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I would never have imagined hackers becoming copyright zealots advocating for lawsuits. I must be getting old but I still remember the Pirate Bay trial as if it

by Kiro 2y ago

I would never have imagined hackers becoming copyright zealots advocating for lawsuits. I must be getting old but I still remember the Pirate Bay trial as if it was yesterday.

williamcotton 2y ago
It’s because it now affects hackers and before it only affected musicians.
- bko 2y ago
  It affects hackers how? By giving them cool technology at below cost? Or is it further democratizing knowledge? Or maybe it's the inflated software eng salaries due to AI hype? Help me understand the negative effect of AI and LLMs on hackers.
  - t-3 2y ago
    It's trendy caste-signaling to hate on AI which endangers white-collar jobs and creative work the way machinery endangered blue-collar jobs and productive work (ie. not at all in the long run, but in the short term you will face some changes). I've never actually used an LLM though - I just don't have any use for such a thing. All my writing and programming are done for fun and automation would take that away.
- xdennis 2y ago
  Nonsense. Computer piracy started with sharing software. Music piracy (on computers) started in the late 90s when computers were powerful enough to store and play music. Bill Gates' infamous letter was sent in 1976[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
someNameIG 2y ago
Pirate Bay wasn't selling access to the torrents trying to make a massive profit.
- zarzavat 2y ago
  True, though paid language models are probably just a blip in history. Free weight language models are only ~12 months behind and have massive resources thanks to Meta. That profit will be squeezed to zero over the long term if Zuck maintains his current strategy.
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    > Free weight language models are only ~12 months That's not true anymore, Meta isn't behind OpenAI
  - rurp 2y ago
    That can change on a dime though, if Zuck decides it's in his financial interest to change course. If Facebook stops spending billions of dollars on open models who is going to step in and fill that gap?
    - zarzavat 2y ago
      That depends on when Meta stops. The longer Meta keeps releasing free models, the more capabilities are made permanently unprofitable. For example, Llama 3.1 is already good enough for translation or as a writing assistant. If Meta stopped now, there would still be profit in the market, but if they keep releasing Llamas for the next 5+ years then OpenAI et al will be fighting for scraps. Not everybody needs a model that can prove theorems.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
progbits 2y ago
I just want consistent and fair rules. I'm all for abolishing copyright, for everyone. Let the knowledge be free and widely shared. But until that is the case and people running super useful services like libgen have to keep hiding then I also want all the LLM corpos to be subject to the same legal penalties.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  Exactly this. If we have to live under a stifling copyright regime, then at least it should be applied evenly. It's fundamentally unfair to have one set of laws (at least as enforced in practice) for the rich and powerful and another set for everyone else.
- candiddevmike 2y ago
  This is the entire point of existence for the GPL. Weaponize copyright. LLMs have conveniently been able to circumvent this somehow, and we have no answer for it.
  - FridgeSeal 2y ago
    Because some people keep asserting that LLM’s “don’t count as stealing” and “how come search links are on but got reciting paywalled NYT articles on demand is bad??” Without so much as a hint of irony. LLM tech is pretty cool. Would be a lot cooler if its existence wasn’t predicted on the wholesale theft of everyone’s stuff, immediately followed by denial of theft, poisoning the well, and massively profiting off it.
    - welferkj 2y ago
      >Because some people keep asserting that LLM’s “don’t count as stealing” People who confidently assert either opinion in this regard are wrong. The lawsuits are still pending. But if I had to bet, I'd bet on the OpenAI side. Even if they don't win outright, they'll probably carve out enough exemptions and mandatory licensing deals to be comfortable.
    - visarga 2y ago
pydry 2y ago
The common denominator is big corporations trying to screw us over for profit, using their immense wealth as a battering ram. So, capitalism. It's taboo to criticize that though.
- munksbeer 2y ago
  > It's taboo to criticize that though. It's not, that's playing the victim. There are hundreds or thousands of posts daily all over HN criticising capitalism. And most seem upvoted, not downvoted. Don't even get me started on reddit.
  - fernandotakai 2y ago
    i find quite ironic whenever i see a highly upvoted comment here complaining about capitalism because for sure i don't see yc existing in any other type of economy.
    - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
      This only holds if your thinking on the subject of economic systems is only as deep as choosing your character’s class in an RPG game. There’s no need for us to make every last industry a state owned enterprise and no one who’s spent longer than an hour or so contemplating such things thinks that way. I have no desire to not have a variety of companies producing things like cars, electronics, software, video games, just to name a few. Competition does drive innovation, that is still true, and having such firms vying for a limited amount of resources dispatched by individuals makes a lot of sense. Markets have their place. However markets also have limits. A power company competing for your business is largely a farce, since the power lines to your home will not change. A cable company in America is almost certainly a functional monopoly, and that fact is reflected in their quality of service. Infrastructure of all sorts makes for piss-put markets because true competition is all but impossible, and even if it does kind of work, it’s inefficient. A customer must become knowledgeable in some way to have a ghost of a clue what they’re buying, or trust entirely dubious information from marketing. And, even if somehow everything is working up to this point, corporations are, above all, cost cutters and if you put one in charge of an area where it feels as though customers have few if any choices and the friction to change is high, they will immediately begin degrading their quality of services to save money in the budget. And this is only from first principles, we have so many other things that could be discussed from mass market manipulation to the generous subsidies of a stunning variety that basically every business at scale enjoys to the rapacious compensation schemes that have become entirely too commonplace in the executive room, etc etc etc. To put it short: I have no issue at all with capitalism operating in non-essential to life industries. My issue is all the ways it’s infiltrated the essential ones and made them demonstrably worse, less efficient, and more expensive for every consumer.
rsynnott 2y ago
I'm not sure if you're being disingenuous, or if you genuinely don't understand the difference. Pirate Bay: largely facilitating the theft of material from large corporations by normal people, for generally personal use. LLM training: theft of material from literally _everyone_, for the purposes of corporate profit (or, well, heh, intended profit; of course all LLM-based enterprises are currently massively loss-making, and may remain so forever).
- CaptainFever 2y ago
  > (or, well, heh, intended profit; of course all LLM-based enterprises are currently massively loss-making, and may remain so forever) This undermines your own point. Also, open source models exist.
- acheron 2y ago
  It’s the same picture.
meiraleal 2y ago
Hackers are against corporations. If breaking the copyright laws make corps bigger, more powerful and more corrupt, hackers will be against it rightfully so. Abolishing copyright is different than abusing it, we should abolish it.
jjulius 2y ago
On the one hand, we've got, "Pirating something because we find copyright law to be restrictive and/or corporate pricing to be excessive". On the other, we've got, "Massively wealthy people vacuuming up our creative output to further their own wealth". And you're trying to suggest that these two are the same? Edit: I don't mind downvotes, karma means nothing, but I do appreciate when folk speak up and say why I might be wrong. :)

