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I was really hoping that the conversation around AI art would at least be partially centered on the perhaps now dated "2008 pirate party" idea that intellectual

• elicksaur 2y ago
  Gonna submit that business model to a YC 2026 batch.
• ryandrake 2y ago
  Not just some particular collection of pixels, but an infinite number of combinations of collections of pixels, any of which remotely invoke a shadow of similarity to hundreds of "properties" that Disney lays claim to.
  • codedokode 2y ago
    But why do you want to make a collection of pixels that resembles existing characters and not create your own?
• ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  I can't speak for everyone obviously, but my anti-AI sentiment in this regard is not that IP law is flawless and beyond reproach, far from it. I'm merely saying that as long as we're all required to put up with it, that OpenAI and company should also have to put up with it. It's incredibly disingenuous the way these companies have taken advantage of publicly available material on an industrial scale, used said material to train their models "for research" and as soon as they had something that vaguely did what they wanted, began selling access to them. If they are indeed the output of "research" that couldn't exist without the requisite publicly available material, then they should be accessible by the public (and arguably, the products of said outputs should also be inherently public domain too). If they are instead created products to be sold themselves, then what is utilized to create them should be licensed for that purpose. Additionally, if they can be used to generate IP violating material, then IMHO, makes perfect sense for the rights holders of those IPs to sue their asses like they would anyone else who did that and sold the results. Again, for emphasis: I'm not endorsing any of the effects of IP law. I am simply saying that we should all, from the poorest user to the richest corporation, be playing by the same rules, and it feels like AI companies entire existence is hinging on their ability to have their IP cake and eat it too: they want to be able to restrict and monetize access to their generative models that they've created, while also having free reign to generate clearly, bluntly plagiarizing material, by way of utilizing vast amounts of in-good-faith freely given material. It's gross, and it sucks.
  • flats 2y ago
    Very well put. I’m open to a future in which nothing is copyrighted & everything is in the public domain, but the byproduct of that public domain material should _also_ be owned by the public. Otherwise, we’re making the judgement that the originators of the IP should not be compensated for their labor, while the AI labs should be. Of course, training & running the models take compute resources, but the ultimate aim of these companies is to profit above & beyond those costs, just as artists hope to be compensated above & beyond the training & resources required to make the art in the first place.
    • loki-ai 2y ago
      as an artist, I totally agree with this approach. the whole idea of trying to pay artists for their contributions in training data is just impractical. if the data’s pulled from the public domain, the model built from this human knowledge should be shared with all creators too, meaning everyone should get access to it
  • Kim_Bruning 2y ago
    Beware of pushing for rules that you don't personally believe in. You just might succeed a little too well, and have to live with the consequences.
• onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  > to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation. How is copyright stifling innovation? You could not rip something off more blatantly than Gravity, which had the lawsuit dismissed entirely. Taurus vs Stairway to Heaven, the list goes on and on and on. You can often get away with nearly murder ripping off other people's stuff.
  • fragmede 2y ago
    Because it's self indulgent wankery. If I, as writer and an artist, have just the most absolutely brilliant thoughts, and write them down into a book or draw the most beautiful artwork, I can earn money off that well into my afterlife with copyright. Meanwhile the carpenter who is no less bright, can only sell the chair he's built once. In order to make money off of it, he must labor to produce a second or even a third chair. Why does one person have to work harder than the other because of the medium they chose? Meanwhile in China, just because you invented a thing, you don't get to sit back and rest on your laurels. sipping champagne in hot tubs, because your competitor isn't staying put. He's grinding and innovating off your innovation so you'd also better keep innovating.
    • onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      This has nothing to do with stifling innovation. I am yet to meet a writer who doesn't even attempt to write for fear that whatever they write will be found to be in violation of copyright (unless they are the type of writer that is always finding excuses not to write). Several people have made successful careers out of fan fiction...
      • fragmede 2y ago
        JK Rowling never has to work again in her life because she wrote a couple of books that were exceedingly popular. Because she doesn't have to work, she's not been forced to come up with new stuff. How is that not stifling?
