might spend the money making and hosting their website.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#692
post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't small crime vs large crime. It is no crime regardless of scale. If it is acceptable for a person to learn, then it should be acceptable for a machine. And any derived works produced from that information isn't theft or copyright violation. Though I do think there is a valid gripe with the LLMs being trained on pirated materials. I've also personally learned from a lot of PDF of textbooks I didn't o…

> If it is acceptable for a person to learn, then it should be acceptable for a machine. Is there a name for the fallacy when people act like models and algorithms should be granted the same rights as human beings?

Is it a fallacy? Can you provide a legal or logical basis for this being treated differently.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#693
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did the first homo sapiens exist? Ideas like species evolve. Saying there are no original ideas seems to me an attempt to glibly capture something quite fundamental.

Hi dmoose, your handle looks familiar to me. The non-glib answer is that we should giver some very serious consideration to the possibility that language either functions like, or possibly is the same as, Jung's collective unconscious: the organically created repository of all of humankind's cognition and reason, accumulated over vasts periods of time, deposited by billions of humans. My way of "giving this serious a…

> unless you have data... it is just an opinion

Glib as well, but this one hits home a lot harder. Well said.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#694
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course quantity makes emerge it’s own quality. If you kill a single person, you are a murderer, if you genocide "others" and distribute the spoliation wealth to those unscathed you are a national hero. If you steal small material you are a theft and go to prison, if you hog some billions you can enact laws to grab even more.

>If you kill a single person, you are a murderer, if you genocide "others" and distribute the spoliation wealth to those unscathed you are a national hero. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how laws work. It's not the scale that makes it okay, it's that it's done through some official process. Trump's raid to grab Maduro killed less than 100 people. Pretty modest by "genocide" standards, and is easily eclipse…

Who is sir Francis drake

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#695

Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It's a Seductive Mirage. [0] [0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html

Just so long as it's just a seductive mirage to the Oracles, Microsofts, Metas, and Googles as well as your friendly neighbourhood unpaid overworked open-source developer. Open weight model trained with no attribution on all of Oracle's internal repos. It's only fair.

And on all aristocrat communications and private meetings. Tis fair to keep algorithmic tabs on the most dangerous of society

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be specific, it would be more of a hassle for human visitors than for the AI companies with infinite money and specialized browsers.

The idea would be that AI companies would still be forced to do this proof of work. Anubis proved the idea

I don’t think Anubis proves the idea much though. I feel the main reason it’s worked is that AI companies haven’t yet tried to bypass it.

And AI companies still scrape Anubis protected websites, it just forces them to not DDOS the website

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been pirating books online for 20 years and in that time the number of books published per year has increased 15-fold. A number of my favorites have been released in that time.

Piracy is illegal and most people don't do it. In a world without copyright, I can stand up a slick 100% legal website (and apps, etc) and distribute electronic copies of every single book (or whatever) straight to normies' phones, and I am free to monetize this scheme however I want.

You're underestimating how easy and common piracy is. You can get books, movies, or music with just a search, for free, with no consequences. It's generally socially accepted. This report tracked 216 billion visits to piracy websites in 2024: https://www.muso.com/blog/what-216-billion-visits-to-piracy-...

Music piracy is down just because services like Spotify let you listen to any song (for free with ads or with a subscription) and it's more convenient than pirating.

> I wonder how many of the books I love would still have been written in a world where somebody could scoop them all up and post them on the internet for free (and run ads).

Legal or not, this is exactly what happened. The piracy sites run ads and/or ask for donations.

I don't know which of your favorite books would have still been written without copyright. But I can say with confidence that the massive increase in the number of books per year over the past two decades would have happened regardless of copyright. It's been driven by lowering the barrier to entry for self-publishing, and only a very small fraction of them earn a living.

A surprisingly large fraction of my favorite books from the past two decades were published for free online by the author (e.g. Andy Weir's book).

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#699
post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument isn't small crime vs large crime. It is no crime regardless of scale. If it is acceptable for a person to learn, then it should be acceptable for a machine. And any derived works produced from that information isn't theft or copyright violation. Though I do think there is a valid gripe with the LLMs being trained on pirated materials. I've also personally learned from a lot of PDF of textbooks I didn't o…

> If it is acceptable for a person to learn, then it should be acceptable for a machine. Is there a name for the fallacy when people act like models and algorithms should be granted the same rights as human beings?

AI psychosis would be my term. When you attribute to software the characteristics of a human you are in a psychosis.

Re: AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you feel strongly that fan fiction and similar derivative works ought to be monetizable? I guess I really just don't care about that. It hasn't stopped huge numbers of amazing authors from doing their thing, and I don't think it's a good reason to [partially] abolish copyright except in a very specific and limited scope.

Yes I do, in part because the difference between fan fiction and fiction, is that one has the blessing of the copyright holder while the other doesn't. Disney turning common folk tales (the culture of the day) into movies is not considered fan fiction because there was no monopoly on who could tell those stories, and how. If lack of copyright for fan fiction and derivative work hasn't stopped good fan fiction authors…

> Yes I do, in part because the difference between fan fiction and fiction, is that one has the blessing of the copyright holder while the other doesn't.

This is a really odd thing to say. You can just go write your own fiction, right now. You can invent your own original characters and setting and plot and go write it. You will automatically own the copyright to your own work; there is no other party who must "bless" your efforts.

I have nothing against fan fiction, but it's an edge case.

> If lack of copyright for fan fiction and derivative work hasn't stopped good fan fiction authors from doing good work, then I don't think that we will lose much if the newest Marvel movie or franchise reboot also can't be copyrighted.

I mean, I don't think we will lose much if the latter doesn't exist. I think I have made it clear that my specific concern is for individual artists who hold the rights to their work, not purveyors of commodity slop. But, since you mentioned it, what effect do you think abolishment of copyright will have on the production of films that are actually good? Who will finance them when it's impossible to directly monetize them? If anything I think commodity slop will be the only thing that gets funded anymore, since it probably synergizes best with massive distribution platforms and hundred million dollar multi-media marketing blitzes. Everyone else can go the Neil Breen route.

> I don't see a good reason for keeping it though. Copyright isn't why artists are being paid pennies for their work.

Yeah, you're right. No artists are relying on royalties and similar payments for their work. I'm sure none of them will complain if we take all that away.

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