by Kiro 2y ago

I would never have imagined hackers becoming copyright zealots advocating for lawsuits. I must be getting old but I still remember the Pirate Bay trial as if it was yesterday.

williamcotton 2y ago

It’s because it now affects hackers and before it only affected musicians.

bko 2y ago
It affects hackers how? By giving them cool technology at below cost? Or is it further democratizing knowledge? Or maybe it's the inflated software eng salaries due to AI hype? Help me understand the negative effect of AI and LLMs on hackers.
- t-3 2y ago
  It's trendy caste-signaling to hate on AI which endangers white-collar jobs and creative work the way machinery endangered blue-collar jobs and productive work (ie. not at all in the long run, but in the short term you will face some changes). I've never actually used an LLM though - I just don't have any use for such a thing. All my writing and programming are done for fun and automation would take that away.
xdennis 2y ago
Nonsense. Computer piracy started with sharing software. Music piracy (on computers) started in the late 90s when computers were powerful enough to store and play music. Bill Gates' infamous letter was sent in 1976[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

someNameIG 2y ago

Pirate Bay wasn't selling access to the torrents trying to make a massive profit.

zarzavat 2y ago
True, though paid language models are probably just a blip in history. Free weight language models are only ~12 months behind and have massive resources thanks to Meta. That profit will be squeezed to zero over the long term if Zuck maintains his current strategy.
- meiraleal 2y ago
  > Free weight language models are only ~12 months That's not true anymore, Meta isn't behind OpenAI
- rurp 2y ago
  That can change on a dime though, if Zuck decides it's in his financial interest to change course. If Facebook stops spending billions of dollars on open models who is going to step in and fill that gap?
  - zarzavat 2y ago
    That depends on when Meta stops. The longer Meta keeps releasing free models, the more capabilities are made permanently unprofitable. For example, Llama 3.1 is already good enough for translation or as a writing assistant. If Meta stopped now, there would still be profit in the market, but if they keep releasing Llamas for the next 5+ years then OpenAI et al will be fighting for scraps. Not everybody needs a model that can prove theorems.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

progbits 2y ago

I just want consistent and fair rules. I'm all for abolishing copyright, for everyone. Let the knowledge be free and widely shared. But until that is the case and people running super useful services like libgen have to keep hiding then I also want all the LLM corpos to be subject to the same legal penalties.