        • 2y ago
• masfuerte 2y ago
  I don't really care. Either enforce the current copyright regime and sue the AI companies to dust. Or abolish copyright and let us all go hog wild. But this halfway house where you can ignore the law as long as you've got enough money is disgusting.
  • dragonwriter 2y ago
    Or treat AI training as within the coverage of the current fair use regime (which is certainly defensible within the current copyright regime), while prosecuting the use of AI models to create infringing copies and derivative works that do not themselves have permission or a reasonable claim to be within the scope of fair use as a violation (and prosecuted hosted AI firms for contributory infringement where their actions with regard to such created infringements fit the existing law on that.)
    • Wowfunhappy 2y ago
      ^ I feel like I almost never see this take, and I don't understand why because frankly, it strikes me at patently obvious! Of course the tool isn't responsible, and the person who uses it is.
      • srveale 2y ago
        I think the tricky bit is that AI companies make money off the collected works of artists, regardless of user behaviour. Suppose I pay for an image generator because I like making funny pictures in Ghibli style, then the AI company makes money because of Ghibli's work. Is that ethical? I can see how an artist would get upset about it. On the other hand, suppose I also like playing guitar covers of songs. Does that mean artists should get upset at the guitar company? Does it matter if I do it at home or at a paid gig? If I record it, do I have to give credit to the original creator? What if I write a song with a similar style to an existing song? These are all questions that have (mostly) well defined laws and ethical norms, which usually lean towards what you said - the tool isn't responsible. Maybe not a perfect analogy. It takes more skill to play guitar than to type "Funny meme Ghibli style pls". Me playing a cover doesn't reduce demand for actual bands. And guitar companies aren't trying to... take over the world? At the end of the day, the cat is out of the bag, generative AI is here to stay, and I think I agree that we're better off regulating use rather than prohibition. But considering the broader societal impacts, I think AI is more complicated of a "tool" than other kinds of tools for making art.
• kokanee 2y ago
  The idea of open sourcing everything and nullifying patents would benefit corporations like Disney and OpenAI vastly more than it would benefit the people. The first thing that would happen is that BigCorp would eat up every interesting or useful piece of art, technology, and culture that has ever been created and monetize the life out of it. These legal protections are needed by the people. To the Pirate Party's credit, undoing corporate personhood would be a good first step, so that we can focus on enforcing protections for the works of humans. Still, attributing those works to CEOs instead of corporations wouldn't result in much change.
  • pixl97 2y ago
    >The first thing that would happen is that BigCorp would eat up every interesting or useful piece of art, technology, and culture that has ever been created and monetize the life out of it. Wait, I'm still trying to figure out the difference between your imaginary world and the world we live in now?
    • dragontamer 2y ago
      Thor would have red hair in the imaginary world, rather than being a Blonde man which was made to be a somewhat distinguished comic book character. The Disney or otherwise copyrighted versions allow for unique spins on these old characters to be re-copyrighted. This Thor from Disney/Marvel is distinguished from Thor from God of War.
      • runarberg 2y ago
        > “Before starting the series, we stuffed ourselves to the gills with Norse mythology, as well as almost every other type of mythology – we love it all! But you’ve got to remember that these are legendary tales – myths – and no two versions are ever exactly the same. We changed a lot of things – for example, in most of the myths Thor has red hair, Odin has one eye, etc. But we preferred doing our own version.” https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/54400/why-did-early-marvel-writers-change-thor-from-his-legendary-red-haired-appearanc#54405 https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/54400/why-did-earl... Huh, did not know that. As an Icelandic person I knew about Þór the Norse god much earlier than Thor the marvel character. I never really pictured his hair color, nor knew he had a specific hair color in the mythology. I actually always pictured him with a beard though. What mostly mattered though was his characteristics. His ill temper and drinking habits, and the fact that he was not a nice person, nor a hero, but rather a guy who starts shit that gets everyone else in trouble, he also wins every fight except one (he looses one against Elli [the personification of old age]). The little I’ve seen of him in the Marvel movies, he keeps almost none of these characteristics. EDIT: My favorite story of him is the depiction of the fall of Ásgarður, where Loki and some Jötun are about to use the gods vanity against them and con them out of stuff they cannot actually pay for a wall around Ásgarður. Þór, being the way he is, cannot be around a Jötun without fighting and killing him. So rather than paying up (which the gods cannot do) Þór is sent to see this Jötun, knowing very well that he will be murdered. This betrayal is marked as the beginning of the end in Völuspá (verse 26).
