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AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was
- sharkjacobs 8mo agoMost people in my social circles are various flavours of anti-AI, and it drives me crazy how many of them, who were once stridently anti-copyright, are now using copyright as one of the great pillars of AI opposition
- avaer 8mo agoDon't worry, they will flip and become staunch supporters of AI too once it starts to benefit them. Then they will immediately forget the copyright issue.
- HPsquared 8mo agoIt serves to demonstrate that in most cases, "principles" are only a rhetorical device.
- acheron 8mo agoYep. It’s just who/whom all the way down.
- repelsteeltje 8mo agoI suppose both copyright and AI are problematic. And the article is thought provoking.
- AlienRobot 8mo agoEveryone is anti-copyright until they understand what copyright means. In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- happytoexplain 8mo agoUsually when I see this opinion (yours), it leans on an uncharitable coloring of everybody who sees problems with copyright as "anti-copyright", when really those people largely are happy with the concept of protecting an individual's work. I.e. it is the age-old "those people" argument, where "those people" are a made-up conglomerate of opinions that are real, but come from slightly different contexts and from different people, throwing away those variables to create the illusion of a hypocrite.
- jasonlotito 8mo agoI think this is a good explanation, and even if this isn't what the OP says, I see arguments like this frequently. In the case of copyright, think of it as anti-current-implementation of copyright rather than anti-copyright. For example, you could oppose the current copyright term, but that doesn't mean you are anti-copyright. Quite the opposite, in fact.
- Altern4tiveAcc 8mo ago> it leans on an uncharitable coloring of everybody who sees problems with copyright as "anti-copyright" That's the charitable coloring. Owning concepts or ideas, and trying to police others' use of ideas you """own""" is absurd.
- kixiQu 8mo agohttps://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Goomba_fallacy https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Goomba_fallacy (Not so ironclad that you're wrong not to use it, but I'm a fan of this term, so promulgating)
- ares623 8mo agoMaybe they’re more anti-blatant-unequal-and-unfair-enforcement-of-copyright-law?
- amarcheschi 8mo agoI feel a stark difference if people break the law to watch movies or if a company does it for profit
- masklinn 8mo agoSo people are pitting two foes against one another and that’s supposed to… be bad?
- bitwize 8mo ago"Let them fight."
- JoshTriplett 8mo agoI'm heavily anti-copyright. I don't think it should exist. However, as long as it exists, I want it to be applied consistently across the board: AI shouldn't get to use Open Source code while ignoring its license, until Open Source developers get to use proprietary code while ignoring its license. Ditto art, movies, books, etc.
- candiddevmike 8mo agoWere they really 100% anti-copyright though? By and large, copyright is the reason most of us have a job and get paid. There are things that shouldn't necessarily be copyright-able like APIs, and copyright probably exists for too long in certain cases, but a world without copyright doesn't really work with our current economic model.
- runarberg 8mo agoThere is a difference between distributing pirated copies of popular media by already rich artists who you know get paid anyway, and the systematic art theft of AI machines who “create” new art based on artists works who may or may not have been paid for it, and definitely didn’t get credited. Both are copyright infringements, but only the latter is art theft.
- hackyhacky 8mo ago> Most people in my social circles are various flavours of anti-AI, and it drives me crazy how many of them, who were once stridently anti-copyright, are now using copyright as one of the great pillars of AI opposition As the article has pointed out, it's not the principle that has changed, but the scale. Lots of things that are tolerable at small scale (e.g. lying, stealing) become disruptive to society at larger scale. Copyright has been used in the past as a way for corporations to rent-seek and limit innovation. Now it may be the only legal means to stop them from doing that.
- tjr 8mo agoIt's not illegal for me to drive from New York to San Francisco on Interstate 80. But if I were able to endlessly duplicate myself and my car, about a million of me could hog the entire country-wide highway. Not sure if even that would be "illegal", but it would sure be annoying, and I suspect there would need to be laws updated / rewritten to account for my ability to duplicate myself without limit. I doubt society would just agree, "yep, one of you on I-80 is okay, and so a million of you on I-80 is also okay."
- jasonlotito 8mo agoI'm curious what the circle is, because it doesn't match up with my circle. So, I'm genuinely curious what you mean by "anti-copyright".
- k__ 8mo agoAnti-copyright usually means, anti big corps who hold culture hostage.
- Avshalom 8mo agoPeople hate it when copyright law is used by corporations to crush people. People hate it when copyright law is ignored by corporations to crush people. This isn't particularly hard to grasp.
- direwolf20 8mo agoClass consciousness isn't real and won't hurt you
- sharkjacobs 8mo agoYes, I too hate copyright law
- account42 8mo agoI think besides the points already brought up by other responses, it's important to distinguish attribution from copyright. AI training ignores both while people who are against copyright might not want to get rid of attribution requirements.
