4 ms·

Copyright as we know it is, simply put: entirely broken. There is no world imaginable where the concept of owning ideas should be protected. Imagine if chefs h

by dcow 4y ago

Copyright as we know it is, simply put: entirely broken. There is no world imaginable where the concept of owning ideas should be protected. Imagine if chefs had to license recipes… The arts communities need to take cues from the scientific community where citations are the cultural norm. And as a society we need to figure out how to protect artists by protecting and celebrating the expression of ideas. Not the ideas themselves.

thewataccount 4y ago
> And as a society we need to figure out how to protect artists by protecting and celebrating the expression of ideas. Github copilot would (until they manually changed it) spit out the famous fast inverse square function word for word - comments and everything which is more than just the idea (why would you want the comments with them swearing?)
- dcow 4y ago
  I'll admit, writing something down is where it gets very murky. On one side, you have music and musicians, where the written form is somewhat of meaningless tool used to produce creative expression, which is the performance of sound on an instrument. On the other hand you have authors (and recently, software engineers), where the creative expression as most understand it, is in the choice of arrangement of words (or statements). You can't really resolve the two. And so I lean towards a stance that it is fraught to try and build a flourishing creative society on the idea that simply writing an idea down (or saving a file of data) means you own it and can legally bring a case against someone else who happens to write the same idea down, be it music or a book. And then there's https://libraryofbabel.info https://libraryofbabel.info, which contains all possible combinations of characters that every has been, or ever will be, written. Should that be copyrightable? Anyway, I am of the opinion that Copilot does infringe on copyright as we know it. But I'm also of the opinion that simply giving individuals universal claim to any written text they produce is problematic. And to answer your question, maybe I do want the comments. Maybe they communicate something that the code cannot, swearing be damned. I'd prefer a culture of citations for written/stored/saved works. And a culture of celebrating performance of the arts, not storage of them.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    It's interesting watching AI turn into RMS's the Right to Read. When things were just a human endever alone there was a lot of pushback to prevent ownership of culture and words, but the AI battle looks like it's going to erode that
EMIRELADERO 4y ago
> There is no world imaginable where the concept of owning ideas should be protected. Copyright does not apply to ideas, it applies to specific expressions/implementations of those ideas, which is what it seeks to incentivize. The fact that many companies (particularly Disney) sued people who only copied the ideas and not the expressions shows a failure of the legal system, not copyright.
- dcow 4y ago
  Why, then, is one artist even able to bring a case against another artist for composing a song with a similar riff as one they published? It seems it's not so simple. Perhaps I should have been more specific to say that copyright law as it exists in society today is rather broken so as not to disparage the original intent of copyright as a concept. But, I feel like we're just talking semantics, really. The point remains that the implementation is broken, copyright as we know it.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - kevingadd 4y ago
    Because riffs aren't ideas, they're expressions of ideas. This seems pretty obvious? The concept of a riff is not copyrighted, but a specific one apparently can be. Obviously copyright overreach is a problem today, but you're attacking the wrong problem. Musical works can be plagiarized by other musicians and it does happen, sometimes by accident (due to modern technology and attribution problems), sometimes on purpose. The developer of a notable mobile game had to pull some music from their title a couple years ago because the composer they hired blatantly plagiarized some other works, for example.
    - dcow 4y ago
      > but you're attacking the wrong problem No, I am not. I do not believe it is possible to accidentally plagiarize something (it cannot be by definition). I do not wish to live in a society where you can face legal consequences for picking up a musical instrument and simply expressing what's on your mind. Or as another commenter put it, dropping bricks on a piano. It's insane but it's rather familiar, sadly. It's in fact you who are falling victim to the common misconception that copyrighting the performance of a riff by recording it grants you rights to attack others' performance of the same riff. And that if I perform the same riff you performed I have somehow plagiarized it. To use your words, if you copyrighted the expression of one idea, then how can you possibly attack someone else's expression, that is not your expression, of the same idea, hmm? I am lamenting the fact that it's even possible to become so confused with the current state of copyright law (and juries do). And that it's even possible to bring a case against someone in the first place (it is). That is a problem and that's what I'm attacking. As a thought experiment, consider: https://libraryofbabel.info https://libraryofbabel.info. Should the author be entitle to copyright over every combination of characters imaginable simply because they wrote them down?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by dcow 4y ago

thewataccount 4y ago

> And as a society we need to figure out how to protect artists by protecting and celebrating the expression of ideas. Github copilot would (until they manually changed it) spit out the famous fast inverse square function word for word - comments and everything which is more than just the idea (why would you want the comments with them swearing?)