• tastyface 2y ago
  A different way of looking at it: AI, by design, defaults to regurgitating the poppiest of pop culture content. Every whip-wielding archaeologist is now Harrison Ford. Every suave British spy is now Daniel Craig. With the power of AI, creativity is dead and buried.
  • card_zero 2y ago
    The backlash against AI compels creative types to be more original, maybe. It could be that AI improves culture by reflecting it in insipid parody, with the implicit message "stop phoning it in".
  • slg 2y ago
    This is what was often missed in the previous round of AI discourse that criticized these companies for forcing diversity into their systems after the fact. Every suave spy being Daniel Craig is just the apolitical version of every nurse being a woman or every criminal being Black. Converging everything to the internet's most popular result represents an inaccurate and a dumped down version of the world. You don't have to value diversity as a concept at all to recognize this as a systemic flaw of AI, it is as easy as recognizing that Daniel Craig isn't the only James Bond let alone the only "suave English spy".
    • dcow 2y ago
      It’s only a flaw insofar as it’s used in ways in which the property of the tool is problematic. Stereotypes are use for good and bad all the time, let’s not pretend that we have to attack every problem with a funky shaped hammer because we can’t admit that it’s okay to have specialized tools in the tool belt.
      • slg 2y ago
        I don't follow your analogy. Is the "specialized tool" the AI or the way that it returns "problematic" results? Because I'm not saying the system is bad for using negative stereotypes. I'm saying the system is bad because it removes natural variety from the results making them misleading. The reliance on stereotypes are just one example of this phenomenon with another example being "suave English spy" only returning Daniel Craig.
• chimpanzee 2y ago
  Essentially: “information wants to be free”. I agree. But this must include the dissolution of patents. Otherwise corporations and the owners of the infrastructure will simply control everything, including the easily replicable works of individuals.
  • j-bos 2y ago
    At least patents only last 20 years as opposed to nearly over a century for copyright.
    • paulryanrogers 2y ago
      In practice it's often longer. Drug companies queue up minor tweaks to their formulas and can threaten to sue anyone even close to the new way, even carbon copies of the now expired patent. Few can afford to win a lawsuit. We need more courts and judges to speed the process, to make justice more accessible, and universal SLAPP protections to weed out frivolous abuse.
      • j-bos 2y ago
        True, though at least with drugs if there's a shortage compounding pharmacies are given broad freedom outside the patent holder's control. See semaglutide.
        • paulryanrogers 2y ago
          Sad that we rely on the scraps these captured regulators let fall through the cracks. At least until their patrons awake and close those loopholes.
  • codedokode 2y ago
    I am against dissolution of patents if the technology took lot of research. In this case the patent protects from others copying the result of research. However, obvious patents like "a computer system with a display displaying a product and a button to order it" should not be allowed. Also, software patents should not exist (copyright is enough).
• xorcist 2y ago
  I think what you observe is more like a natural blowback to the prevailing idea that this is somehow beyond critique because it will fundamentally change culture and civilization forever. There's a bit of irony here too. The intellectual discourse around intellectural property, a diverse and lively one from an academic standpoint, the whole free and open source software movements, software patents, the piracy movement and so on have analyzed the history, underlying ideas and values in detail for the past thirty years. Most people know roughly what is at stake, where they stand, and can defend their position in an honest way. Then comes new technology, everyone and their mother gets excited about it, and steamrolls all those lofty ideas into "oh look at all the shiny things it can produce!". Be careful what you wish for.