- akst 8mo agoI take it because copyright was used to hurt independent and smaller harmless creators, they’re dislike of AI is entirely consistent with that given smaller creatives are being harmed in a sense with their work mimicked and work deprived of them. Personally I think creatives have an edge as I personally don’t think AI is great at exercising discretion in creativity or design. Which you can see in coding agents their discretion in design is often arbitrary and poor. So I think at least for now that’s still where humans tend to out perform AI
- realusername 8mo agoPersonally I feel that the excessive duration of copyright just weakens authors arguments against AI. If even WWII-era documents are still under copyright, building a model respecting that would be impossible.
- JoshTriplett 8mo ago> If even WWII-era documents are still under copyright, building a model respecting that would be impossible. "We can't do this legally, so we should be allowed to ignore the law." If you can't build a model while respecting licenses, don't build a model. I don't want copyright to exist, at any duration, and I certainly think it should be much shorter than it is. However, as long as it exists, AI should not get any exception to it; such an exception inherently privileges massive entities over small entities or individuals.
- realusername 8mo agoIf you can't do something which looks reasonable within the laws, it means that the laws have to change. I don't see how building such a model of historical documents would impact authors (which most of them are dead anyways).
- JoshTriplett 8mo ago> If you can't do something which looks reasonable within the laws, it means that the laws have to change. Then change the law. For everyone, consistently, not just massive AI companies. Until then, deal with it. > I don't see how building such a model of historical documents would impact the authors It impacts the authors of new documents, who do not get to copy those historical documents, while an AI competing with them gets to. If you want those historical documents to be freely available, make copyright stop applying to them. For everyone, not just massive AI companies.
- realusername 8mo agoI'm personally in favor of a heavily reduced copyright duration similar to patents and so if AI makes people realize how stupid the current laws look, I take it.
- vibedev 8mo agoIMHO AI generated content should be treated the same way with how human generated content and I don't see the problem. However as with technology the problem is a bit different, e.g.: When subletting your apartment requires manual effort, this is not a problem. Automated, it became an industry and that's a huge headache. I think this is the key point where the derived work has unlimited possibility that they want to curb it early on. In a way it's a fair effort to keep human's competitiveness but may prove to be futile.
- avaer 8mo ago> IMHO AI generated content should be treated the same way with how human generated content and I don't see the problem. The problem is that AIs don't have rights. So you literally can't treat it the same. If I "make" something in a way I'm not allowed to (e.g. copying), the law will go after me. If AI makes something I'm not allowed to, I can just say "whoopsie doodle", blame the AI, and there are no repercussions for anyone.
- wtetzner 8mo ago> If you paint a picture of Sonic the Hedgehog in your living room, you are technically creating an unauthorized derivative work Is this even true? It might violate a trademark, but I don't think it would violate copyright law unless it was a copy of an existing picture.
- k__ 8mo agoYeah, in some countries private stuff isn't illegal at all.
- masklinn 8mo agoI don’t believe there’s any country where derivative work is intrinsically illegal. The Berne convention considers them protected same as originals.
- repelsteeltje 8mo agoLLMs are often framed as lossy compression, and surely converting some copyrighted Sonic the Hedgehog image from PNG to JPEG is considered copyright infringement, no?!
- AlienRobot 8mo agoRelevant: What Colour are your bits? https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23
- AlienRobot 8mo agoIt's not true. You don't need "authorization" to create a derivative work. You do need a license to distribute copyrighted works, including derivatives. And this only matters when you are distributing it to a sizable audience. For example, if you rent a movie, you can watch it with your family. Nobody is going to sue you for distributing the movie with 5 people in your room. That's pure nonsense. Same with music, books, etc. If you try to play the movie in an establishment with dozens of people, then it can become a problem, because you're essentially a theater now. I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what the law is on selling fan art on a convention or even privately commissioned fan artwork. But things aren't as draconian as people assume it is.
- klustregrif 8mo agoCopyright infringement use to be the absolute worst crime imaginable if you asked the tech industry, that is until they started doing it themselves at scale and now they are claiming it’s the law that’s broken, it’s crazy.
- amarcheschi 8mo agoI think you can replace copyright with whatever the law <insert big company here> wants to break Last but not least, generating csam and deep fakes porn on social medias and having to see it called free speech
- Spivak 8mo agoAll of that last one really says is that broadly speaking the average person has no idea what free speech actually is and the kinds of things that it covers. I put it in the same bucket as like the young kids uploading to YouTube with the comment no copyright infringement intended thinking it's like plagiarism.
- thinkbud 8mo agoCan you elaborate on your view about "no copyright infringement intended" being related please?
