9 ms·

The entire premise is stupid. No theft occurred at any point, the original authors still have their creations.

BoredPositron 1y ago
Can you send me a copy of the front and back of your social security card? You still have your card so no theft happened.
- ktallett 1y ago
  I don't feel this is quite the gotcha argument you believe it is. Your last line is indeed correct, he would still have his card, so no theft would have occurred. Just having a copy of said card is not theft. Likewise should a person use said card for a nefarious purpose, that is still not theft, that is fraud.
  - BoredPositron 1y ago
    You are really close...
    - wiseowise 1y ago
      No, your argument is a complete bogus. If I steal your ID card, then nothing really happens at all. I can spend years watching it, draw something on it, cut it in pieces, whatever. The moment I start trying to impersonate you, then it becomes a problem for you. If Bobby the metalhead downloads a copy of Enter the Sandman, then Metallica and brand doesn’t lose anything at all. If you were to make it industrial, then maybe we can talk about it.
      - BoredPositron 1y ago
        You are also really close...
  - XCabbage 1y ago
    Well, not necessarily, on your last sentence. It might also be theft, depending on the precise nefarious purpose and on the jurisdiction. If you take somebody else's property without their consent, that's typically theft, even if the "property" is money in a bank account and no tangible physical object changed hands, and even if the method of taking involved deception. Fraud and theft overlap.
  - gwd 1y ago
    There was a good essay I saw a bit ago, talking about how this shift from "fraud" to "identity theft" neatly started shifting the victim from the bank to the individual. E.g., 30 years ago, if someone claiming to be me went to my bank, asked for my money, and the bank gave it to them, then the bank that was a victim of fraud. But now, if someone goes to my bank, asks for my money, and the bank gives it to them, then I am the victim of identity theft. The difference is subtle, but potentially important. If the bank unfortunately gives money to someone else, that's their problem: I can say to the bank, I'm sorry you were the victim of fraud, but you still owe me my money. If I unfortunately "have my identity stolen", then that makes it seem like it's my problem -- the bank may say, we're sorry you "had your identity stolen" and thus lost your money, but that's not really our problem.
- rcxdude 1y ago
  "Identity theft" is another misuse of the word to deflect from what is actually an authentication failure.
  - chii 1y ago
    It's identity fraud, but people use theft to mean fraud here.
    - close04 1y ago
      People use "theft" because it's the terminology the companies responsible for the failure insist on using. The word makes it sound like the person failed to protect their identity, and hides that it was the company which failed to validate the identity. This should be called "identity validation failure". When scammers impersonate a company to steal your money it's no longer called identity theft.
      - chii 1y ago
        you are absolutely correct. The idea that it is theft is tinged with victim blaming connotations.
- close04 1y ago
  You wouldn't "steal" that identity, you'd just prove that e.g. banks are bad at validating identity.
  - tialaramex 1y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E (Mitchell & Webb Sound - Identity Theft)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- wiseowise 1y ago
  Can you do the same trick with my copy of Metallica, please?
BenGosub 1y ago
Digital music is infinitely reproducible, but that doesn't mean that I am allowed to illegally download it. It is similar with articles. The author decides who can consume their art,
- falcor84 1y ago
  > The author decides who can consume their art, What?! How would that even happen? Unless you limit your definition of art to performing at salon events, that doesn't make much sense. Typically art is released into the world and at best the authors can get a bit of rent from the people who consume it (typically via a publisher), but they don't have any control over who the consumers would be.
  - BenGosub 1y ago
    For example, I decide if my music is going to stream on YouTube or Spotify, or it will only sell on Bandcamp. I decide if I am going to go with a publisher, which publisher and what platforms. What you label as "typically" has only been the case for the past ≈15 years.
    - wiseowise 1y ago
      You don’t decide anything on the platforms. The moment you upload your music there, they decide what they do with it.
    - falcor84 1y ago
      YouTube and Spotify and Bandcamp are distribution platforms, not your consumers
      - BenGosub 1y ago
        My point is that just like I decide if I am going to distribute to streaming services, I also should be able to decide if I am going to allow models to train on my work. Isn't this something obvious?
dartharva 1y ago
I think they are more scared that the AI models will reproduce their original content in odd contexts that may bring liability to them and cause overall pandemonium.
TrackerFF 1y ago