AlexandrB 2y ago
Exactly this. If we have to live under a stifling copyright regime, then at least it should be applied evenly. It's fundamentally unfair to have one set of laws (at least as enforced in practice) for the rich and powerful and another set for everyone else.
candiddevmike 2y ago
This is the entire point of existence for the GPL. Weaponize copyright. LLMs have conveniently been able to circumvent this somehow, and we have no answer for it.
- FridgeSeal 2y ago
  Because some people keep asserting that LLM’s “don’t count as stealing” and “how come search links are on but got reciting paywalled NYT articles on demand is bad??” Without so much as a hint of irony. LLM tech is pretty cool. Would be a lot cooler if its existence wasn’t predicted on the wholesale theft of everyone’s stuff, immediately followed by denial of theft, poisoning the well, and massively profiting off it.
  - welferkj 2y ago
    >Because some people keep asserting that LLM’s “don’t count as stealing” People who confidently assert either opinion in this regard are wrong. The lawsuits are still pending. But if I had to bet, I'd bet on the OpenAI side. Even if they don't win outright, they'll probably carve out enough exemptions and mandatory licensing deals to be comfortable.
  - visarga 2y ago

pydry 2y ago

The common denominator is big corporations trying to screw us over for profit, using their immense wealth as a battering ram. So, capitalism. It's taboo to criticize that though.

munksbeer 2y ago
> It's taboo to criticize that though. It's not, that's playing the victim. There are hundreds or thousands of posts daily all over HN criticising capitalism. And most seem upvoted, not downvoted. Don't even get me started on reddit.
- fernandotakai 2y ago
  i find quite ironic whenever i see a highly upvoted comment here complaining about capitalism because for sure i don't see yc existing in any other type of economy.
  - ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    This only holds if your thinking on the subject of economic systems is only as deep as choosing your character’s class in an RPG game. There’s no need for us to make every last industry a state owned enterprise and no one who’s spent longer than an hour or so contemplating such things thinks that way. I have no desire to not have a variety of companies producing things like cars, electronics, software, video games, just to name a few. Competition does drive innovation, that is still true, and having such firms vying for a limited amount of resources dispatched by individuals makes a lot of sense. Markets have their place. However markets also have limits. A power company competing for your business is largely a farce, since the power lines to your home will not change. A cable company in America is almost certainly a functional monopoly, and that fact is reflected in their quality of service. Infrastructure of all sorts makes for piss-put markets because true competition is all but impossible, and even if it does kind of work, it’s inefficient. A customer must become knowledgeable in some way to have a ghost of a clue what they’re buying, or trust entirely dubious information from marketing. And, even if somehow everything is working up to this point, corporations are, above all, cost cutters and if you put one in charge of an area where it feels as though customers have few if any choices and the friction to change is high, they will immediately begin degrading their quality of services to save money in the budget. And this is only from first principles, we have so many other things that could be discussed from mass market manipulation to the generous subsidies of a stunning variety that basically every business at scale enjoys to the rapacious compensation schemes that have become entirely too commonplace in the executive room, etc etc etc. To put it short: I have no issue at all with capitalism operating in non-essential to life industries. My issue is all the ways it’s infiltrated the essential ones and made them demonstrably worse, less efficient, and more expensive for every consumer.

rsynnott 2y ago

I'm not sure if you're being disingenuous, or if you genuinely don't understand the difference. Pirate Bay: largely facilitating the theft of material from large corporations by normal people, for generally personal use. LLM training: theft of material from literally _everyone_, for the purposes of corporate profit (or, well, heh, intended profit; of course all LLM-based enterprises are currently massively loss-making, and may remain so forever).

CaptainFever 2y ago
> (or, well, heh, intended profit; of course all LLM-based enterprises are currently massively loss-making, and may remain so forever) This undermines your own point. Also, open source models exist.
acheron 2y ago
It’s the same picture.

meiraleal 2y ago

Hackers are against corporations. If breaking the copyright laws make corps bigger, more powerful and more corrupt, hackers will be against it rightfully so. Abolishing copyright is different than abusing it, we should abolish it.

jjulius 2y ago

On the one hand, we've got, "Pirating something because we find copyright law to be restrictive and/or corporate pricing to be excessive". On the other, we've got, "Massively wealthy people vacuuming up our creative output to further their own wealth". And you're trying to suggest that these two are the same? Edit: I don't mind downvotes, karma means nothing, but I do appreciate when folk speak up and say why I might be wrong. :)