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I'm going to die of old age in this world where no-one can feel safe to make any small, unrelated, irrelevant, unpopular, ugly, worthless thing without the thre

I'm going to die of old age in this world where no-one can feel safe to make any small, unrelated, irrelevant, unpopular, ugly, worthless thing without the threat of being fed to the lawyers. No-one is seriously fighting the tyranny of copyright that covers basically the whole world. Even AI companies just retreated and hid after they got what they needed, like a shy teenager with empty wallet who still craves access culture, with no real attempts to change the system. Meta is only putting up a token fight because it has been directly sued, but we all know how this ends: they will eventually bend the knee. They accessed human culture for practical, not moral reasons. That's clear evidence that human culture was sucked dry and is no longer needed. OpenAI won't fight to open access to Anna's Archive because they no longer can get any benefit from using it in training. They can pay reddit and such for trickle of their fresh drivel. But the usefulness of any book ever written ran out some years ago and new ones are just riffs of the old ones so not really worthy of pursuing. Reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards is the present and the future and human output becomes something not worth (or legal) to even cite in any interesting volume.

marshray 4mo ago
According to the article, 'Qontour' AKA 'Prompt Digital' simply took the full text of a modern copyrighted and published book and made an official-looking website out of it with affiliate links to the real book. If you agree with copyright at all, then this is just blatant, intentional infringement for commercial gain. This story has practically nothing to do with AI. It could have been done 20 years ago, the crappy Midjouney illustrations and generative text interface merely add insult to injury.
- scotty79 4mo ago
  They basically liked the idea of the book and used the bulk of its text as lorem ipsum in a demo for their most likely one (three?) person "digital agency" that probably has 3 clients including mom. The title made me think that he released a paperback that competes with the original. > If you agree with copyright at all The only part of copyright I agree with is right to inalienable attribution (which the rest of copyright makes often hard for purely financial reasons). So whoever made this silly little thing gets a pass from me.
  - 12_throw_away 4mo ago
    > liked the idea of the book and used the bulk of its text as lorem ipsum in a demo I'm sorry, what? What exactly do you think is happening here?
    - scotty79 4mo ago
      You tell me: https://webflow.com/@qontour?msockid=0946eab0f6bf6a55192dfccaf7bf6b3f https://webflow.com/@qontour?msockid=0946eab0f6bf6a55192dfcc... If that doesn't look like a marooned freelancer down on their luck I don't what does. I mean, what's your read on this? Is this a person who secretly hates the book and the author and re-published its contents because he knows that people who have the content will never, ever purchase a book, no matter how much they like it? And he provides the links to buy the book only for plausible deniability and makes them affiliates for even more plausible deniability fully knowing nobody will ever now buy this book? Or is he a grifter trying to earn heaps of money with affiliate links to one obscure book providing it with better visibility through SEO tricks Google is powerless against even though they are in this business for nearly three decades? And he also published the full text of the book because of ... how does this helps him earn more money exactly? I ran out of ideas. And the most important question. Is this person a worthy target of the internet wrath?
      - marshray 4mo ago
        We're discussing a blog post about a blatantly plagiarized website, and the ethical environment and professional choices that led to its creation and continued existence. We get to do that. This isn't Reddit and we aren't "the internet". We aren't brigading and organizing harassment or whatever here. That is why the particulars of the web designer's personal life and state of mind are mostly uninteresting.
        scotty79 4mo ago
        > We get to do that. We get to discuss anything that doesn't get moderated. > This isn't Reddit and we aren't "the internet". It's a reddit for techno snobs and we are the internet as much as any other part of the internet. > That is why the particulars of the web designer's personal life and state of mind are mostly uninteresting. Depends on the perspective. IP law and it's fake aspirations for a morality that's voluntarily mob supported by a small but very vocal group of people is what's interesting for me. And who's being ground by it also kind of matters more than what imagined offences agains the letter of the "law" they commited to trigger that.

marshray 4mo ago

According to the article, 'Qontour' AKA 'Prompt Digital' simply took the full text of a modern copyrighted and published book and made an official-looking website out of it with affiliate links to the real book. If you agree with copyright at all, then this is just blatant, intentional infringement for commercial gain. This story has practically nothing to do with AI. It could have been done 20 years ago, the crappy Midjouney illustrations and generative text interface merely add insult to injury.

scotty79 4mo ago
They basically liked the idea of the book and used the bulk of its text as lorem ipsum in a demo for their most likely one (three?) person "digital agency" that probably has 3 clients including mom. The title made me think that he released a paperback that competes with the original. > If you agree with copyright at all The only part of copyright I agree with is right to inalienable attribution (which the rest of copyright makes often hard for purely financial reasons). So whoever made this silly little thing gets a pass from me.
- 12_throw_away 4mo ago
  > liked the idea of the book and used the bulk of its text as lorem ipsum in a demo I'm sorry, what? What exactly do you think is happening here?
  - scotty79 4mo ago
    You tell me: https://webflow.com/@qontour?msockid=0946eab0f6bf6a55192dfccaf7bf6b3f https://webflow.com/@qontour?msockid=0946eab0f6bf6a55192dfcc... If that doesn't look like a marooned freelancer down on their luck I don't what does. I mean, what's your read on this? Is this a person who secretly hates the book and the author and re-published its contents because he knows that people who have the content will never, ever purchase a book, no matter how much they like it? And he provides the links to buy the book only for plausible deniability and makes them affiliates for even more plausible deniability fully knowing nobody will ever now buy this book? Or is he a grifter trying to earn heaps of money with affiliate links to one obscure book providing it with better visibility through SEO tricks Google is powerless against even though they are in this business for nearly three decades? And he also published the full text of the book because of ... how does this helps him earn more money exactly? I ran out of ideas. And the most important question. Is this person a worthy target of the internet wrath?
    - marshray 4mo ago
      We're discussing a blog post about a blatantly plagiarized website, and the ethical environment and professional choices that led to its creation and continued existence. We get to do that. This isn't Reddit and we aren't "the internet". We aren't brigading and organizing harassment or whatever here. That is why the particulars of the web designer's personal life and state of mind are mostly uninteresting.
      - scotty79 4mo ago
        > We get to do that. We get to discuss anything that doesn't get moderated. > This isn't Reddit and we aren't "the internet". It's a reddit for techno snobs and we are the internet as much as any other part of the internet. > That is why the particulars of the web designer's personal life and state of mind are mostly uninteresting. Depends on the perspective. IP law and it's fake aspirations for a morality that's voluntarily mob supported by a small but very vocal group of people is what's interesting for me. And who's being ground by it also kind of matters more than what imagined offences agains the letter of the "law" they commited to trigger that.