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Yeah, copyright infringement isn't stealing, copyright shouldn't even exist to begin with. I just think it's especially asinine how corporations are perfectly

Yeah, copyright infringement isn't stealing, copyright shouldn't even exist to begin with. I just think it's especially asinine how corporations are perfectly willing to launder copyrighted works via LLMs when it's profitable to do so. We have to perpetually pay them for their works and if we break their little software locks it's felony contempt of business model, but they get to train their AIs on our works and reproduce them infinitely and with total impunity without paying us a cent. It's that "rules for thee but not for me" nonsense that makes me reach such extreme logical conclusions that I feel empathy for terrorists.

thesz 1y ago
> copyright shouldn't even exist to begin with. You then get trade secretes and guilds. Hardly an improvement.
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  Secrets? Just leak them, it only has to happen once. Guilds? Revoke their privileges and protections, and there's nothing they can do about it. Absolutely an improvement. Information wants to be free. Stop criminalizing it and people will find a way to free it. And once it's out there it's over, there is no containing it.
  - wakawaka28 1y ago
    People want to be paid for their work. If you don't let them, they won't do the work. "Information" does not have a mind of its own. Even when the idea of a thing is "out there" there is a lot of grunt work and special stuff that needs to be implemented to get the best outcomes. Nobody owes you that work for free. Regardless of what GPL copers say, it is very hard to make money with software without enforcing some access restrictions and IP. Open source is great when it works, but it does not work for most things nor is it at the leading edge for most things.
    - matheusmoreira 1y ago
      Welp. Then don't do the work if you don't want to. Nobody's advocating for your enslavement.
      - wakawaka28 1y ago
        Copyright facilitates people getting paid for IP work. Without it the work would be much harder to justify.
        matheusmoreira 1y ago
        Then let it be unjustified, and let it stay undone. Copyright is a functionally perpetual state granted monopoly on information, on numbers. A business model that depends on such a delusion should not even exist to begin with.
        wakawaka28 1y ago
        Sorry, a piece of software is no more a bunch of numbers than a musical score or a novel. Intellectual property exists for valid reasons. It's clearly not delusional because we've made it work for hundreds of years. Saying that intellectual property is founded on a delusion because someone can infringe on it or it's mere numbers is like saying your physical property rights are a delusion because the stuff is mere matter and can be manipulated by anyone. While true, such statements add absolutely nothing to the conversation. If people are willing to copy from others rather than make their own creations, there is value in the original works that is a direct result of someone's labor, not some immutable law of the universe.
        matheusmoreira 1y ago
        It's not the age of printing presses anymore. It's the 21st century, the age of information, the age of globally networked pocket supercomputers. Copying is so trivial that it's become normal. It happens every day at massive scales. People do not even realize they are doing it. We're discussing this in a thread about AI laundering of copyrighted works, for god's sake. If you keep believing this delusion, you'll eventually watch it shatter right before your eyes. Let's not waste time comparing bits of infomation to physical objects either. We can revisit this discussion when Star Trek replicators are invented.
- yencabulator 1y ago
  It sounds like you're confusing copyright with patents.
wakawaka28 1y ago
Your views are contradictory. Copyright shouldn't exist, but the businesses infringing on it are the bad ones? >We have to perpetually pay them for their works and if we break their little software locks it's felony contempt of business model You don't have to pay them, or break their restrictions. >but they get to train their AIs on our works and reproduce them infinitely and with total impunity without paying us a cent. You don't need to allow this either. Unfortunately open-source code is necessarily public. >It's that "rules for thee but not for me" nonsense that makes me reach such extreme logical conclusions that I feel empathy for terrorists. The way LLMs use code is fundamentally different from wholesale copying. If someone read your code and paraphrased it and tweaked it, it would be a completely new work not subject to the original copyright. At least it would be really hard to get a court to regard it as an infringement. This is like what LLMs do.
- matheusmoreira 1y ago
  > Your views are contradictory. How is it contradictory? Tell it to the corporations who defend copyright for you and public domain fair use for themselves. If they were honest, they'd abolish copyright straight up instead of creating this idiotic caste system. > Copyright shouldn't exist, but the businesses infringing on it are the bad ones? Yes. Copyright shouldn't exist to begin with, but since it does, one would expect the corporations to work within the legal framework they themselves created and lobbied so heavily for. One would expect them to reap the consequences of their actions and be bound by the exact same limitations they seek to impose on us. It is absolutely asinine to watch them make trillions of dollars by breaking their own rules while simultaneously pretendinf that nothing is happening and insisting that you mortal citizen must still abide by the same rules they are breaking. The sheer dishonesty of it makes me sick to my core. > If someone read your code and paraphrased it and tweaked it, it would be a completely new work not subject to the original copyright. Derivative work. I was once told that corporate programmers are warned by legal not to even read AGPLv3 source code, lest it subconsciously infect their thought processes and the final result. This is also the reason we have clean room reverse engineering where one team produces documentation and another uses it to reimplement the thing. Isolating minds from the copyrighted inputs is the whole point of it. All of this is risk management meant to disallow even the mere possibility that a derivative work was created in the process. There is absolutely no reason to believe LLMs are any different. They are literally trained on copyrighted inputs. Either they're violating copyrights or we're being oppressed by these copyright monopolists who say we can't do stuff we should be able to do. Both cannot be true at the same time. > At least it would be really hard to get a court to regard it as an infringement. It's extremely hard to get a court to do anything. As in tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars difficult. Nothing is decided until actual judges start deciding things, and to get to that point you need to actually go through the legal system, and to do that you need to pay expensive lawyers lots of money. It's the reason people instantly fold the second legal action is threatened, doesn't matter if they're right. Corporations have money to burn, we don't. And that's assuming that courts are presided by honest human beings who believe in law and reason instead of political activist judges or straight up corrupt judges who can be lobbied by industry.

