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There's a lot of assumptions and assertions in this article and very few sources or links. Not even sure where to start with this one because almost everything

by mvdtnz 3y ago

There's a lot of assumptions and assertions in this article and very few sources or links. Not even sure where to start with this one because almost everything here is just an assertion from the author. > However, because so many people think that they’re supporting creators and “sticking it” to Big Tech in supporting these copyright lawsuits over AI, I don't care about "sticking it to big tech", I think it's only fair to pay for using someone else's work to your own benefit. > Copyright law, by its very nature as a monopoly right, has always served the interests of gatekeepers over artists. Copyright has never served artists? That's a huge assertion to just throw out there. > This is why the most aggressive enforcers of copyright are the very middlemen with long histories of screwing over the actual creatives: the record labels, the TV and movie studios, the book publishers, etc. These are the groups enforcing copyright because in a lot of cases they are the copyright holders. > This is why we’ve said that AI training will never fit neatly into a licensing regime. Certainly true - we will need a new licensing regime to handle this. It's a brave new world. > And, because of the nature of training data, which only needs to be collected once, it’s not likely that this will be a recurring payment, but a minuscule one-off for the right to train on the data. This is a very strange assertion. Spotify only needs to download your band's MP3 files once so they should only pay you once? No, they use it on an ongoing basis to serve their customers, so recurring payments are appropriate. > But, given the enormity of the amount of content, and the structure of this kind of thing, the cost will be extremely high for the AI companies (a few pennies for every creator online can add up in aggregate), meaning that only the biggest of big tech will be able to afford it. Yeah this will lock out all of those scrappy mum and pop shops training their multi-billion parameter models on the entire internet. I don't claim to know the proper solution to this problem, but it does feel desperately unfair to me to see companies like OpenAI slurping up the output of artists and benefitting greatly from it while the artists get nothing in return. I don't know if copyright law is the right place to look or not. Like I said, it's a brave new world. But this article is not convincing to me, at all.

kianlocke 3y ago
> I think it's only fair to pay for using someone else's work to your own benefit. How many artists do you know that pay out a portion of the proceeds of any of their works to the artists that have influenced and inspired them? Why should we have a separate set of laws for men and machines? Why would we assume that any algorithms used to determine 'inspirational ancestry' will only ever be used against machines? This is a power grab, pure and simple, an attempt to add style to the list of copyrightable immaterials -- Disney 2.0, but on a much more massive and debilitating scale.
- allturtles 3y ago
  > Why should we have a separate set of laws for men and machines? We already do. Humans have many rights that machines do not. I should think this is obvious and desirable.
  - kianlocke 3y ago
    Sorry, I should have phrased that as "why should we have a separate set of laws for men and for men using machines?" No artist is required to pay out to their influences, but an artist that uses a machine must or it is a grave injustice?
    - pixl97 3y ago
      Or more to the point "why should we have a separate set of laws for men and for corporations?" I do feel a lot of these attempts to provide one set of rules for people and one set of rules for everything else will fail in the US due to "corporations are people too". Unless of course corporations actually want these rules as it further entrenches their power.
- mvdtnz 3y ago
  In my view it's just categorically wrong to treat a billion dollar computer system owned by a huge tech company the same way we treat the human brain. They are simply not the same thing.
  - kianlocke 3y ago
    In my view it's categorically wrong to assume that these systems will cost a billion dollars forever, and if we write the laws without that understanding, we are only helping billion-dollar corporations. In cases where these systems were trained on data that was literally stolen from closed, user-gated sites, this is one thing -- for those trained on data that was pulled from the open web, there are a number of cases relating to scraping sites that publicly make available information, and they tend to fall in favor of the scraper (see LinkedIn for a prime example).
polski-g 3y ago
> No, they use it on an ongoing basis to serve their customers, so recurring payments are appropriate Imagine that I pay for and listen to some AC/DC and some Metallica, and then compose a new rock song inspired by those bands. Should those bands receive royalties from my new song? Of course not. What if I drove through a neighborhood and was inspired by the architecture of the houses. So I go home and design my dream home based on some things derived from said neighborhood. Should every architect in that neighborhood receive royalties from my new house? Of course not. What about if I taste 10 different cakes and design a new cake recipe inspired by (but not a direct clone of) the original cakes. Should they get royalties? Of course not. If I painted a portrait of a woman who seemingly looks at the viewer, should the Mona Lisa rightsholder get royalties? Of course not. So why is the MidJourney situation any different?
- mistrial9 3y ago
  thirty-five times in the last four weeks on front-page YNews stories, the reply has been available .. so, here is thirty-six .. "because doing computer programming at scale, with millions of inputs, is not the same thing as a person learning a skill, doing that skill, and having legal rights to their own works" secondly, if you count the major economies of the world, each major economy has a different, negotiated settlement regarding the legal rights of creative authors. These are legal outcomes of a thousand years of social evolution. The laws are quite different.