Following this logic, anything that is digital can not be stolen? After all, you only steal a digital copy - not the original, and not something that is physical. In which case, the following is not theft: - Pirating anything that is digital video - Pirating anything that is digital audio - Pirating anything that is digital text - Pirating any software etc. EDIT: For the proponents of "it is not theft", what's your stance on personal data being stolen ("accessed")? If someone can access your medical records, are you fine with that? They can do whatever they want with that?
- concinds 1y ago
  Correct. Piracy is potentially copyright infringement, not "theft". People insist on using that word, despite it being factually wrong, due to its emotional valence and persuasive value. The author is a photojournalist, not a lawyer, and not qualified to comment on copyright law beyond simply giving his personal opinion.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    You can hold that stance, but it completely undermines the source of income for artists or inventors. If you want a world where only rich and privileged people can afford the time to create art, this is the way to go. Otherwise, we maybe can agree that people who make something should be eligible for some kind of compensation to encourage them to continue making, for our shared benefit. You can argue that Beyoncé and George Clooney and Stephen King are so rich already they don’t need the money anyway, but that omits how even these people had to make a career from the bottom up on the sole premise that their focus on their art (regardless of your opinion on it) will pay the bills. So just saying piracy isn’t theft and thus isn’t a problem is a wholly undercooked answer to a difficult problem.
    - rcxdude 1y ago
      The "therefore isn't a problem" was not, I believe, present in the original post. It's entirely possible to believe that copyright infringement is not theft and yet also still a problem. It's mainly an appeal to not misrepresent the situation, because theft in a literal sense refers to a situation which is generally worse than copyright infringement.
eastbound 1y ago
I find the argument “Nothing was stolen” very weak compared to “The infinite endeavour of preventing private people from copying bytes, shouldn’t be a prerogative of the state” / ideas are copiable and can’t be decently guaranteed by the public against copy. That is, public funds, tribunals and lawmaking power, shouldn’t be used to protect a private interests. Corollary: 1. DRM is ok. 2. If one cracks it, it’s ok too, 3. You gotta find other ways to conduct business than retaining information (licenses, movies, etc.) 4. For software companies, cloud is one of those ways, compared to licensing downloads, 5. Netflix is the cloud of the movies and you pay for earlier access to a shared experience that is synchronized with other friends who will watch the same thing, 5. Patents are another stupid attempt by the state to protect corporations against citizens.
DrScientist 1y ago
I think the issue here is the theft of livelihoods. If you spend months crafting something unique with your livelihood being based on then selling access to that creation ( whether it be music, software or prose ) and somebody copies it in a way that deprives you of a livelihood ( and replaces it with a revenue to the entity that copied it's ) - it's that theft of your income stream?
- xscott 1y ago
  Do you feel the same about spreadsheet software reducing the need for accountants? What about textile workers creating fabric for clothing by hand? Or do we only romanticize artists such that they're entitled to an income?
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    Does spreadsheet software have to be trained directly on the copyright-lrptected work of the accountants it's replacing without their consent (and often against their loud protesting)?
  - DrScientist 1y ago
    Of course not - you are confusing competition with theft. It's the difference between you writing a piece of competing software and taking my market share, versus you stealing my software and selling it as your own. Or you attempting to write a competing best seller versus copying mine wholesale and selling under your own name on Amazon. One activity is ultimately creative destruction that pushes society forward - the other is simply destructive free riding. ie theft involves no creation of value. Now the situation with tech companies is that there is theft, but also value add ( like somebody stealing your book and putting a better cover on it online ). Just because there is some value add doesn't forgive the theft.
    - xscott 1y ago
      Did you edit your post above? Even slightly? Because I was replying specifically to the idea that artists have a right to a livelihood, and I think you changed a few words to add the copying bit. I should be more consistent about pasting in the text I'm replying to. Regardless, you really should learn the difference between "theft", "copyright violation", and "training", because they are different things. If I read a bunch of books, learn from the authors' use of word phrasing, then pick one of Vonnegut's 8 Story Shapes, and make a book in some author's style, it's not illegal. I don't see why I can't have a computer do that for me. None of this really matters. If you feel strongly about it, you should go bribe congress to make a law. Because the existing laws about theft and copyright don't cover "learning from billions of examples and interpolating or extrapolating from them".