- xgkickt 8mo agoIn space, no-one can ... serve you warrants.
- Spivak 8mo agoHollywood sure, publishers sure, but tech? Where? The pro piracy pro game cracking open source p2p distribution people?
- account42 8mo agoThe people adding DRM to operating systems, display connector standards and even the web.
- falloutx 8mo agoBasically a rage bait. If the law was bad, does it make it okay to violate it? In fact Anthropic is literally paying $1.5B on the copyright settlement, that indicates its completely a settled issue that AI companies have been violating this law. Some have been caught and fined, others are been lucky or that influence over the government. > Copyright Law Was Built for Human Scale No where in the law it has this kinda scoped limits. It has a time limit and scale doesnt not matter. Scale matter in a way that its gets harder to enforces buts that not the fault of copyright law. If you steal at a big scale, its still stealing.
- repelsteeltje 8mo agoI think build for, here means was intended to work at or with human scale in mind. Not be limited to. Laws usually don't describe the bigger societal context in which they were conceived.
- at1as 8mo ago> Basically a rage bait. If the law was bad, does it make it okay to violate it? In fact Anthropic is literally paying $1.5B on the copyright settlement, that indicates its completely a settled issue that AI companies have been violating this law. Some have been caught and fined, others are been lucky or that influence over the government. Yes, but they were found not liable for copying the books they purchased. They were found liable for the books they torrented. The former is something publishers still want to address
- saulpw 8mo ago> If the law was bad, does it make it okay to violate it? Yes.
- repelsteeltje 8mo ago(I know these days it feels silly to bring this up, but...) That is not how the separation of power is supposed to work. If a law is bad, politics (preferably a democratic process representing the people) replaces the law with a better one. Until the new law comes into effect, everyone is supposed to abide by the old law, even if it's bad.
- infermore 8mo agolaws that were already broken can still be broken. AI exposed how broken copyright law was. AI companies also broke (and continue to break) that law
- at1as 8mo agoI think the problem is that “transformation” has never been clearly defined in copyright law, and that ambiguity is exactly what AI companies lean on in their defense. At a human scale, those boundaries get clarified through litigation on a case by case basis once an infringement becomes large or obvious enough. But there has always been a gray area around when a derivative work crosses the line into infringement. And AI didn’t create that ambiguity, it just pushed it to a more extreme scale
- ppqqrr 8mo agocopyright is not “broken,” it was always a two-faced scam designed to protect “owners” at the expense of creators. don’t expect this blatant hypocrisy to kill copyright, either - death of copyright is a slippery slope leading straight to communist utopia, and the death of the global acqui-parasite class
- excalibur 8mo agoCopyright law has always been excessively restrictive, and is long overdue for reform. The informal practices that people have been following (i.e. free creation and distribution but no monetization and no confusion with official releases) are pretty close to what a reasonable law would state.
- at1as 8mo agoAgreed on all of these points. I think that this will happen (...eventually)
- Altern4tiveAcc 8mo agoAlways have been broken. Hopefully, future legislation will cater less to publishers and copyright trolls. I'm not optimistic though. While certain kinds of publishers are indeed becoming less powerful, sports-related media conglomerates are successfully lobbying for more surveillance. The general population will likely get the worst of both worlds, with copyright trolls getting to enforce unjust laws against regular people, while big tech gets to pay their way out.
- lp4v4n 8mo agoIn the past, many developers were against copyright law because they saw it as a way for big corps to stifle competition and curb creativity in order to increase their profits. A lot of people right now invoke the violation of the same copyright law because the tide has changed and now companies, by ignoring copyright law, are hurting artists/smaller companies and/or not contributing back or unlawfully closing the code in the case of GPL. I don't see any kind of hypocritical stance here honestly. All this time the criticism of the enforcement of copyright law or now the lack of it just reflects the fact that some people are genuinely concerned that bad actors(big corps) are using the law to damage society in order to pursue their own interests.