  • achierius 2y ago
    Let's be clear. You can be for free software, against copyright, etc., and STILL be in favor of these firms being punished for violating copyright as they have. Because frankly, we -- normal people -- have always known that we would be punished if we did anything close to this: so many people have been thrown in jail, even killed themselves, because they distributed some film or hosted some books. But now, when a big corporation does it, and in doing so seeks to replace and impoverish thousands, millions of hard-working, law-abiding people, now is when we should expect the government to finally say -- oh, that copyright thing was silly all along? No. Perhaps if the deal was that the whole system would go away entirely -- that we, too, could do what these firms have done. But that's not what's being proposed. That will not happen. They want the laws to be for them, not for us, and I will always be opposed to attempts at actualizing that injustice.
    • FeepingCreature 2y ago
      IMO the natural effect of this will be to massively devalue any individual cultural artifact, and that this will also achieve the benefit of defanging the big copyright holders. Is it the right way to go about it? No. Is it an insult to anyone who ever got nabbed for piracy? Sure. But tbh as a pirate voter I'll still very much take it.
• jason_pomerleau 2y ago
  > If they could, Disney would scan your brain to charge you a nickel every time you thought of Mickey Mouse. This reminds me of Tom Scott’s “Welcome to Life: The Singularity, Ruined by Lawyers” [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFe9wiDfb0E
• egypturnash 2y ago
  Getting the megacorporations to sit up and take notice of this is about the only way the average independent artist has any hope of stopping this crap from destroying half our jobs. What'm I gonna do, sue OpenAI? Sam Altman makes more money sitting on the toilet taking a dump than I do in an entire year. I have no love for the Mouse but if I can get them and the image slop-mongers to fight then that's absoutely fine. It would be nice to have a functioning, vibrant public domain but it is also nice to not have some rich asshole insisting that all copyright laws must be ignored because if they properly licensed even a fraction of what they've consumed then it would be entirely too expensive to train their glorified autocomplete databases on the entire fucking internet for the purpose of generating even more garbage "content" designed to keep your attention when you're mindlessly scrolling their attention farms, regardless of how it makes you feel, and if I can choose one or the other then I am totally behind the Mouse.
• II2II 2y ago
  > That Disney Corp can prevent you from viewing some collection of pixels, because THEY own it A world without copyright is just as problematic as a world with copyright. With copyright, you run into the problem of excessive control. This wasn't too much of a problem in the past. If you bought a book, record, or video recording, you owned that particular copy. You could run into disagreeable situations because you didn't own the rights, but it was difficult to prevent anyone from from viewing a work once it had been published. (Of course, modern copyright laws and digitial distribution has changed that.) On the flip side, without copyright, it would be far easier for others to exploit (or even take credit) for the work of another person without compensation or recourse. Just look at those AI "generated" images, or any website that blatently rips off the content created by another person. There is no compensation. Heck, there isn't even credit. Worse yet, the parties misrepresenting the content are doing their best to monetize it. Even authors who are more than willing to give their work away have every right to feel exploited under those circumstances. And all of that is happening with copyright laws, where there is the opportunity for recourse if you have the means and the will.
  • singpolyma3 2y ago
    To reply to the parenthetical, copyright has nothing to do with credit. Taking credit for someone else's work is banned in some places in some contexts (they call this a moral rights regime) but not the same thing as what is being talked about when people say copyright (which is about copying and performing)
  • idiotsecant 2y ago
    The idea that someone can't use ideas without someone else making money from it is a really, really, radically weird idea and is very new in the history of human society.
  • dcow 2y ago
    You don’t need credit to talk about pop culture. I don’t need to credit the Indian Jones copyright holder when I paint a stunning likeness of Ford in a kaki outfit with a whip, even if the holder might try to sue me over it. Copyright and credit aren’t the same.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• mvdtnz 2y ago
  I'm guessing you've never created something of value before. People are entitled to the fruits of their labour and control of their intellectual property.
  • adamredwoods 2y ago
    Accusatory clause aside, but I agree, this is how a lot of "starving artists" get out of being starving.
  • Kim_Bruning 2y ago
    > I'm guessing you've never created something of value before That's an interesting speculation. You realize that it could also be turned against you, right? Never a good idea! So, let's focus on the arguments rather than making assumptions about each other's backgrounds. > People are entitled to the fruits of their labour and control of their intellectual property. People are absolutely entitled to the fruits of their labour. The crucial question is whether the current system of 'IP' control – designed for scarcity – is the best way to ensure that, especially when many creators find it hinders more than it helps. That's why many people explore and use other models.