socalgal2 1y ago
Hopefully I can get you to do my taxes. when you’re done I’ll just make a copy and then not pay you because I’ll have not stolen anything and so I don’t owe you any money
- d_k_f 1y ago
  In terms of property theft: exactly. Which is why your tax advisor would insist on a contract with you that outlines compensation for services rendered, time and material, etc.
  - socalgal2 1y ago
    not sure I get your point. So because a movie producer didn't sign a contract with a pirate it's okay for the pirate to copy the movie without compensation and that's the only difference? To me, in both cases someone did some work that someone else wants. In both cases they should pay for that work. If they are not willing to pay the price the person who did the work is asking, then they should go get work from someone else. At no point should they just say "well, I never contracted with you so therefore making a copy of the work you did is totally cool"
    - d_k_f 1y ago
      I was talking about the definition of theft and whether what you did in your example constituted it. If I did your taxes (as in: did all the calculations) and you took a picture of my results, copied the values, etc. no theft happened. If I filled out your tax return and you took that without paying then obviously theft happened, but I assumed you didn't mean that since then your example would have no connection to TFA. What did happen, though, is exactly what you described: you asked someone to do work for you ("contracting"/"work for hire") and they did just that. Then you decided not to pay them, which is a simple civil law case of contract fulfillment. EDIT: depending on the "creativity" of my tax calculations, copying them might be considered IP theft and I could come after you using the DMCA, but I guess creative accounting only goes so far ;)
stereolambda 1y ago
I would just establish that all references to "theft" and "stealing" in the realm of copyright (with the notable exception of plagiarism) is metaphor and emotional rhetoric. Historically it would come from copyright interest groups who want(ed) to use criminal police to enforce their state-granted copyright privileges[1] against regular people. Sadly these things are often decided by rhetoric in society, but then again, there's no actual debate if it's just throwing slogans. Now some of the same rhetoric is used in the AI battle. The only question worth asking here is what's the social benefit, as human culture is by nature all commons and derivation. But in this case, the AI companies are also accumulating power, and LLMs are removing attribution which could be argued to discourage publishing new works more than piracy. A "pirate" may learn about you and later buy from you in different ways, a LLM user won't even know that you exist. [1] Not even discussing how exaggerated these privileges are from what would be reasonable.
- jachee 1y ago
  Why the carve-out for plagiarism? And how does an LLM reciting all or part of a work verbatim not qualify as plagiarism?
  - stereolambda 1y ago
    Because if you present yourself as the author, it follows that the actual author is deprived of attribution. So you are actually taking something from that person. LLM could commit plagiarism if authorship of generated media was claimed for either the LLM or its creators.
exe34 1y ago
Exactly! That's why digital content piracy is legal and copyright doesn't exist.
jillesvangurp 1y ago
I wouldn't call it stupid but I do expect that the legal cases will die somewhere along their way to the supreme courts. Several reasons: 1) The cat is out of the bag, AI is a thing now. It's not going back in the bag. So, artists are going to have to adapt to that. And are already adapting. 2) AI affecting artists is not any different than photography wiping out the market for portrait painters. Or records wiping out the market for selling music in paper form so that professional musicians might reproduce that for an audience. Those things happened a long time ago of course and any copyright issues around that were resolved over time. Copyright law hasn't really changed much since before that happened. These are the same kind of questions that exists for AIs being obviously inspired by but not really perfectly copying songs, images, text, etc. And they have answers in many decades of case law. Judges are going to take all of that into account and are historically reluctant to introduce new interpretations. 3) AI companies are big enough to outright buy the larger copyright holders. That doesn't mean they will; but it suggests they might reach some settlement that doesn't involve pleading guilty in a court. In the end this is about money, not about principles. At least not for the parties paying the lawyers. 4) If a settlement doesn't happen, judges will be forced to look at existing cases to assess what is and isn't an infringement. And if you remove all the outrage and moralism from the equation (which judges tend to do), AI companies are simply not distributing copies of original works to anyone. They are using them, for sure. But it's distributing copies that gets you in trouble. Not using copies. That narrows it down to whether those copies, which are freely distributed on the internet, were obtained legally.