thesz 1y ago

> copyright shouldn't even exist to begin with. You then get trade secretes and guilds. Hardly an improvement.

matheusmoreira 1y ago
Secrets? Just leak them, it only has to happen once. Guilds? Revoke their privileges and protections, and there's nothing they can do about it. Absolutely an improvement. Information wants to be free. Stop criminalizing it and people will find a way to free it. And once it's out there it's over, there is no containing it.
- wakawaka28 1y ago
  People want to be paid for their work. If you don't let them, they won't do the work. "Information" does not have a mind of its own. Even when the idea of a thing is "out there" there is a lot of grunt work and special stuff that needs to be implemented to get the best outcomes. Nobody owes you that work for free. Regardless of what GPL copers say, it is very hard to make money with software without enforcing some access restrictions and IP. Open source is great when it works, but it does not work for most things nor is it at the leading edge for most things.
  - matheusmoreira 1y ago
    Welp. Then don't do the work if you don't want to. Nobody's advocating for your enslavement.
    - wakawaka28 1y ago
      Copyright facilitates people getting paid for IP work. Without it the work would be much harder to justify.
      - matheusmoreira 1y ago
        Then let it be unjustified, and let it stay undone. Copyright is a functionally perpetual state granted monopoly on information, on numbers. A business model that depends on such a delusion should not even exist to begin with.
        wakawaka28 1y ago
        Sorry, a piece of software is no more a bunch of numbers than a musical score or a novel. Intellectual property exists for valid reasons. It's clearly not delusional because we've made it work for hundreds of years. Saying that intellectual property is founded on a delusion because someone can infringe on it or it's mere numbers is like saying your physical property rights are a delusion because the stuff is mere matter and can be manipulated by anyone. While true, such statements add absolutely nothing to the conversation. If people are willing to copy from others rather than make their own creations, there is value in the original works that is a direct result of someone's labor, not some immutable law of the universe.
        matheusmoreira 1y ago
        It's not the age of printing presses anymore. It's the 21st century, the age of information, the age of globally networked pocket supercomputers. Copying is so trivial that it's become normal. It happens every day at massive scales. People do not even realize they are doing it. We're discussing this in a thread about AI laundering of copyrighted works, for god's sake. If you keep believing this delusion, you'll eventually watch it shatter right before your eyes. Let's not waste time comparing bits of infomation to physical objects either. We can revisit this discussion when Star Trek replicators are invented.
yencabulator 1y ago
It sounds like you're confusing copyright with patents.

wakawaka28 1y ago

Your views are contradictory. Copyright shouldn't exist, but the businesses infringing on it are the bad ones? >We have to perpetually pay them for their works and if we break their little software locks it's felony contempt of business model You don't have to pay them, or break their restrictions. >but they get to train their AIs on our works and reproduce them infinitely and with total impunity without paying us a cent. You don't need to allow this either. Unfortunately open-source code is necessarily public. >It's that "rules for thee but not for me" nonsense that makes me reach such extreme logical conclusions that I feel empathy for terrorists. The way LLMs use code is fundamentally different from wholesale copying. If someone read your code and paraphrased it and tweaked it, it would be a completely new work not subject to the original copyright. At least it would be really hard to get a court to regard it as an infringement. This is like what LLMs do.

matheusmoreira 1y ago
> Your views are contradictory. How is it contradictory? Tell it to the corporations who defend copyright for you and public domain fair use for themselves. If they were honest, they'd abolish copyright straight up instead of creating this idiotic caste system. > Copyright shouldn't exist, but the businesses infringing on it are the bad ones? Yes. Copyright shouldn't exist to begin with, but since it does, one would expect the corporations to work within the legal framework they themselves created and lobbied so heavily for. One would expect them to reap the consequences of their actions and be bound by the exact same limitations they seek to impose on us. It is absolutely asinine to watch them make trillions of dollars by breaking their own rules while simultaneously pretendinf that nothing is happening and insisting that you mortal citizen must still abide by the same rules they are breaking. The sheer dishonesty of it makes me sick to my core. > If someone read your code and paraphrased it and tweaked it, it would be a completely new work not subject to the original copyright. Derivative work. I was once told that corporate programmers are warned by legal not to even read AGPLv3 source code, lest it subconsciously infect their thought processes and the final result. This is also the reason we have clean room reverse engineering where one team produces documentation and another uses it to reimplement the thing. Isolating minds from the copyrighted inputs is the whole point of it. All of this is risk management meant to disallow even the mere possibility that a derivative work was created in the process. There is absolutely no reason to believe LLMs are any different. They are literally trained on copyrighted inputs. Either they're violating copyrights or we're being oppressed by these copyright monopolists who say we can't do stuff we should be able to do. Both cannot be true at the same time. > At least it would be really hard to get a court to regard it as an infringement. It's extremely hard to get a court to do anything. As in tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars difficult. Nothing is decided until actual judges start deciding things, and to get to that point you need to actually go through the legal system, and to do that you need to pay expensive lawyers lots of money. It's the reason people instantly fold the second legal action is threatened, doesn't matter if they're right. Corporations have money to burn, we don't. And that's assuming that courts are presided by honest human beings who believe in law and reason instead of political activist judges or straight up corrupt judges who can be lobbied by industry.