  • HideousKojima 2y ago
    >People are entitled to the fruits of their labour and control of their intellectual property. No they aren't, intellectual property is a legal fiction and ideas belong to all of humanity. Humanity did fine without intellectual property for thousands of years, it's a relatively recent creation.
  • jim-jim-jim 2y ago
    If I paint a picture on a physical canvas, I can charge people to come into my house and take a look. If I bring the canvas to a park, I'm not entitled to say "s-stop looking at my painting guys!" If you're worried about your work being infinitely reproduced, you probably shouldn't work in an infinitely-reproducible medium. Digitized content is inherently worthless, and I mean that in a non-derisive way. The sooner we realize this, the richer culture will be. Really all content is worthless. Historically, we've always paid for the transmission medium (tape, CD) and confused it for the cost of art itself.
• WhyOhWhyQ 2y ago
  We're about to witness a fundamental shift in the human experience. Some time in the near future there will not be a single act of creation you can do that isn't trivial compared to the result of typing "make cool thing please now" into the computer. And your position is to add to the problem because with your policy anything I create should get chucked into the LLM grinder by any and everybody. How do I get my human body to commit to doing hard things with that prospect at hand? This is the end of happiness.
  • redwood 2y ago
    This is why I love making bread
    • GPerson 2y ago
      We can’t all be bread making hedonists. Some of us want these finite lives to mean more than living constantly in the moment in a state of baking zen.
  • card_zero 2y ago
    I don't know, that sounds like the basic argument for copyright: "I created a cool thing, therefore I should be able to milk it for the rest of my life". Without this perk, creatives are less motivated. Would that be bad? I guess an extreme version would be a world where you can only publish anonymously and with no tangible reward.
    • jkhdigital 2y ago
      I hate to paint with such a broad brush, but I’d venture that “creatives” are not primarily motivated by profit. It is almost a truism that money corrupts the creative endeavour.
      • card_zero 2y ago
        There are various ways to turn creativity into money, even without publishing any kind of artwork. Basically all skilled jobs and entrepreneurial enterprises require creativity. And if you do have an artwork, you can still seek profit through acclaim, even without copyright: interviews, public appearances. Artists once had patrons - but that tends to put aristocrats in control of art. So money will motivate a lot of the creativity that goes on. Meanwhile, if you dabble in some kind of art or craft while working in a factory to make ends meet, that kind of limits you to dabbling, because you'll have no time to do it properly. Money also buys equipment and helpers, sometimes useful. On the other hand, yes, it ruins the art. There's a 10cc song about that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_for_Art%27s_Sake_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_for_Art%27s_Sake_(song) Though, this reminds me of an interesting aside: the origin of the phrase "art for art's sake" was not about money, but about aesthetics. It meant something like "stop pushing opinions, just show me a painting".
• eaglelamp 2y ago
  If we are going to have a general discussion about copyright reform at a national level, I'm all for it. If we are going to let billion dollar corporations break the law to make even more money and invent legal fictions after the fact to protect them, I'm completely against it. Training a model is not equivalent to training a human. Freedom of information for a mountain of graphics cards in a privately owned data center is not the same as freedom of information for flesh and blood human beings.
  • r3trohack3r 2y ago
    You’re setting court precedent that will apply equally to OpenAI as it does to the llama.cpp and stable diffusion models running on your own graphics card.
    • codedokode 2y ago
      Can stable diffusion be created without using copyrighted content? Maybe we should have some exemption for non-commercial research but definitely not for commercial exploitation or generating copyrighted images using open-source models.
