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How do you propose to keep artists able to pay their bills and live a decent life if you're completely cool with training AIs on them? Bonus points if you have

How do you propose to keep artists able to pay their bills and live a decent life if you're completely cool with training AIs on them? Bonus points if you have any actionable scheme beyond waving your hands and talking vaguely about "basic income". Keep in mind that the life of a professional artist is currently very perilous, anyone working freelance is constantly battling against the social media giants' desire to keep everyone scrolling their site forever. Words like "patreon" and "commission" and links off-site to places an artist can exchange their works for money are poison to The Algorithm and will be hidden. And also if I am reading this right, you have absolutely no problem with an image generator that's been trained on copyrighted work producing work that's either copyrighted or copylefted? You are utterly fine with disregarding the copyrights of the original artist and/or whoever they may have assigned the copyright to as part of their contract?

sinity 4y ago
> How do you propose to keep artists able to pay their bills and live a decent life if you're completely cool with training AIs on them? Why isn't it a concern for any other automation? How do we progress, exactly, if we randomly decide that nothing can disrupt any of the current ways of earning income? What about, IDK, coal miners? > And also if I am reading this right, you have absolutely no problem with an image generator that's been trained on copyrighted work producing work that's either copyrighted or copylefted? You are utterly fine with disregarding the copyrights of the original artist and/or whoever they may have assigned the copyright to as part of their contract? Copyright maximalism is bad. It also doesn't make any sense. Someone learning to reproduce your capabilities by looking at your stuff isn't violating copyright. If we allowed copyright to somehow mean that someone's skills can't be reproduced...
ItsMonkk 4y ago
The very first Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel winner Paul Samuelson[0] makes the argument here[1] when discussing how lighthouse economics works that anything with zero marginal costs that has a price other than free is by definition an economic loss. Therefore you should find other ways to fund lighthouses, and by extension, all media and software. If an economic loss is currently occurring, that means that, if copyright is abolished, an economic gain will accrue. Where that economic gain is captured is therefore the core focus. What we want to occur is for society and the author to share in this increased economic gain, what we don't want is for monopolistic rent-seekers to grab all of this value for themselves. I am not yet sure of this, but I think a land value tax would accomplish this goal. One would then discover some method to find the weight for each artist or piece of software through a market means that might only be an approximation and take from the land value tax revenue and distribute it to artists and other creators. I think a decent way to find this value is through a revenue neutral(or slightly negative) opt-in sortition process in which, when you go to use an artists work, you are entered into an auction wherein the 50% who bid more than the median value get to use the work at the median price, and the 50% who bid less do not get to use the work, but receive their bid in cash. This is surely not the full system, but it is just me working out how we can move forward from such an unjust system like copyright. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson [1]: https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/econ335/out/lighthouse.pdf https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/econ335/out/lighthouse.pdf - page 359, first paragraph
deadbeeves 4y ago
Speaking as another copyright abolitionist, > How do you propose to keep artists able to pay their bills and live a decent life if you're completely cool with training AIs on them? 1. Software being able to imitate artists doesn't mean people will stop wanting art from other people. 2. If it does, I would say that it's unfortunate, but it's the world we live in. Nobody has a guarantee on being able to make a living doing any conceivable profession whatsoever, and artists are no different. I would very much like to make a living from working on my personal projects, but people don't seem to want to take me up on my offer.

sinity 4y ago

> How do you propose to keep artists able to pay their bills and live a decent life if you're completely cool with training AIs on them? Why isn't it a concern for any other automation? How do we progress, exactly, if we randomly decide that nothing can disrupt any of the current ways of earning income? What about, IDK, coal miners? > And also if I am reading this right, you have absolutely no problem with an image generator that's been trained on copyrighted work producing work that's either copyrighted or copylefted? You are utterly fine with disregarding the copyrights of the original artist and/or whoever they may have assigned the copyright to as part of their contract? Copyright maximalism is bad. It also doesn't make any sense. Someone learning to reproduce your capabilities by looking at your stuff isn't violating copyright. If we allowed copyright to somehow mean that someone's skills can't be reproduced...

ItsMonkk 4y ago

The very first Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel winner Paul Samuelson[0] makes the argument here[1] when discussing how lighthouse economics works that anything with zero marginal costs that has a price other than free is by definition an economic loss. Therefore you should find other ways to fund lighthouses, and by extension, all media and software. If an economic loss is currently occurring, that means that, if copyright is abolished, an economic gain will accrue. Where that economic gain is captured is therefore the core focus. What we want to occur is for society and the author to share in this increased economic gain, what we don't want is for monopolistic rent-seekers to grab all of this value for themselves. I am not yet sure of this, but I think a land value tax would accomplish this goal. One would then discover some method to find the weight for each artist or piece of software through a market means that might only be an approximation and take from the land value tax revenue and distribute it to artists and other creators. I think a decent way to find this value is through a revenue neutral(or slightly negative) opt-in sortition process in which, when you go to use an artists work, you are entered into an auction wherein the 50% who bid more than the median value get to use the work at the median price, and the 50% who bid less do not get to use the work, but receive their bid in cash. This is surely not the full system, but it is just me working out how we can move forward from such an unjust system like copyright. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Samuelson [1]: https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/econ335/out/lighthouse.pdf https://courses.cit.cornell.edu/econ335/out/lighthouse.pdf - page 359, first paragraph

deadbeeves 4y ago

Speaking as another copyright abolitionist, > How do you propose to keep artists able to pay their bills and live a decent life if you're completely cool with training AIs on them? 1. Software being able to imitate artists doesn't mean people will stop wanting art from other people. 2. If it does, I would say that it's unfortunate, but it's the world we live in. Nobody has a guarantee on being able to make a living doing any conceivable profession whatsoever, and artists are no different. I would very much like to make a living from working on my personal projects, but people don't seem to want to take me up on my offer.