by mvdtnz 3y ago

kianlocke 3y ago

> I think it's only fair to pay for using someone else's work to your own benefit. How many artists do you know that pay out a portion of the proceeds of any of their works to the artists that have influenced and inspired them? Why should we have a separate set of laws for men and machines? Why would we assume that any algorithms used to determine 'inspirational ancestry' will only ever be used against machines? This is a power grab, pure and simple, an attempt to add style to the list of copyrightable immaterials -- Disney 2.0, but on a much more massive and debilitating scale.

allturtles 3y ago
> Why should we have a separate set of laws for men and machines? We already do. Humans have many rights that machines do not. I should think this is obvious and desirable.
- kianlocke 3y ago
  Sorry, I should have phrased that as "why should we have a separate set of laws for men and for men using machines?" No artist is required to pay out to their influences, but an artist that uses a machine must or it is a grave injustice?
  - pixl97 3y ago
    Or more to the point "why should we have a separate set of laws for men and for corporations?" I do feel a lot of these attempts to provide one set of rules for people and one set of rules for everything else will fail in the US due to "corporations are people too". Unless of course corporations actually want these rules as it further entrenches their power.
mvdtnz 3y ago
In my view it's just categorically wrong to treat a billion dollar computer system owned by a huge tech company the same way we treat the human brain. They are simply not the same thing.
- kianlocke 3y ago
  In my view it's categorically wrong to assume that these systems will cost a billion dollars forever, and if we write the laws without that understanding, we are only helping billion-dollar corporations. In cases where these systems were trained on data that was literally stolen from closed, user-gated sites, this is one thing -- for those trained on data that was pulled from the open web, there are a number of cases relating to scraping sites that publicly make available information, and they tend to fall in favor of the scraper (see LinkedIn for a prime example).

polski-g 3y ago

> No, they use it on an ongoing basis to serve their customers, so recurring payments are appropriate Imagine that I pay for and listen to some AC/DC and some Metallica, and then compose a new rock song inspired by those bands. Should those bands receive royalties from my new song? Of course not. What if I drove through a neighborhood and was inspired by the architecture of the houses. So I go home and design my dream home based on some things derived from said neighborhood. Should every architect in that neighborhood receive royalties from my new house? Of course not. What about if I taste 10 different cakes and design a new cake recipe inspired by (but not a direct clone of) the original cakes. Should they get royalties? Of course not. If I painted a portrait of a woman who seemingly looks at the viewer, should the Mona Lisa rightsholder get royalties? Of course not. So why is the MidJourney situation any different?

mistrial9 3y ago
thirty-five times in the last four weeks on front-page YNews stories, the reply has been available .. so, here is thirty-six .. "because doing computer programming at scale, with millions of inputs, is not the same thing as a person learning a skill, doing that skill, and having legal rights to their own works" secondly, if you count the major economies of the world, each major economy has a different, negotiated settlement regarding the legal rights of creative authors. These are legal outcomes of a thousand years of social evolution. The laws are quite different.