- observationist 8mo agoWell, no, not really - there's no "they" in general. Copyright law is constructed by design for large institutions, lobbying, case law, and attendant legislation allow it to be abused by data hoarders. It was never built to protect individual creators or authors or artists, despite the PR campaigns and marketing for it. There are just companies big enough to ignore those institutions for which copyright law was created, like Google, etc, and the fair use exceptions Google carved out empowered AI companies to make similar moves. To an extent. What's hurting artists and smaller companies and various licensing schemes intended to push back is the fundamental structure of the laws. All copyrights need to be nuked and replaced. If we want to support individuals and maximize protections of individuals, and we want to disincentivize data hoarders that do nothing but recycle old content and IP in perpetual rent-seeking schemes, we should implement a 5 year copyright system. The first 5 years, you get total copyright, any commercial use has to be licensed explicitly, fair use remains largely as it is now. From year 6-10, fair use gets extended - you have to credit the creator, pay a 15% royalty direct to the creator, but otherwise you can use it for anything. Year 10-20, you must credit the creator, but otherwise the media is in the public domain. We should be pushing for and incentivizing creative use of data, empowering as many people as possible to use it and riff on it and make the culture vibrant and active and free from centralizing, manipulative actors. 99% of commercial profits come from the first 5 years after any piece of media gets published - book, music, film, artwork, etc. Copyright should protect that, but after that 5 years, things open up so the price you pay in order to participate in the marketplace which the US fosters is that your content thereafter becomes available for use by anyone, and they have to pay a fair markup for the use. You don't get to deny anyone the use of the media. You'll get credited, paid, and then after 10 years, it's public domain + mandatory credits, kinda like an MIT license style. After 20 years, it's fully public domain. Throw in things like "if you're not paid the royalty, you can sue for up to half of the total revenues generated by the offending work" or something appropriately scaled to prohibit casual abuses, but not totally explode someone's life over honest mistakes, and scale between the two extremes accordingly. Things like Sony and Disney and Hollywood studios are evil. They're effectively data cartels and hoarders, rarely producing anything, gatekeeping access and socializing, imposing obscene contracts on naive artists and creators, exploiting everything and everyone they touch without returning concurrent value to society. They don't deserve consideration or protection under a sane copyright system, especially in a world with gigabit internet everywhere. Screw the MAFIAA and all the people responsible for things ending up like they have. Until then, pirate everything. If you feel an ethical obligation to pay, then do the research and send some crypto or a $20 bill in the mail to the author or creator. All sorts of people have crypto wallets, these days.
- cyanydeez 8mo agoSorry...what? Money, money broke copyright. Remember the DMCA?
- scrubs 8mo agoThis is a particularly well written article. Plaudits to poster and original writer. It took me from no clue to a context or sieve I could organize the noise through. And darn it, it made it look easy. Like the John Daily line it's so good I'm mad. Sheesh, thanks a lot!
- at1as 8mo agoThanks, I'm glad it helped! I still think it's too long, but kudos to those that made it through
- fuzzfactor 8mo agoI can only imagine you already cut out a lot of material :) The way I see it, the original problem, which stands the test of time, is when copies are made and/or sold by somebody who is taking credit for the original work without giving credit to the actual creator. Anything less needs to be much more realistically reflected as very minor by comparison.
- N_Lens 8mo agoThe law (and the system/society) generally serves capital, instead of humans. That's why big corporations can both use copyright against smaller companies and individual creators, while also ignoring the same copyright laws when it suits them. I think this is unjust. As we see capital concentrate, we see more injustice as the power balance becomes more lopsided. This isn't good for anyone, not even the super wealthy because it undermines the stability of the whole system upon which their wealth depends.
- moi2388 8mo agoI’m happy with what’s happening. It never made sense to me that just because you drew a shitty picture of a mouse, somehow I’m no longer allowed to do that.
- hulitu 8mo ago> AI didn't break copyright law, it just exposed how broken it was "I twist the truth, i rule the world"... Tell this to kids raided by BSA for downloading pirated Microsoft and Adobe programms.
- teleforce 8mo ago"AI did break copyright law and by doing that exposed how broken it was." Fixed that for you.
- tsoukase 8mo agoNot copywrite but the whole democracy is broken. A big company with an army of lawyers and an OS project will claim exactly the same case. Who has more probability to win? It happens in every occasion, it's just that copywrite ones are more common. Only when two giants collide justice is rendered, eg Oracle vs Google over Java on Android.
- timoth3y 8mo agoThe article fundamentally misrepresents what AI is doing. It claims that people using AI to create works that violate copyright is equivalent to individual artists painting pictures or people writing fan fiction. But that is not at all what is happening. OpenAI and others are taking money from customers to generate copyrighted works. That's back-letter copyright infringement. The states that it is unreasonable to go after all the individual customers. That's true, but that's not how copyright law has ever been enforced. If you have a company selling copyrighted works without permission, you go after that company not after their customers.
- akst 8mo agoThe argument here is founded on motivated reasoning. Copyright was founded on similar principles to property rights, it encourages desirable economic by ensuring investment in RnD doesn’t have a free-rider disincentive. Whether it’s the right tool for the job and how enforcement carries out its a another matter. While these laws for property and IP aren’t without issues they do address actual problems. Personally I would be more open to the idea of open AI flouting copy rights if they weren’t planning on taking a portion of the claim of other peoples creations used via the product while failing to properly compensate the sources of its training data.