AI is just unauthorised plagiarism at a bigger scale

I don't have a strong opinion here yet, because I think it's a genuinely complex problem:

Information should be as free as possible, but creating and organizing information still needs to be encouraged, and people need money to live.

How do we meet all these goals?

My liberal ass is just like....tax the rich, solve all the problems but it's likely not quite that simple.

> Disney did not create Snow White, Bambi, Robin Hood, or Peter Pan.

I believe I stated above that I support reducing copyright periods (to the lifetime of the original author would be appropriate IMO, if the copyright is held by an individual, and I would be open to a more aggressive schedule for corporate copyrights). AFAIK all of Disney's adaptations of these stories would be allowed under that rule; some of these original stories are centuries old. But no, I don't think Disney should be able to immediately adapt a book I've written and not give me a cent out of the billions they will make off the adaptation. I would sell more books that way, sure---except I actually wouldn't, because in that world I have also lost the ability to monetize my work. So it's more accurate to say that somebody else would sell more of my books, or that I would give away more of my books.

And yes, it's more appropriate to call these adaptations. Fan fiction is more in the vein of original stories using (somebody else's) established characters and settings.

> To a large degree individual artists do not hold copyright for their work, they often sign it away (especially musicians and authors) in exchange for signing, advances, and distribution.

"To a large degree" is obviously meaningless, but a good author's agent will retain your core copyright and other rights (e.g. film adaptation, publishing/distribution in other countries, etc.).

> I think they will still be financed. Take books, I don't think bookstores will want to vertically integrate from book discovery through printing and retail stores. Consumers will still need ways to identify reputable book publishers to limit what they purchase next.

You are conflating production and distribution. If there is no copyright, the second a single copy of a work becomes available it will be scraped and offered by every distribution platform in the business, who are all free to curate their "storefronts" however they please. The difference is that they don't have to pay a cent for production, royalties, or anything else.

As an example, say I publish a new short story on my Patreon, which I use to support my writing---the idea being that if people want to read my shorts they have to pay for access. In this new regime, that newly posted story is going to appear on Amazon and every other big platform within hours, for cheaper than my Patreon membership or even free. And if I am an established name, there is no reason Amazon can't put my book front and center in their KDP feeds, etc.

The same goes for any other publishing model. The author and publisher (if applicable) immediately lose all ability to get a return on their investment, except to the extent that they can organically attract people to the correct listing on the correct distribution platform, which will have to be price-competitive with other listings.

It's the same story for paper books, too. B&N can just print copies of my book and display it front and center in their stores, without even asking me, and certainly without paying me anything.

And the same goes for other types of media. Why wouldn't it? This is why I say the commodity slop is all that will be left---that kind of IP synergizes best with the massive marketing efforts and platform consolidation that will be required to recoup your investments in content. Not much might even change in that world.

> The 0.00001$ per stream for musicians? Or the 1$ residual checks for reruns?

There is always going to be a long tail, and there are always going to be great artists who go unrecognized and unrewarded. It's also true that monolithic modern platforms like Spotify are going to leverage their position as gatekeepers to squeeze artists as far as possible. But it's ignorant (or possibly disingenuous, and anyway categorically incorrect) to claim that the above means nobody is getting paid substantial amounts for their work via these mechanisms. I suggest you seek out the authors of some of your favorite recent novels (if you read) and ask them whether losing royalties would have a substantial impact on their finances and ability to keep writing.

> What data makes you think it's low?

Observations of fellow readers, conversations with self- and traditionally-published authors, and some knowledge of the market?

But what is low, anyway? For the sake of argument I could believe 10, 20, even 30% of all the books people read are pirated. I would be surprised if it was higher, but let's just say hypothetically it's 50%. I think that's a reasonable conservative estimate. So, in this scenario, the remaining 50% of reads can in principle be monetized by their respective authors.

Abolition of copyright will drive that monetizable share essentially to 0%, for reasons I've outlined elsewhere in this thread.^[1]. I consider that meaningful, and I have personally had conversations with published authors who state that the royalties they receive are financially significant, which is why I'm here in this thread taking the position that I'm taking.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48238503

I didn't mean to imply Uber was "right" or it unilaterally got laws adjusted in its favor. Both sides had to adapt, but very clearly regulations had to be significantly adjusted as well: https://www.blackcarnews.com/article/the-uber-taxi-partnersh...

I followed this evolution peripherally as it happened, because while I appreciated the convenience of Uber, I disliked that it was unfair towards existing taxi drivers who had very onerous requirements like taxi medallions, which, note, never became a requirement for rideshare drivers.

I remember at one point Uber drivers at the airport would ask me to pretend I'm a friend being picked up to avoid trouble with the cops, and then a couple of years later there was a dedicated, official "Uber pickup lane."

My underlying point was that the whole system -- including Uber, incumbents, society and laws -- adapted to a new economic reality.

Copying someone's website contents is not a material programming project. I was thinking you'd say something like 90% of people would balk at this point and sure, maybe, but 10x as many people doing this doesn't matter because 1) that's still a lot of people and 2) people are not the bottleneck. Do you think the barrier blocked more than 90% of people? A dozen people doesn't make a difference here.

Yes, people can make money making original content. They can also make even more money making movies, music, and TV shows. Do you know any movies, songs, or TV shows that you can't find on the pirate bay? Of course not, piracy is fully saturated. Audiences prefer to support original creators, but this is not evidence we're not at rock bottom. LLMs make torrent production easier every step of the way, but there will not be a wave of piracy because the situation essentially cannot be worse.

When I say 'nobody reads the articles', that's an exaggeration. I'm definitely not speaking for myself, which should be clear from my criticizing the article. I mean, of the HN users who are not on the same page with one another that you point to as evidence the article should be here, the vast majority did not read the article and approximately none of them are engaging with its content.

I'm curious what you got from it and why you think it deserved to sit on the front page all day. I see a retread of LLM training complaints that may as well be plagiarism because it doesn't say anything I didn't hear in 2023, then a complaint about AI bros, followed by two sentences about what set them off that don't explain why they suspect ChatGPT or provide any material detail (and have nothing to do with the training complaint they opened with) before finally sending off by blaming Google for being victimized by SEO manipulation (which also rock-bottomed before LLMs). I'd understand if it was a famous person's low effort rant- I wouldn't be thrilled, but it would make sense- but what's the value here? What did 700 people see here that made them think other HN users need to see it? I'm still convinced the answer is "the title", a title that is not at all supported by the text and that you just told me you disagree with.