4 ms·

We're having to rediscover in real time the extremely hard way, why enabling mass theft is so incredibly damaging to society. This is literally why we need a fu

by 20k 24d ago

We're having to rediscover in real time the extremely hard way, why enabling mass theft is so incredibly damaging to society. This is literally why we need a functional copyright system If theft becomes more profitable than genuine creation, then nobody will create anything. Then there's nothing to steal, at which point all progress collapses

CamperBob2 24d ago
This is literally why we need a functional copyright system To block progress. Got it.
- 20k 24d ago
  This is the literal opposite of progress: stealing from people genuinely creating, and stealing the money they should earn
  - CamperBob2 24d ago
    Funny, the stuff that was stolen is still there. A strange kind of theft. Copyright maximalism is a bad look on a site called "Hacker News." Perhaps other sites beckon.
    - majormajor 24d ago
      > Copyright maximalism is a bad look on a site called "Hacker News." Perhaps other sites beckon. Frankly it's more of an insult to the "hacker" name to be apologising for big companies profiting off of frontrunning existing work for PR purposes, if the claims about piggybacking on human-directed efforts/prompting are true. Being pro-copyright in order to protect the work of an individual from being reconstituted into the corporate machine is VERY hackery. Novel use for an existing tool, to fight the dominant system. (Of course, we're on a so-called "hacker" site hosted by a company run by squarely-establishment individuals acting in an extremely un-hackery-field (investing), so the irony here has been at least one layer deep since the start.)
      - CamperBob2 24d ago
        "Corporate machine," yadda, yadda, whatever, go sell it on Reddit. The model running on the box in my basement is almost as good as the one we're talking about here, and may in fact be just as good by this time next year... and it couldn't have existed under your proposed regime. Yes, OpenAI is likely to be found to have acted like a slimeball in this instance, or at least the employee in question may have. But you can't fix that without making laws that will make everything else worse... and only here in the US.
      - tancop 23d ago
        In my mind being a hacker is something very anarchist/left libertarian coded. Hackers don't try and get laws passed to achieve their goals, they do it themselves no matter if it's legal or not. Activists fight for right to repair, hackers jailbreak their device and publish the keys. We need both to fight big tech effectively. Copyright is not a hacker thing because it restricts peoples freedom to share and hack on anything they see. Now abusing a bad system to do something good, as you said, would be hackery. But that's not the same thing as supporting copyright as it is right now or wanting to expand it. It needs to be in the spirit of "we turn their own tools against them". The ultimate goal is still eliminating IP laws as far as they limit individuals free speech. It would be different if it was an asymmetric system. Protect creators from companies trying to make money off their work, but not the companies from users taking their profits. That would mean switching to a form of copyright that only applies to commercial use and abolishing work for hire / any form of rights assignment as opposed to a license. That's one idea I can get behind.
paxys 24d ago
What theft? LLM output has never been copyrightable.
- _alternator_ 24d ago
  I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. GP was referring to the use of copyrighted material to train LLMs.
  - orangecat 24d ago
    Which is not "theft" according to current legal precedent, and also common sense.
    - ironman1478 24d ago
      It is theft under common sense.
      - conz 24d ago
        Only in the sense that you reading a book from the library also constitutes theft of knowledge. Does it?
        20k 24d ago
        If I stole someone's private research notes and republished them loosely in my own words, they'd correctly be pissed This was unpublished research that was stolen, and constitutes plagiarism and academic fraud by even the strictest definition
        logicchains 24d ago
        >This was unpublished research that was stolen, and constitutes plagiarism and academic fraud by even the strictest definition It was not stolen, it was willingly given.
ralph84 24d ago
Nobody owns math and it is ridiculous to suggest someone should.
zer00eyz 24d ago
> why enabling mass theft is so incredibly damaging to society. This is literally why we need a functional copyright system What is interesting is that LLM's do not directly violate copyright. The settlements we have seen are for how the works were acquired (that was a copyright violation) not the use of the works. The vectors of a book, or a paper, are not the paper. They are, for all intents, facts about the work itself, and more generally writing. You can not copyright a fact. It also means that the weights, the things that (mostly) matter can not be copyrighted either.

by 20k 24d ago

CamperBob2 24d ago

This is literally why we need a functional copyright system To block progress. Got it.