Can you send me a copy of the front and back of your social security card? You still have your card so no theft happened.

ktallett 1y ago
I don't feel this is quite the gotcha argument you believe it is. Your last line is indeed correct, he would still have his card, so no theft would have occurred. Just having a copy of said card is not theft. Likewise should a person use said card for a nefarious purpose, that is still not theft, that is fraud.
- BoredPositron 1y ago
  You are really close...
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    No, your argument is a complete bogus. If I steal your ID card, then nothing really happens at all. I can spend years watching it, draw something on it, cut it in pieces, whatever. The moment I start trying to impersonate you, then it becomes a problem for you. If Bobby the metalhead downloads a copy of Enter the Sandman, then Metallica and brand doesn’t lose anything at all. If you were to make it industrial, then maybe we can talk about it.
    - BoredPositron 1y ago
      You are also really close...
- XCabbage 1y ago
  Well, not necessarily, on your last sentence. It might also be theft, depending on the precise nefarious purpose and on the jurisdiction. If you take somebody else's property without their consent, that's typically theft, even if the "property" is money in a bank account and no tangible physical object changed hands, and even if the method of taking involved deception. Fraud and theft overlap.
- gwd 1y ago
  There was a good essay I saw a bit ago, talking about how this shift from "fraud" to "identity theft" neatly started shifting the victim from the bank to the individual. E.g., 30 years ago, if someone claiming to be me went to my bank, asked for my money, and the bank gave it to them, then the bank that was a victim of fraud. But now, if someone goes to my bank, asks for my money, and the bank gives it to them, then I am the victim of identity theft. The difference is subtle, but potentially important. If the bank unfortunately gives money to someone else, that's their problem: I can say to the bank, I'm sorry you were the victim of fraud, but you still owe me my money. If I unfortunately "have my identity stolen", then that makes it seem like it's my problem -- the bank may say, we're sorry you "had your identity stolen" and thus lost your money, but that's not really our problem.
rcxdude 1y ago
"Identity theft" is another misuse of the word to deflect from what is actually an authentication failure.
- chii 1y ago
  It's identity fraud, but people use theft to mean fraud here.
  - close04 1y ago
    People use "theft" because it's the terminology the companies responsible for the failure insist on using. The word makes it sound like the person failed to protect their identity, and hides that it was the company which failed to validate the identity. This should be called "identity validation failure". When scammers impersonate a company to steal your money it's no longer called identity theft.
    - chii 1y ago
      you are absolutely correct. The idea that it is theft is tinged with victim blaming connotations.
close04 1y ago
You wouldn't "steal" that identity, you'd just prove that e.g. banks are bad at validating identity.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS9ptA3Ya9E (Mitchell & Webb Sound - Identity Theft)
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
wiseowise 1y ago
Can you do the same trick with my copy of Metallica, please?

BenGosub 1y ago

Digital music is infinitely reproducible, but that doesn't mean that I am allowed to illegally download it. It is similar with articles. The author decides who can consume their art,

falcor84 1y ago
> The author decides who can consume their art, What?! How would that even happen? Unless you limit your definition of art to performing at salon events, that doesn't make much sense. Typically art is released into the world and at best the authors can get a bit of rent from the people who consume it (typically via a publisher), but they don't have any control over who the consumers would be.
- BenGosub 1y ago
  For example, I decide if my music is going to stream on YouTube or Spotify, or it will only sell on Bandcamp. I decide if I am going to go with a publisher, which publisher and what platforms. What you label as "typically" has only been the case for the past ≈15 years.
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    You don’t decide anything on the platforms. The moment you upload your music there, they decide what they do with it.
  - falcor84 1y ago
    YouTube and Spotify and Bandcamp are distribution platforms, not your consumers
    - BenGosub 1y ago
      My point is that just like I decide if I am going to distribute to streaming services, I also should be able to decide if I am going to allow models to train on my work. Isn't this something obvious?

dartharva 1y ago

I think they are more scared that the AI models will reproduce their original content in odd contexts that may bring liability to them and cause overall pandemonium.

