4 ms·

> “as far as I can tell, it’s had zero economic impact on authors” Why are you the right person in the world to make these decisions on the behalf of thousands

by pavlov 3y ago

> “as far as I can tell, it’s had zero economic impact on authors” Why are you the right person in the world to make these decisions on the behalf of thousands of living authors? I can understand distributing old works and abandonware. Copyright protection is far too long. But I don’t understand taking the recent creative work of somebody who’s alive and trying to make a living, and packaging it so that trillion-dollar corporations have a plausible excuse to use the work without permission.

anothernewdude 3y ago
Who are publishers to do so? Because they're the ones that have decided for everyone right now. There will be zero economic impact on authors because they're already being screwed by publishers.
- pavlov 3y ago
  That’s pointless whataboutism. The authors can decide for themselves if they want to be in a contract with a publisher.
  - anothernewdude 3y ago
    Sure they can. Ask any academic how they feel about publishers.
jrflowers 3y ago
> Why are you the right person in the world to make these decisions on the behalf of thousands of living authors? This is a good argument. Why would anyone focus on the fact that no harm has been caused when we could be talking about theoretical harms that we can’t describe or quantify??
- pavlov 3y ago
  Because there is such a thing as moral rights? Can I start writing books in your name and selling them on Kindle using your reputation with made-up quotes from your professional associates? Why not? How can you quantify the harm?
  - jrflowers 3y ago
    > Because there is such a thing as moral rights? The inalienable right to protect us from a computer using statistical math to output the word “embiggens” when given a Simpsons prompt is as obvious as free speech and liberty. Edit >Can I start writing books in your name and selling them on Kindle using your reputation with made-up quotes from your professional associates? Why not? How can you quantify the harm? You make a very compelling point here. The books3 torrent has made so much money by doing what you’ve described. Quantifying the harm is easy, simply take all of the money from books3 (the file archive)’s ill-gotten-gains checking account and give it to its victims.
    - pavlov 3y ago
      Excellent comparison because the implementation details of free speech are far from obvious and have been constantly tuned and tweaked over the centuries. (“Liberty” isn’t any specific right.) It’s easy to pick an example that you consider benevolent and harmless. But have you considered that authors simply may not want their work included in a Simpsons meme generator? Samuel Beckett dictated the set design for his plays to every last detail. Because of long copyright, you still can’t perform your own version of “En attendant Godot” today. I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. But I have to respect Beckett’s obsessive creative vision and that the law doesn’t let me (or Disney) make our own versions of Godot yet. Re: your edit — You wouldn’t have written the books I’m selling on Kindle in your name. So by the same logic that there’s no harm to authors when Meta and Google and OpenAI sell products derived from pirated books, there’s no harm to you when I use your name for my own ventures. Sillysaurusx created a database whose only appeal is that it contains works by famous authors. This is not fundamentally different from me writing a book in your name.
      - hnfong 3y ago
        > But have you considered that authors simply may not want their work included in a Simpsons meme generator? Ironically copyright law seems to explicitly allow this under fair use for parody... I totally understand that authors need to put food on the table, and economic rights are important. What I don't get is why we should worry that some author might be unhappy that their works end up in a meme. It seems to be the last thing we should worry about in the grand scheme of things.
sillysaurusx 3y ago
Who are authors to decide that their work should be forbidden from being fed into ML models? Everyone does it. And until the laws change, people will continue to. You could make the same argument about LAION (and people do). The difference is that people have to scrape LAION themselves. Google itself would be copyright infringement by that standard. They spider massive amounts of copyrighted content, and serve ads while doing so. My goal was to make it possible for people like you and me to train a ChatGPT competitor.
- KirillPanov 3y ago
  > Who are authors to decide that their work should be forbidden from being fed into ML models? That's how copyright works. To create a derivative work, you need a license. > They spider massive amounts of copyrighted content ...while obeying `robots.txt`, which is the machine-readable version of "all rights reserved". They also accept DMCA notices.
  - sillysaurusx 3y ago
    https://spawning.ai https://spawning.ai seems to have the right idea. They propose creating an ai.txt standard. I’m also working with them to make an opt out for books3, for whatever that’s worth. Which given the current climate of “sue or jail anyone who disagrees” might only stoke the flames.
  - mellosouls 3y ago
    That's how copyright works. To create a derivative work, you need a license. It's no more derivative than the works the authors produce, publicize and sell on their open source software platforms. Are they also going to be charged for every book released that has in some way contributed to their cultural hinterland? We're talking about building a cultural context en-masse - not taking individual books to enjoy for free and plagiarise. That single vs mass use of the books makes a significant ethical difference.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
hnfong 3y ago
Assuming you believe technological advancements are a good thing, there's a balance to be struck between depriving authors of revenue they wouldn't have had in the first place (when you write a book in 2010, do you actually do so with the intent that you'd get paid by companies developing an AI with that data?), and stifling technological progress because there's new money to be made and we haven't figured how to divide the pie. (Yes, I believe they should be paid, but I don't think authors should morally be allowed to hold their works for ransom in the 'a million dollars per book, take it or leave it' sense. There should be some more reasonable thing here.) We're all members of society, it's not like you want to live in an authoritarian environment where only Big Brother has the rights to make that decision. Mind you, according to your logic, even the authors of the books themselves would not have the right to make a general decision, only that of their own works. But they wouldn't have any insight at all to how allowing the data be trained on models will advance our understanding of AI tech.
hgomersall 3y ago
Copyright is a deal with society. One might just as well ask why an author has any say over transactions between two independent third parties. The answer is because it has been deemed useful for the encouragement of creative works to provide for that say. It's not immutable and the rules can easily be changed if society thinks they should be.

