4 ms·

What worries me most is that this is likely to only increase the gap between large corporate creator and small independent creators. Large AI companies probabl

by crote 3y ago

What worries me most is that this is likely to only increase the gap between large corporate creator and small independent creators. Large AI companies probably are not too worried about making deals with corporate content creators. Having access to content from a trigger-happy creator is only going to increase their advantage over competitors, after all. And if those creators were instead to try to introduce legislation, the AI companies would risk losing access to content from small creators without the means to sue too. We seem to be moving into a world where corporate content cannot in any way be reused, remixed, or even archived. You cannot even own a copy - it is only accessible for a monthly fee and can disappear at any time. Meanwhile, anything created by independent creators is fair game to steal and rip off. Copyright was intended to promote and protect human creativity, but instead we got a rent-seeking mechanism used to stifle original creation.

EGreg 3y ago
How shocking! A monopoly right granted by the government to exclude others from use of an idea (patents) and creative works (intellectual property) was intended to help the little guy, but ended up helping the big boys extract rents instead, while exploiting the little guy because they sold their rights to survive and get access to a platform? https://janefriedman.com/i-would-rather-see-my-books-pirated/ https://janefriedman.com/i-would-rather-see-my-books-pirated... It’s almost as if governments (even capitalist ones) work with industry and concentration of power perpetuates this kind of consolidation further. They keep us distracted so we don’t have enough collective willpower to get together and demand reform, or even better — create our own alternative open ecosystems. I write about many other examples of government-industry distracting us here: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362
gochi 3y ago
[flagged]
- lewhoo 3y ago
  How so ? Copyright was introduced along with the print press to protect the works of authors. When you buy a copy of a book it's not exactly private property of the author that you buy, is it ?
  - smokel 3y ago
    Texts were copied even before the printing press. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright for more information.
    - lewhoo 3y ago
      They were, usually to preserve the work, not distribute it on a large scale because there was no large scale. What's your argument ?
      - a2800276 3y ago
        I'd guess the point is that prior to the invention of the printing press, an "author" would be financed through a patron. That patron could monetize their initial investment by either hiring people to copy a work by hand or allowing access to the book. Once the printing press arrived the patron / publisher needed another way to monetize their initial investment as modes of reproduction became more easy, copyright became more restrictive. Depending on your side of the copyright argument, it either allows whomever is making the initial investment (publisher, author) to be a generous patron of human creative progress ... or ... it allows the to maintain a monopoly on knowledge and be able to profit off it.
        tbrownaw 3y ago
        > * or ... it allows the to maintain a monopoly on knowledge and be able to profit off it.* The length of modern copyright terms is absurd and harmful. The USA started with 14 (plus optionally another 14) which was better. Last I checked - quite a few year ago - I think there were academic papers calculating that an "optimal" copyright term is probably around 10-14 years.
- tbrownaw 3y ago
  >> Copyright was intended to promote and protect human creativity > This was never the case. Copyright was always a method to enforce private property as a core concept as it's integral to capitalism functioning. Yeah, copyright was never intended to protect creativity, it was just intended to allow people to make a living by being creative. Somehow something about that doesn't seem to quite add up. > Just like police were never about promoting safety and wellbeing. Please do a bit of research on what happens when laws stop being enforced. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Metropolitan_Police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Metropolitan_Po...
- Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
  >as it's integral to capitalism functioning Copyright in the united states begins in 1776 and even earlier in Europe. At this time the economy consisted almost solely of agriculture as well as some light manufacturing. So it seems highly unlikely that the authors of the constitution saw copyright as "integral to capitalism functioning" rather than as a way to promote the arts. Regarding your second point: >The first statutory police force is believed to be the High Constables of Edinburgh, who were created by the Scottish parliament in 1611 to "guard their streets and to commit to ward all person found on the streets after the said hour".[0] I understand that you will likely view this source through a communist lens, and I wouldn't either take every primary source at face value but having a city watch and balif was common. As goverments became more centralized these were replaced by "police" but it is misleading to say police were simply invented one day, and that it was invented soley with ulterior motives. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_criminal_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_criminal_justice
  - throw10920 3y ago
    > So it seems highly unlikely that the authors of the constitution saw copyright as "integral to capitalism functioning" rather than as a way to promote the arts. They didn't. GP is speaking out of ignorance and desire to prove that "capitalism bad".
blibble 3y ago
> And if those creators were instead to try to introduce legislation, the AI companies would risk losing access to content from small creators without the means to sue too. this is the point of a class action suit isn't it? if it turns out training isn't fair use then Microsoft/Google/OpenAI will suddenly have class action suits for billions if not trillions of damages against them ($150,000 damages per willful infringement, after all)
- gentleman11 3y ago
  Have you never seen the outcome of a class action? They’re all slaps in the wrist, less than speeding tickets, and the action members get like a free hotdog or red bull as compensation if they’re lucky
  - blibble 3y ago
    yes, the lawyers always clean up the aim would be to make training on copyrighted material legally toxic and render all existing datasets and trained weights unlawful the damages are simply a bonus
    - __loam 3y ago
      Yeah that's the real goal. You can make it impossible for big corporations to use this technology because it paints a huge target on them while ignoring the de facto state of open source models that are impossible to enforce regulation against. Best of both worlds maybe.
      - blibble 3y ago
        exactly it's like patent trolling, but with no expensive patent required
    - harry8 3y ago
      How do you prove a set of weights was trained on, in part, any dataset? "We bought these weights in good faith from Digitus Tertius corp of bermuda."