      • CaptainFever 2y ago
        Public Diffusion: https://source.plus/public-diffusion-private-beta https://source.plus/public-diffusion-private-beta
      • godelski 2y ago
        There is already exemptions for research. Look at licensing around things like ImageNet. There's similar licensing around things like LAION and Common Crawl[0] It's also not legal to just scrape everything without paying. There's a reason the NYT sued OpenAI and then got a settlement. It's still illegal for Meta to torrent terabytes of textbooks too. [0] https://commoncrawl.org/terms-of-use https://commoncrawl.org/terms-of-use > In this regard, you acknowledge that you may not rely on any Crawled Content created or accumulated by CC. CC strongly recommends that you obtain the advice of legal counsel before making any use, including commercial use, of the Service and/or the Crawled Content. BY USING THE CRAWLED CONTENT, YOU AGREE TO RESPECT THE COPYRIGHTS AND OTHER APPLICABLE RIGHTS OF THIRD PARTIES IN AND TO THE MATERIAL CONTAINED THEREIN.
• rglullis 2y ago
  > It seems most people have fully assimilated the idea that information itself must be entirely subsumed into an oppressive, proprietary, commercial apparatus. No, the idea is that rules needed to be changed in a way that can are valid for everyone, not just for mega corporations who are trying to exploit other's works and gatekeep the it behind "AI".
• serviceberry 2y ago
  What's the damage to the society done by Disney holding the rights to Mickey Mouse? Like, if we're being honest? Patents, sure. They're abused and come at a cost to the society. But all we've done here is created a culture where, in some sort of an imagined David-vs-Goliath struggle against Disney, we've enabled a tech culture where it's OK to train gen AI tech on works of small-scale artists pilfered on an unprecedented scale. That's not hurting Disney. It's hurting your favorite indie band, a writer you like, etc.
  • fiddlerwoaroof 2y ago
    It’s worse in music: the folk music that came before recorded music had a long history of everyone borrowing and putting their own spin on someone else’s tune and, today, this is viewed as some kind of assault on the originator of the tune. If companies can’t gatekeep our artistic culture for money, we’ll be better able to enjoy it.
• codedokode 2y ago
  I don't understand how protecting Disney characters prevents development of art or science. Why do you need them at all? There is lot of liberally licensed art and I think today there are more artists than ever in history. Also making a billion dollar business by using hard work of talented people for free and without permission is not cool. The movie they downloaded from Pirate Bay for free took probably man-years of work to make. Also I wonder how can we be sure that the images produced by machine are original and are not a mix of images from unknown artists at DeviantArt. Maybe it is time to make a neural image origin search engine?
  • CaptainFever 2y ago
    For the last paragraph, it already exists: Stable Attribution. It doesn't work. If you put your handmade drawing inside, it'll also tell you what images were mixed to make it, even though it was entirely human-made.
• boplicity 2y ago
  > used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful This is where the argument falls apart. Not because the copyright isn't used by the rich and powerful, but because it misses the fact that copyright also grants very powerful rights to otherwise powerless individuals, thus allowing for many small businesses and individuals to earn a living based on the rights granted by our current copyright system.
  • fiddlerwoaroof 2y ago
    Rights you basically can’t use without a lot of money
    • boplicity 2y ago
      Um, no. I use these rights all of the time, and often enforce them, and am not at all wealthy.
• r0s 2y ago
  It's not baffling in the least. No matter the extent you believe in the freedom of information, few believe anyone should then be free to profit from someone else's work without attribution. You seem to think it would be okay for disney to market and charge for my own personal original characters and art, claiming them as their own original idea. Why is that?
  • raspyberr 2y ago
    Yes. I 100% unironically believe that anyone should be able to use anyone else's work royalty/copyright free after 10-20 years instead of 170 in the UK. Could you please justify why 170 years is in any way a reasonable amount of time?
    • codedokode 2y ago
      May I ask why you want to use someone's work instead of creating your own?
      • card_zero 2y ago
        I mean, it's fun. Ever listened to the KLF, and things from the era before sampling was heavily sat on, such as the album 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) - ? I don't claim it's very good, but it was definitely fun. And the motivation for using existing works, instead of creating your own, is similar to the motivation for using existing words, instead of creating your own. They're reference points, people recognize them, you can communicate with them instead of having to extract patience from the audience like they have to learn a new language for each work. And of course in practice the rules are fuzzy, so everybody sails close to the wind by imitating others and in this way we share a culture. Stealing their work is just sharing the culture more closely.