20k 24d ago
This is the literal opposite of progress: stealing from people genuinely creating, and stealing the money they should earn
- CamperBob2 24d ago
  Funny, the stuff that was stolen is still there. A strange kind of theft. Copyright maximalism is a bad look on a site called "Hacker News." Perhaps other sites beckon.
  - majormajor 24d ago
    > Copyright maximalism is a bad look on a site called "Hacker News." Perhaps other sites beckon. Frankly it's more of an insult to the "hacker" name to be apologising for big companies profiting off of frontrunning existing work for PR purposes, if the claims about piggybacking on human-directed efforts/prompting are true. Being pro-copyright in order to protect the work of an individual from being reconstituted into the corporate machine is VERY hackery. Novel use for an existing tool, to fight the dominant system. (Of course, we're on a so-called "hacker" site hosted by a company run by squarely-establishment individuals acting in an extremely un-hackery-field (investing), so the irony here has been at least one layer deep since the start.)
    - CamperBob2 24d ago
      "Corporate machine," yadda, yadda, whatever, go sell it on Reddit. The model running on the box in my basement is almost as good as the one we're talking about here, and may in fact be just as good by this time next year... and it couldn't have existed under your proposed regime. Yes, OpenAI is likely to be found to have acted like a slimeball in this instance, or at least the employee in question may have. But you can't fix that without making laws that will make everything else worse... and only here in the US.
    - tancop 23d ago
      In my mind being a hacker is something very anarchist/left libertarian coded. Hackers don't try and get laws passed to achieve their goals, they do it themselves no matter if it's legal or not. Activists fight for right to repair, hackers jailbreak their device and publish the keys. We need both to fight big tech effectively. Copyright is not a hacker thing because it restricts peoples freedom to share and hack on anything they see. Now abusing a bad system to do something good, as you said, would be hackery. But that's not the same thing as supporting copyright as it is right now or wanting to expand it. It needs to be in the spirit of "we turn their own tools against them". The ultimate goal is still eliminating IP laws as far as they limit individuals free speech. It would be different if it was an asymmetric system. Protect creators from companies trying to make money off their work, but not the companies from users taking their profits. That would mean switching to a form of copyright that only applies to commercial use and abolishing work for hire / any form of rights assignment as opposed to a license. That's one idea I can get behind.

paxys 24d ago

What theft? LLM output has never been copyrightable.

_alternator_ 24d ago
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. GP was referring to the use of copyrighted material to train LLMs.
- orangecat 24d ago
  Which is not "theft" according to current legal precedent, and also common sense.
  - ironman1478 24d ago
    It is theft under common sense.
    - conz 24d ago
      Only in the sense that you reading a book from the library also constitutes theft of knowledge. Does it?
      - 20k 24d ago
        If I stole someone's private research notes and republished them loosely in my own words, they'd correctly be pissed This was unpublished research that was stolen, and constitutes plagiarism and academic fraud by even the strictest definition
        logicchains 24d ago
        >This was unpublished research that was stolen, and constitutes plagiarism and academic fraud by even the strictest definition It was not stolen, it was willingly given.

ralph84 24d ago

Nobody owns math and it is ridiculous to suggest someone should.

zer00eyz 24d ago

> why enabling mass theft is so incredibly damaging to society. This is literally why we need a functional copyright system What is interesting is that LLM's do not directly violate copyright. The settlements we have seen are for how the works were acquired (that was a copyright violation) not the use of the works. The vectors of a book, or a paper, are not the paper. They are, for all intents, facts about the work itself, and more generally writing. You can not copyright a fact. It also means that the weights, the things that (mostly) matter can not be copyrighted either.