by crote 3y ago

EGreg 3y ago

How shocking! A monopoly right granted by the government to exclude others from use of an idea (patents) and creative works (intellectual property) was intended to help the little guy, but ended up helping the big boys extract rents instead, while exploiting the little guy because they sold their rights to survive and get access to a platform? https://janefriedman.com/i-would-rather-see-my-books-pirated/ https://janefriedman.com/i-would-rather-see-my-books-pirated... It’s almost as if governments (even capitalist ones) work with industry and concentration of power perpetuates this kind of consolidation further. They keep us distracted so we don’t have enough collective willpower to get together and demand reform, or even better — create our own alternative open ecosystems. I write about many other examples of government-industry distracting us here: https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362 https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=362

gochi 3y ago

[flagged]

lewhoo 3y ago
How so ? Copyright was introduced along with the print press to protect the works of authors. When you buy a copy of a book it's not exactly private property of the author that you buy, is it ?
- smokel 3y ago
  Texts were copied even before the printing press. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright for more information.
  - lewhoo 3y ago
    They were, usually to preserve the work, not distribute it on a large scale because there was no large scale. What's your argument ?
    - a2800276 3y ago
      I'd guess the point is that prior to the invention of the printing press, an "author" would be financed through a patron. That patron could monetize their initial investment by either hiring people to copy a work by hand or allowing access to the book. Once the printing press arrived the patron / publisher needed another way to monetize their initial investment as modes of reproduction became more easy, copyright became more restrictive. Depending on your side of the copyright argument, it either allows whomever is making the initial investment (publisher, author) to be a generous patron of human creative progress ... or ... it allows the to maintain a monopoly on knowledge and be able to profit off it.
      - tbrownaw 3y ago
        > * or ... it allows the to maintain a monopoly on knowledge and be able to profit off it.* The length of modern copyright terms is absurd and harmful. The USA started with 14 (plus optionally another 14) which was better. Last I checked - quite a few year ago - I think there were academic papers calculating that an "optimal" copyright term is probably around 10-14 years.
tbrownaw 3y ago
>> Copyright was intended to promote and protect human creativity > This was never the case. Copyright was always a method to enforce private property as a core concept as it's integral to capitalism functioning. Yeah, copyright was never intended to protect creativity, it was just intended to allow people to make a living by being creative. Somehow something about that doesn't seem to quite add up. > Just like police were never about promoting safety and wellbeing. Please do a bit of research on what happens when laws stop being enforced. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Metropolitan_Police https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Metropolitan_Po...
Vt71fcAqt7 3y ago
>as it's integral to capitalism functioning Copyright in the united states begins in 1776 and even earlier in Europe. At this time the economy consisted almost solely of agriculture as well as some light manufacturing. So it seems highly unlikely that the authors of the constitution saw copyright as "integral to capitalism functioning" rather than as a way to promote the arts. Regarding your second point: >The first statutory police force is believed to be the High Constables of Edinburgh, who were created by the Scottish parliament in 1611 to "guard their streets and to commit to ward all person found on the streets after the said hour".[0] I understand that you will likely view this source through a communist lens, and I wouldn't either take every primary source at face value but having a city watch and balif was common. As goverments became more centralized these were replaced by "police" but it is misleading to say police were simply invented one day, and that it was invented soley with ulterior motives. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_criminal_justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_criminal_justice
- throw10920 3y ago
  > So it seems highly unlikely that the authors of the constitution saw copyright as "integral to capitalism functioning" rather than as a way to promote the arts. They didn't. GP is speaking out of ignorance and desire to prove that "capitalism bad".

blibble 3y ago

> And if those creators were instead to try to introduce legislation, the AI companies would risk losing access to content from small creators without the means to sue too. this is the point of a class action suit isn't it? if it turns out training isn't fair use then Microsoft/Google/OpenAI will suddenly have class action suits for billions if not trillions of damages against them ($150,000 damages per willful infringement, after all)

gentleman11 3y ago
Have you never seen the outcome of a class action? They’re all slaps in the wrist, less than speeding tickets, and the action members get like a free hotdog or red bull as compensation if they’re lucky
- blibble 3y ago
  yes, the lawyers always clean up the aim would be to make training on copyrighted material legally toxic and render all existing datasets and trained weights unlawful the damages are simply a bonus
  - __loam 3y ago
    Yeah that's the real goal. You can make it impossible for big corporations to use this technology because it paints a huge target on them while ignoring the de facto state of open source models that are impossible to enforce regulation against. Best of both worlds maybe.
    - blibble 3y ago
      exactly it's like patent trolling, but with no expensive patent required
  - harry8 3y ago
    How do you prove a set of weights was trained on, in part, any dataset? "We bought these weights in good faith from Digitus Tertius corp of bermuda."