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A slippery slope to eliminate copyright out right. The argument made is that AI is somehow more special and will otherwise lose to competition with China. The

A slippery slope to eliminate copyright out right. The argument made is that AI is somehow more special and will otherwise lose to competition with China. The flaw there is that AI is not more special than any other endeavor while all other American markets must equally compete with China. What that failure means is that when anything is exceptional then everything becomes exceptional because the economic conditions apply equally and therefore bypassing copyright protections applies equally to anybody facing external competition.

hansmayer 2y ago
All of this, plus it's not even AI in the generic sense, it's just very advanced text generation, or a certain application of AI. So the chinese Gemini will offer to summarise e-mails at lower cost, who cares?
glimshe 2y ago
Copyrights are more often used to defend large corporations than small creators. As long everybody has a level playing field and individuals benefit from weaker copyright laws, it might actually make the world a better place. I'm not arguing for the complete elimination of copyright protections, but today's laws, in particular copyright duration, are immoral. This is as good of a starting point as any assuming OpenAI isn't the only who gets to benefit from it.
- hansmayer 2y ago
  ...right, lets make sure we protect the little, undercapitalised startup OpenAI from the large corporations holding them back :)
- austin-cheney 2y ago
  > Copyrights are more often used to defend large corporations than small creators. Are there numbers to this or is it empty conjecture? The reality is that resulting civil judgments apply the same regardless of owner size, which benefits small owners disproportionately to large owners with regard to windfall versus regular revenue. That is OpenAI’s principle concern: they don’t want to get sued into bankruptcy by numerous small rights owners.
  - thedevilslawyer 2y ago
    Copyright significantly powers revenue to corporations than individuals. Take music - this article show it's only 12% to individual musicians. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-percent-from-music-sales-706746/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-...
    - rich_sasha 2y ago
      Surely copyright isn't the problem here. Without copyright, music industry could pay nothing for the music..? Just copy it with impunity. Music industry, presumably, takes a bet on many musicians, and only a few make it. The revenues made by the successful ones effectively subsidise the unsuccessful ones. Also if musicians are so widely screwed by the bad industry, why don't they create a cooperative agency that treats them well? There's enough money sloshing around in successful musicians' coffers.
- codedokode 2y ago
  In a billion dollar company can use pirated books for a business, should we allow them to use pirated software too? Do you think that requiring a company to pay for Windows license is "immoral"?
  - actionfromafar 2y ago
    Of course, how else could we train the neural networks to run the programs? /largest_company
  - thedevilslawyer 2y ago
    Ideally, software shouldn't be copyrightable, or patent-able. It's what FOSS is based on (couldn't remove copyright, so let's hack it via copyleft).
  - rich_sasha 2y ago
    Well, just you try not to pay for ChatGPT...
echelon 2y ago
OpenAI has no moat. They're afraid of open source and want the government to protect them. Microsoft doesn't think they're very cool anymore. Sam Altman is going to have one of the quickest falls from grace in tech history. It's a shame he's using his time to try to legislate a worse world for the rest of us.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  At the rate things are going in the US, "legislate" seems to be largely replaced by "executive directive", so maybe you don't have to worry about legislation. (We will still have the worse world part, of course.)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

hansmayer 2y ago

All of this, plus it's not even AI in the generic sense, it's just very advanced text generation, or a certain application of AI. So the chinese Gemini will offer to summarise e-mails at lower cost, who cares?

glimshe 2y ago

Copyrights are more often used to defend large corporations than small creators. As long everybody has a level playing field and individuals benefit from weaker copyright laws, it might actually make the world a better place. I'm not arguing for the complete elimination of copyright protections, but today's laws, in particular copyright duration, are immoral. This is as good of a starting point as any assuming OpenAI isn't the only who gets to benefit from it.

hansmayer 2y ago
...right, lets make sure we protect the little, undercapitalised startup OpenAI from the large corporations holding them back :)
austin-cheney 2y ago
> Copyrights are more often used to defend large corporations than small creators. Are there numbers to this or is it empty conjecture? The reality is that resulting civil judgments apply the same regardless of owner size, which benefits small owners disproportionately to large owners with regard to windfall versus regular revenue. That is OpenAI’s principle concern: they don’t want to get sued into bankruptcy by numerous small rights owners.
- thedevilslawyer 2y ago
  Copyright significantly powers revenue to corporations than individuals. Take music - this article show it's only 12% to individual musicians. https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-percent-from-music-sales-706746/ https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/music-artists-make-12-...
  - rich_sasha 2y ago
    Surely copyright isn't the problem here. Without copyright, music industry could pay nothing for the music..? Just copy it with impunity. Music industry, presumably, takes a bet on many musicians, and only a few make it. The revenues made by the successful ones effectively subsidise the unsuccessful ones. Also if musicians are so widely screwed by the bad industry, why don't they create a cooperative agency that treats them well? There's enough money sloshing around in successful musicians' coffers.
codedokode 2y ago
In a billion dollar company can use pirated books for a business, should we allow them to use pirated software too? Do you think that requiring a company to pay for Windows license is "immoral"?
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Of course, how else could we train the neural networks to run the programs? /largest_company
- thedevilslawyer 2y ago
  Ideally, software shouldn't be copyrightable, or patent-able. It's what FOSS is based on (couldn't remove copyright, so let's hack it via copyleft).
- rich_sasha 2y ago
  Well, just you try not to pay for ChatGPT...

echelon 2y ago

OpenAI has no moat. They're afraid of open source and want the government to protect them. Microsoft doesn't think they're very cool anymore. Sam Altman is going to have one of the quickest falls from grace in tech history. It's a shame he's using his time to try to legislate a worse world for the rest of us.

actionfromafar 2y ago
At the rate things are going in the US, "legislate" seems to be largely replaced by "executive directive", so maybe you don't have to worry about legislation. (We will still have the worse world part, of course.)

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]