TrackerFF 1y ago

Following this logic, anything that is digital can not be stolen? After all, you only steal a digital copy - not the original, and not something that is physical. In which case, the following is not theft: - Pirating anything that is digital video - Pirating anything that is digital audio - Pirating anything that is digital text - Pirating any software etc. EDIT: For the proponents of "it is not theft", what's your stance on personal data being stolen ("accessed")? If someone can access your medical records, are you fine with that? They can do whatever they want with that?

concinds 1y ago
Correct. Piracy is potentially copyright infringement, not "theft". People insist on using that word, despite it being factually wrong, due to its emotional valence and persuasive value. The author is a photojournalist, not a lawyer, and not qualified to comment on copyright law beyond simply giving his personal opinion.
- 9dev 1y ago
  You can hold that stance, but it completely undermines the source of income for artists or inventors. If you want a world where only rich and privileged people can afford the time to create art, this is the way to go. Otherwise, we maybe can agree that people who make something should be eligible for some kind of compensation to encourage them to continue making, for our shared benefit. You can argue that Beyoncé and George Clooney and Stephen King are so rich already they don’t need the money anyway, but that omits how even these people had to make a career from the bottom up on the sole premise that their focus on their art (regardless of your opinion on it) will pay the bills. So just saying piracy isn’t theft and thus isn’t a problem is a wholly undercooked answer to a difficult problem.
  - rcxdude 1y ago
    The "therefore isn't a problem" was not, I believe, present in the original post. It's entirely possible to believe that copyright infringement is not theft and yet also still a problem. It's mainly an appeal to not misrepresent the situation, because theft in a literal sense refers to a situation which is generally worse than copyright infringement.

eastbound 1y ago

I find the argument “Nothing was stolen” very weak compared to “The infinite endeavour of preventing private people from copying bytes, shouldn’t be a prerogative of the state” / ideas are copiable and can’t be decently guaranteed by the public against copy. That is, public funds, tribunals and lawmaking power, shouldn’t be used to protect a private interests. Corollary: 1. DRM is ok. 2. If one cracks it, it’s ok too, 3. You gotta find other ways to conduct business than retaining information (licenses, movies, etc.) 4. For software companies, cloud is one of those ways, compared to licensing downloads, 5. Netflix is the cloud of the movies and you pay for earlier access to a shared experience that is synchronized with other friends who will watch the same thing, 5. Patents are another stupid attempt by the state to protect corporations against citizens.

DrScientist 1y ago

I think the issue here is the theft of livelihoods. If you spend months crafting something unique with your livelihood being based on then selling access to that creation ( whether it be music, software or prose ) and somebody copies it in a way that deprives you of a livelihood ( and replaces it with a revenue to the entity that copied it's ) - it's that theft of your income stream?

xscott 1y ago
Do you feel the same about spreadsheet software reducing the need for accountants? What about textile workers creating fabric for clothing by hand? Or do we only romanticize artists such that they're entitled to an income?
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  Does spreadsheet software have to be trained directly on the copyright-lrptected work of the accountants it's replacing without their consent (and often against their loud protesting)?
- DrScientist 1y ago
  Of course not - you are confusing competition with theft. It's the difference between you writing a piece of competing software and taking my market share, versus you stealing my software and selling it as your own. Or you attempting to write a competing best seller versus copying mine wholesale and selling under your own name on Amazon. One activity is ultimately creative destruction that pushes society forward - the other is simply destructive free riding. ie theft involves no creation of value. Now the situation with tech companies is that there is theft, but also value add ( like somebody stealing your book and putting a better cover on it online ). Just because there is some value add doesn't forgive the theft.
  - xscott 1y ago
    Did you edit your post above? Even slightly? Because I was replying specifically to the idea that artists have a right to a livelihood, and I think you changed a few words to add the copying bit. I should be more consistent about pasting in the text I'm replying to. Regardless, you really should learn the difference between "theft", "copyright violation", and "training", because they are different things. If I read a bunch of books, learn from the authors' use of word phrasing, then pick one of Vonnegut's 8 Story Shapes, and make a book in some author's style, it's not illegal. I don't see why I can't have a computer do that for me. None of this really matters. If you feel strongly about it, you should go bribe congress to make a law. Because the existing laws about theft and copyright don't cover "learning from billions of examples and interpolating or extrapolating from them".

