3 ms·

There was a relatively tiny but otherwise identical uproar over Google even before they added infoboxes that reduced the number of people who clicked through.

by Kye 11mo ago

tpmoney 11mo ago
There was also the lawsuit against google for the Google Scholar project, which is not only very similar to how AI use ingest copyright material, but even more than AI actually reproduced word for word (intentionally so) snippets of those works. Google Scholar is also fair use.
AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
> There was a relatively tiny but otherwise identical uproar over Google even before they added infoboxes that reduced the number of people who clicked through. But is that because it isn't fair use or because of the virulent rabies epidemic among media company lawyers?
- Kye 11mo ago
  This was normal people, as much as bloggers on the pre-social media early web could be considered normal.
  - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
    Normal people that aren't media companies were objecting to search engines indexing websites? That seems more likely to have been media companies using the fact that they're media companies to get people riled up over a thing the company is grumpy about.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - freejazz 11mo ago
      I don't think regular people pay attention to copyright decisions (they don't even pay attention to the cases to make it to the supreme court) but there are plenty of lawyers who don't work for media companies who disagree with the findings. I also think your characterization is ridiculous and pejorative.
      - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
        They disagree with search engines being fair use? The general problem is that both the structure of copyright and the legacy media business model were predicated on copying being a capital-intensive process. If a printing press is expensive then reproduction is a good place to collect royalties, because you could go after that expensive piece of equipment if they don't pay. And if a printing press is expensive then a publisher who has one is offering a scarce service in a market with a high barrier to entry. The internet made copying free and that pretty well devastated the publishing industry, more as a result of the second one than the first. If your product isn't scarce -- if your news reporting is in competition with every blog and social media post -- you're not getting the same margins you used to. But there's no plausible way the incumbents are going to convince people that reporters with a website instead of a printing press need to be excluded from the market so they can have less competition, and that by itself and nothing more means their traditional business model is gone. They're competing for readers and advertisers against Substack and Reddit and the cat's not going back in the bag. Meanwhile copyright infringement got way easier and that's much more plausible to frame as a problem, so the companies want to sic their lawyers on it, except that the bag is here on the ground and the cat is still over there getting a million hits. There is no obviously good way to solve it (but plenty of bad ways to not solve it) and solving it still wouldn't put things back the way they were anyway. So their lawyers are constantly under pressure to do something but none of their options are good or effective which means they're constantly demanding things that are oppressive or asinine or, like the anti-circumvention clause in the DMCA, own-goals that tech megacorps use against content creators to monopolize distribution channels. Which is why it's an epidemic. If you can see the target the pressure is on to pull the trigger even when all you have is a footgun.
        11mo ago

There was a relatively tiny but otherwise identical uproar over Google even before they added infoboxes that reduced the number of people who clicked through.

by Kye 11mo ago

There was a relatively tiny but otherwise identical uproar over Google even before they added infoboxes that reduced the number of people who clicked through.

tpmoney 11mo ago

There was also the lawsuit against google for the Google Scholar project, which is not only very similar to how AI use ingest copyright material, but even more than AI actually reproduced word for word (intentionally so) snippets of those works. Google Scholar is also fair use.

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago

> There was a relatively tiny but otherwise identical uproar over Google even before they added infoboxes that reduced the number of people who clicked through. But is that because it isn't fair use or because of the virulent rabies epidemic among media company lawyers?

Kye 11mo ago
This was normal people, as much as bloggers on the pre-social media early web could be considered normal.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
  Normal people that aren't media companies were objecting to search engines indexing websites? That seems more likely to have been media companies using the fact that they're media companies to get people riled up over a thing the company is grumpy about.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - freejazz 11mo ago
    I don't think regular people pay attention to copyright decisions (they don't even pay attention to the cases to make it to the supreme court) but there are plenty of lawyers who don't work for media companies who disagree with the findings. I also think your characterization is ridiculous and pejorative.
    - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
      They disagree with search engines being fair use? The general problem is that both the structure of copyright and the legacy media business model were predicated on copying being a capital-intensive process. If a printing press is expensive then reproduction is a good place to collect royalties, because you could go after that expensive piece of equipment if they don't pay. And if a printing press is expensive then a publisher who has one is offering a scarce service in a market with a high barrier to entry. The internet made copying free and that pretty well devastated the publishing industry, more as a result of the second one than the first. If your product isn't scarce -- if your news reporting is in competition with every blog and social media post -- you're not getting the same margins you used to. But there's no plausible way the incumbents are going to convince people that reporters with a website instead of a printing press need to be excluded from the market so they can have less competition, and that by itself and nothing more means their traditional business model is gone. They're competing for readers and advertisers against Substack and Reddit and the cat's not going back in the bag. Meanwhile copyright infringement got way easier and that's much more plausible to frame as a problem, so the companies want to sic their lawyers on it, except that the bag is here on the ground and the cat is still over there getting a million hits. There is no obviously good way to solve it (but plenty of bad ways to not solve it) and solving it still wouldn't put things back the way they were anyway. So their lawyers are constantly under pressure to do something but none of their options are good or effective which means they're constantly demanding things that are oppressive or asinine or, like the anti-circumvention clause in the DMCA, own-goals that tech megacorps use against content creators to monopolize distribution channels. Which is why it's an epidemic. If you can see the target the pressure is on to pull the trigger even when all you have is a footgun.
      - 11mo ago