by pavlov 3y ago

anothernewdude 3y ago

Who are publishers to do so? Because they're the ones that have decided for everyone right now. There will be zero economic impact on authors because they're already being screwed by publishers.

pavlov 3y ago
That’s pointless whataboutism. The authors can decide for themselves if they want to be in a contract with a publisher.
- anothernewdude 3y ago
  Sure they can. Ask any academic how they feel about publishers.

jrflowers 3y ago

> Why are you the right person in the world to make these decisions on the behalf of thousands of living authors? This is a good argument. Why would anyone focus on the fact that no harm has been caused when we could be talking about theoretical harms that we can’t describe or quantify??

pavlov 3y ago
Because there is such a thing as moral rights? Can I start writing books in your name and selling them on Kindle using your reputation with made-up quotes from your professional associates? Why not? How can you quantify the harm?
- jrflowers 3y ago
  > Because there is such a thing as moral rights? The inalienable right to protect us from a computer using statistical math to output the word “embiggens” when given a Simpsons prompt is as obvious as free speech and liberty. Edit >Can I start writing books in your name and selling them on Kindle using your reputation with made-up quotes from your professional associates? Why not? How can you quantify the harm? You make a very compelling point here. The books3 torrent has made so much money by doing what you’ve described. Quantifying the harm is easy, simply take all of the money from books3 (the file archive)’s ill-gotten-gains checking account and give it to its victims.
  - pavlov 3y ago
    Excellent comparison because the implementation details of free speech are far from obvious and have been constantly tuned and tweaked over the centuries. (“Liberty” isn’t any specific right.) It’s easy to pick an example that you consider benevolent and harmless. But have you considered that authors simply may not want their work included in a Simpsons meme generator? Samuel Beckett dictated the set design for his plays to every last detail. Because of long copyright, you still can’t perform your own version of “En attendant Godot” today. I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. But I have to respect Beckett’s obsessive creative vision and that the law doesn’t let me (or Disney) make our own versions of Godot yet. Re: your edit — You wouldn’t have written the books I’m selling on Kindle in your name. So by the same logic that there’s no harm to authors when Meta and Google and OpenAI sell products derived from pirated books, there’s no harm to you when I use your name for my own ventures. Sillysaurusx created a database whose only appeal is that it contains works by famous authors. This is not fundamentally different from me writing a book in your name.
    - hnfong 3y ago
      > But have you considered that authors simply may not want their work included in a Simpsons meme generator? Ironically copyright law seems to explicitly allow this under fair use for parody... I totally understand that authors need to put food on the table, and economic rights are important. What I don't get is why we should worry that some author might be unhappy that their works end up in a meme. It seems to be the last thing we should worry about in the grand scheme of things.

sillysaurusx 3y ago

Who are authors to decide that their work should be forbidden from being fed into ML models? Everyone does it. And until the laws change, people will continue to. You could make the same argument about LAION (and people do). The difference is that people have to scrape LAION themselves. Google itself would be copyright infringement by that standard. They spider massive amounts of copyrighted content, and serve ads while doing so. My goal was to make it possible for people like you and me to train a ChatGPT competitor.

KirillPanov 3y ago
> Who are authors to decide that their work should be forbidden from being fed into ML models? That's how copyright works. To create a derivative work, you need a license. > They spider massive amounts of copyrighted content ...while obeying `robots.txt`, which is the machine-readable version of "all rights reserved". They also accept DMCA notices.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  https://spawning.ai https://spawning.ai seems to have the right idea. They propose creating an ai.txt standard. I’m also working with them to make an opt out for books3, for whatever that’s worth. Which given the current climate of “sue or jail anyone who disagrees” might only stoke the flames.
- mellosouls 3y ago
  That's how copyright works. To create a derivative work, you need a license. It's no more derivative than the works the authors produce, publicize and sell on their open source software platforms. Are they also going to be charged for every book released that has in some way contributed to their cultural hinterland? We're talking about building a cultural context en-masse - not taking individual books to enjoy for free and plagiarise. That single vs mass use of the books makes a significant ethical difference.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

hnfong 3y ago

Assuming you believe technological advancements are a good thing, there's a balance to be struck between depriving authors of revenue they wouldn't have had in the first place (when you write a book in 2010, do you actually do so with the intent that you'd get paid by companies developing an AI with that data?), and stifling technological progress because there's new money to be made and we haven't figured how to divide the pie. (Yes, I believe they should be paid, but I don't think authors should morally be allowed to hold their works for ransom in the 'a million dollars per book, take it or leave it' sense. There should be some more reasonable thing here.) We're all members of society, it's not like you want to live in an authoritarian environment where only Big Brother has the rights to make that decision. Mind you, according to your logic, even the authors of the books themselves would not have the right to make a general decision, only that of their own works. But they wouldn't have any insight at all to how allowing the data be trained on models will advance our understanding of AI tech.

hgomersall 3y ago

Copyright is a deal with society. One might just as well ask why an author has any say over transactions between two independent third parties. The answer is because it has been deemed useful for the encouragement of creative works to provide for that say. It's not immutable and the rules can easily be changed if society thinks they should be.