socalgal2 1y ago

Hopefully I can get you to do my taxes. when you’re done I’ll just make a copy and then not pay you because I’ll have not stolen anything and so I don’t owe you any money

d_k_f 1y ago
In terms of property theft: exactly. Which is why your tax advisor would insist on a contract with you that outlines compensation for services rendered, time and material, etc.
- socalgal2 1y ago
  not sure I get your point. So because a movie producer didn't sign a contract with a pirate it's okay for the pirate to copy the movie without compensation and that's the only difference? To me, in both cases someone did some work that someone else wants. In both cases they should pay for that work. If they are not willing to pay the price the person who did the work is asking, then they should go get work from someone else. At no point should they just say "well, I never contracted with you so therefore making a copy of the work you did is totally cool"
  - d_k_f 1y ago
    I was talking about the definition of theft and whether what you did in your example constituted it. If I did your taxes (as in: did all the calculations) and you took a picture of my results, copied the values, etc. no theft happened. If I filled out your tax return and you took that without paying then obviously theft happened, but I assumed you didn't mean that since then your example would have no connection to TFA. What did happen, though, is exactly what you described: you asked someone to do work for you ("contracting"/"work for hire") and they did just that. Then you decided not to pay them, which is a simple civil law case of contract fulfillment. EDIT: depending on the "creativity" of my tax calculations, copying them might be considered IP theft and I could come after you using the DMCA, but I guess creative accounting only goes so far ;)

stereolambda 1y ago

I would just establish that all references to "theft" and "stealing" in the realm of copyright (with the notable exception of plagiarism) is metaphor and emotional rhetoric. Historically it would come from copyright interest groups who want(ed) to use criminal police to enforce their state-granted copyright privileges[1] against regular people. Sadly these things are often decided by rhetoric in society, but then again, there's no actual debate if it's just throwing slogans. Now some of the same rhetoric is used in the AI battle. The only question worth asking here is what's the social benefit, as human culture is by nature all commons and derivation. But in this case, the AI companies are also accumulating power, and LLMs are removing attribution which could be argued to discourage publishing new works more than piracy. A "pirate" may learn about you and later buy from you in different ways, a LLM user won't even know that you exist. [1] Not even discussing how exaggerated these privileges are from what would be reasonable.

jachee 1y ago
Why the carve-out for plagiarism? And how does an LLM reciting all or part of a work verbatim not qualify as plagiarism?
- stereolambda 1y ago
  Because if you present yourself as the author, it follows that the actual author is deprived of attribution. So you are actually taking something from that person. LLM could commit plagiarism if authorship of generated media was claimed for either the LLM or its creators.

exe34 1y ago

Exactly! That's why digital content piracy is legal and copyright doesn't exist.

jillesvangurp 1y ago

I wouldn't call it stupid but I do expect that the legal cases will die somewhere along their way to the supreme courts. Several reasons: 1) The cat is out of the bag, AI is a thing now. It's not going back in the bag. So, artists are going to have to adapt to that. And are already adapting. 2) AI affecting artists is not any different than photography wiping out the market for portrait painters. Or records wiping out the market for selling music in paper form so that professional musicians might reproduce that for an audience. Those things happened a long time ago of course and any copyright issues around that were resolved over time. Copyright law hasn't really changed much since before that happened. These are the same kind of questions that exists for AIs being obviously inspired by but not really perfectly copying songs, images, text, etc. And they have answers in many decades of case law. Judges are going to take all of that into account and are historically reluctant to introduce new interpretations. 3) AI companies are big enough to outright buy the larger copyright holders. That doesn't mean they will; but it suggests they might reach some settlement that doesn't involve pleading guilty in a court. In the end this is about money, not about principles. At least not for the parties paying the lawyers. 4) If a settlement doesn't happen, judges will be forced to look at existing cases to assess what is and isn't an infringement. And if you remove all the outrage and moralism from the equation (which judges tend to do), AI companies are simply not distributing copies of original works to anyone. They are using them, for sure. But it's distributing copies that gets you in trouble. Not using copies. That narrows it down to whether those copies, which are freely distributed on the internet, were obtained legally.