dcow 4y ago
I'll admit, writing something down is where it gets very murky. On one side, you have music and musicians, where the written form is somewhat of meaningless tool used to produce creative expression, which is the performance of sound on an instrument. On the other hand you have authors (and recently, software engineers), where the creative expression as most understand it, is in the choice of arrangement of words (or statements). You can't really resolve the two. And so I lean towards a stance that it is fraught to try and build a flourishing creative society on the idea that simply writing an idea down (or saving a file of data) means you own it and can legally bring a case against someone else who happens to write the same idea down, be it music or a book. And then there's https://libraryofbabel.info https://libraryofbabel.info, which contains all possible combinations of characters that every has been, or ever will be, written. Should that be copyrightable? Anyway, I am of the opinion that Copilot does infringe on copyright as we know it. But I'm also of the opinion that simply giving individuals universal claim to any written text they produce is problematic. And to answer your question, maybe I do want the comments. Maybe they communicate something that the code cannot, swearing be damned. I'd prefer a culture of citations for written/stored/saved works. And a culture of celebrating performance of the arts, not storage of them.
- pixl97 4y ago
  It's interesting watching AI turn into RMS's the Right to Read. When things were just a human endever alone there was a lot of pushback to prevent ownership of culture and words, but the AI battle looks like it's going to erode that

EMIRELADERO 4y ago

> There is no world imaginable where the concept of owning ideas should be protected. Copyright does not apply to ideas, it applies to specific expressions/implementations of those ideas, which is what it seeks to incentivize. The fact that many companies (particularly Disney) sued people who only copied the ideas and not the expressions shows a failure of the legal system, not copyright.

dcow 4y ago
Why, then, is one artist even able to bring a case against another artist for composing a song with a similar riff as one they published? It seems it's not so simple. Perhaps I should have been more specific to say that copyright law as it exists in society today is rather broken so as not to disparage the original intent of copyright as a concept. But, I feel like we're just talking semantics, really. The point remains that the implementation is broken, copyright as we know it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kevingadd 4y ago
  Because riffs aren't ideas, they're expressions of ideas. This seems pretty obvious? The concept of a riff is not copyrighted, but a specific one apparently can be. Obviously copyright overreach is a problem today, but you're attacking the wrong problem. Musical works can be plagiarized by other musicians and it does happen, sometimes by accident (due to modern technology and attribution problems), sometimes on purpose. The developer of a notable mobile game had to pull some music from their title a couple years ago because the composer they hired blatantly plagiarized some other works, for example.
  - dcow 4y ago
    > but you're attacking the wrong problem No, I am not. I do not believe it is possible to accidentally plagiarize something (it cannot be by definition). I do not wish to live in a society where you can face legal consequences for picking up a musical instrument and simply expressing what's on your mind. Or as another commenter put it, dropping bricks on a piano. It's insane but it's rather familiar, sadly. It's in fact you who are falling victim to the common misconception that copyrighting the performance of a riff by recording it grants you rights to attack others' performance of the same riff. And that if I perform the same riff you performed I have somehow plagiarized it. To use your words, if you copyrighted the expression of one idea, then how can you possibly attack someone else's expression, that is not your expression, of the same idea, hmm? I am lamenting the fact that it's even possible to become so confused with the current state of copyright law (and juries do). And that it's even possible to bring a case against someone in the first place (it is). That is a problem and that's what I'm attacking. As a thought experiment, consider: https://libraryofbabel.info https://libraryofbabel.info. Should the author be entitle to copyright over every combination of characters imaginable simply because they wrote them down?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]