Its so funny seeing the cope from tech enthusiasts. They’ll claim copywrite is the devil and AI is good, actually, because it will erase legal ownership of art… because Microsoft and OpenAI and Elon Musk are totally gonna give up everything they make with AI for public use
Copyrighting is one of the few forms of IP I support. It’s highly specific and genuinely protects creators.
Patents, on the other hand, need to be destroyed.
And speaking as a tech enthusiast (and if you are on the fediverse right now I’d argue that also applies to you) GenAI has few valid use cases, and almost no valid use-cases under capitalism. I’d argue Meta’s plan to detect NSFL content qualifies, but that’s just old fashioned ML, not GenAI… so my point stands.
I don’t see how you can separate them. They both protect ideas, copyright protects creative ones and patents protect engineering ones. And with copyright there have been cases where I would say they weren’t highly specific or genuinely protecting creators. Look at Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ vs Flame’s ‘Joyful Noise’ or Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ vs Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give it Up’ or Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’ vs bloody ‘Kookaburra’ for crying out loud. If any of those cases have any merit then you might as well be able to own entire genres, chords or scales.
Copyright is an absolute cancer on society. Even if you ignore all the transformative works that get lumped in, like fanfiction or memes, you have genuine fair use like comment and critique getting taken down or demonetised because DMCA safe harbour laws mean websites have to be very capricious to protect themselves.
The solution to the AI problem isn’t to all of a sudden become pro-copyright again and I can’t believe I have to say this out loud.
You made some great points. For me, I think of copyright and protecting specific works, like entire books, articles, etc - not derivatives. But as you pointed out, that is not how it is applied. It is frequently abused to crush and stifle things that are clearly NOT copies.
I suppose I should say I am not opposed to the concept of copyright in very narrow conceptual terms, rather than current real-world applications.
No, it isn’t. The original intent of copyrights and patents both have just be subverted over time until they became their current form.
The idea of having someone have a temporary monopoly on a thing for a limited period of time completely makes sense (as long as you’re under capitalism). Inventions and creative works take investment to produce, and those making that investment should see a payback on it.
However, over time, corporations have lobbied to make a temporary monopoly into a near permanent one. The public domain (until very recently) just didn’t grow at all because of this influence. That’s what’s wrong here.
As per usual, the real bone to pick is with capitalism and regulatory capture. I think it’s reasonable to say that, for instance, the Beatles operating under capitalism ought to have been paid for the works that they created. However, at some point, enough is enough.
Microsoft, OpenAi, Musk and Google are the only ones that can afford the data. The data is essentially owned by aggregator websites (reddit, instagram, getty, etc), three publishing houses and five record companies.
If draconian laws are passed, the average artists will get nothing, the open source scene gets destroyed and a handful of companies get to monopolize the whole thing.
The copyright industry is not our friend and neither are the 4 stock tickers trying to make the tech illegal for everyone but them.
Copyright is pretty terrible, and I don’t think we should expand the power of copyright in order to get a handle on AI.
The good news is, we have other tools.
Gen AI firms are deliberately using creators’ own content to compete in the same space; that’s anti-competitive, hit em with antitrust
Nobody should be forced to accept an AI training provision in their contract; hit em with unions
If you identify a private detail of a person through large-scale statistics, that’s an invasion of privacy
Deepfaking someone is a violation of likeness rights and privacy; for sexual content, it should be a sexual offense as well
AI slop is polluting our communication channels while the devs say they bear no responsibility for it; we should treat info pollution as seriously as we (should) treat environmental pollution
Content provenance is also a good idea, though I don’t like the centralized nature of C2PA.
We have plenty of options for regulating here. They want you to think copyright is the only path, because they win either way there.
Its so funny seeing the cope from tech enthusiasts. They’ll claim copywrite is the devil and AI is good, actually, because it will erase legal ownership of art… because Microsoft and OpenAI and Elon Musk are totally gonna give up everything they make with AI for public use
Copyrighting is one of the few forms of IP I support. It’s highly specific and genuinely protects creators.
Patents, on the other hand, need to be destroyed.
And speaking as a tech enthusiast (and if you are on the fediverse right now I’d argue that also applies to you) GenAI has few valid use cases, and almost no valid use-cases under capitalism. I’d argue Meta’s plan to detect NSFL content qualifies, but that’s just old fashioned ML, not GenAI… so my point stands.
I don’t see how you can separate them. They both protect ideas, copyright protects creative ones and patents protect engineering ones. And with copyright there have been cases where I would say they weren’t highly specific or genuinely protecting creators. Look at Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ vs Flame’s ‘Joyful Noise’ or Robin Thicke’s ‘Blurred Lines’ vs Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give it Up’ or Men At Work’s ‘Down Under’ vs bloody ‘Kookaburra’ for crying out loud. If any of those cases have any merit then you might as well be able to own entire genres, chords or scales.
Copyright is an absolute cancer on society. Even if you ignore all the transformative works that get lumped in, like fanfiction or memes, you have genuine fair use like comment and critique getting taken down or demonetised because DMCA safe harbour laws mean websites have to be very capricious to protect themselves.
The solution to the AI problem isn’t to all of a sudden become pro-copyright again and I can’t believe I have to say this out loud.
You made some great points. For me, I think of copyright and protecting specific works, like entire books, articles, etc - not derivatives. But as you pointed out, that is not how it is applied. It is frequently abused to crush and stifle things that are clearly NOT copies.
I suppose I should say I am not opposed to the concept of copyright in very narrow conceptual terms, rather than current real-world applications.
No, it isn’t. The original intent of copyrights and patents both have just be subverted over time until they became their current form.
The idea of having someone have a temporary monopoly on a thing for a limited period of time completely makes sense (as long as you’re under capitalism). Inventions and creative works take investment to produce, and those making that investment should see a payback on it.
However, over time, corporations have lobbied to make a temporary monopoly into a near permanent one. The public domain (until very recently) just didn’t grow at all because of this influence. That’s what’s wrong here.
As per usual, the real bone to pick is with capitalism and regulatory capture. I think it’s reasonable to say that, for instance, the Beatles operating under capitalism ought to have been paid for the works that they created. However, at some point, enough is enough.
Microsoft, OpenAi, Musk and Google are the only ones that can afford the data. The data is essentially owned by aggregator websites (reddit, instagram, getty, etc), three publishing houses and five record companies.
If draconian laws are passed, the average artists will get nothing, the open source scene gets destroyed and a handful of companies get to monopolize the whole thing.
The copyright industry is not our friend and neither are the 4 stock tickers trying to make the tech illegal for everyone but them.
Copyright is pretty terrible, and I don’t think we should expand the power of copyright in order to get a handle on AI.
The good news is, we have other tools.
Content provenance is also a good idea, though I don’t like the centralized nature of C2PA.
We have plenty of options for regulating here. They want you to think copyright is the only path, because they win either way there.