        • codedokode 2y ago
          > is similar to the motivation for using existing words I don't think it's like that. If we take music, for example, the existing word would be a note or a scale or a musical instrument or a style, but a melody would be an existing sentence. As for sampling, there is creative usage of samples, like Prodigy for example where it is difficult to even recognize the source. Also today there is some leeway in copyright enforcement. For example, I often see non-commercial amateur covers of commercial songs and the videos don't get taken down.
• a_bonobo 2y ago
  >information itself must be entirely subsumed into an oppressive, proprietary, commercial apparatus I think that's the reason why I've (and probably many others?) have cooled down on general open source coding. Open source started when well-paid programmers used their stable positions and ample extra time to give back to the community. What happened then is that corporations then siphoned up all that labor and gave nothing back, just like the AI bros siphoned up all data and gave nothing back. The 'contract' of mutual exchange, of bettering each other, was always a fantasy. Instead the companies took away that ample extra time and those stable positions. Here we are in 2025 and sometimes I can't afford rent but the company C-tier is buying itself their hundredth yacht. Why should I contribute to your system?
• fullshark 2y ago
  All those ideas were rationalizations because people didn’t want to pay for stuff, just like your post effectively blaming the victim of IP theft cause corporations undeniably do suck so we shouldn’t care if they suffer.
• myhf 2y ago
  The problem with this kind of plagiarism isn't that it violates someone's specific copyright. But the discussion around plagiarism calls attention to the deeper issue: "generative" AI does not have emergent thinking or reasoning capabilities. It is just very good at obfuscating the sources of its information. And that can cause much bigger problems than just IP infringement. You could make a strategic decision based on information that was deliberately published by an adversary.
• gerdesj 2y ago
  How do you suggest you protect your "thing"? * If I make a thing that is different and I get a patent - cool. * If I create a design that is unusual and I get copyright on it - is that cool? Both concepts - patent and copyright - are somewhat controversial, for multiple reasons. If you invented a thingie, would you not want some initial patent related protection to allow you to crack on with some sort of clout against cough CN? If you created a film/creative thang, would you not want some protection against your characters being ... subverted. Patents and copywrite are what we have - do you have any better ideas?
• kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  Consider that one day you may wish to author a creative work and derive financial benefit from that labor. There is legitimate use for limited time ownership of reproducible cultural artifacts. Extending that to 95 years is the problem.
  • narcraft 2y ago
    I wish to one day derive financial benefit from hitting myself with a hammer for 8 hours a day. Should we construct a legal apparatus to guarantee that I am able to do so? Edit: the point I want to illustrate is that we do not get to choose what others value, or to dictate what is scarce and no one is entitled to make a living in a specific way even if they really want to
    • loki-ai 2y ago
      It is bad analogy specially because we value that so much that we are even discussing on how to have more of it.
• soulofmischief 2y ago
  It smells like a psyop, to be honest. Doesn't take much to get the ball rolling. Just more temporarily embarrassed millionaires sticking up for billionaires and corporations, buying their propaganda hook line and sinker, and propagating it themselves for free. Copyright is a joke, DMCA is a disgusting, selectively applied tool of the elite.
• furyofantares 2y ago
  I think we have all grown up with pervasive strong IP rights, and most people have come to internalize it as a matter of fairness or an almost natural right, rather than a practical tool designed to incentivize creation. And then even if you get past that, the world is filled with lots of IP we love, and it is easy to imagine weakened IP rights taking that away, but quite difficult to imagine what weakened IP rights might buy us. I do have some hope still that this generative AI stuff will give a glimpse into the value of weaker IP rights and maybe inspire more people to think critically about it. But I think it is an uphill battle. Or maybe it will take younger people growing up on generative AI to notice.
• rthomas6 2y ago
  More than giant corporations make IP. What about independent artists making original art?
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Planktonne 2y ago
  The issue here is that you think the problem is > intellectual property rather than > used over and over again, primarily by the rich and powerful, to stifle original ideas and hold back cultural innovation You're using those "2008 ideas now to defend the rich and powerful exploiting and stifling creativity; the problem hasn't changed, you've just swapped sides. OpenAI isn't the underdog here.