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GenAI tools ‘could not exist’ if firms are made to pay copyright
(www.computerweekly.com)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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I think it's a conflation of the ideas of what copyright should be and actually is. I don't tend to see many people who believe copyright should be abolished in its entirety, and if people write a book or a song they should have some kind of control over that work. But there's a lot of contention over the fact that copyright as it exists now is a bit of a farce, constantly traded and sold and lasting an aeon after the person who created the original work dies.
It seems fairly morally constant to think that something old and part of the zeitgeist should not be under copyright, but that the system needs an overhaul when companies are using your live journal to make a robot call center.
Lemmy seems left-wing on economics in other threads. But on AI, it's private property all the way, without regard for the consequences on society. The view on intellectual property is that of Ayn Rand. Economically, it does not get further to the right than that.
My interpretation is that people go by gut feeling and never think of the consequences. The question is, why does their gut give them a far-right answer? One answer is that somehow our culture, at present, fosters such reactions; that it is the zeitgeist. If that's the truth (and this reflects a wider trend) then inequality will continue to increase as a result of voter's demands.
Often, yes.
The political right exploits fear, and the fear of AI hits close to home. Many people either have been impacted, could be impacted, or know someone who could be impacted, either by AI itself or by something that has been enabled by or that has been blamed on AI.
When you’re afraid and/or operating from a vulnerable position, it’s a lot easier to jump on the anti-AI bandwagon. This is especially true when the counter-arguments address their flawed reasoning rather than the actual problems. They need something to fix the problem, not a sound argument about why a particular attempt to do so is flawed. And when this problem is staring you in the face, the implications of what it would otherwise mean just aren’t that important to you.
People are losing income because of AI and our society does not have enough safety nets in place to make that less terrifying. If you swap “AI” for “off-shore outsourcing” it’s the same thing.
The people arguing in favor of AI don’t have good answers for them about what needs to happen to “fix the problem.” The people arguing against AI don’t need to have sound arguments to appeal to these folks since their arguments sound like they could “fix the problem.” “If they win this lawsuit against OpenAI, ChatGPT and all the other LLMs will be shut down and companies will have to hire real people again. Anthropic even said so, see!”
UBI would solve a lot of the problems, but it doesn’t have the political support of our elected officials in either party and the amount of effort to completely upend the makeup of Congress is so high that it’s obviously not a solution in the short term.
Unions are a better short-term option, but that’s still not enough.
One feasible solution would be legislation restricting or taxing the use of AI by corporations, particularly when that use results in the displacement of human laborers. If those taxes were then used to support those same displaced laborers, then that would both encourage corporations to hire real people and lessen the sting of getting laid off.
I think another big part of this is that there’s a certain amount of feeling helpless to do anything about the situation. If you can root for the folks with the lawsuit, then that’s at least something. And it’s empowering to see that people like you - other writers, artists, etc. - are the ones spearheading this, as opposed to legislators.
But yes, the more that people’s fear is exploited and the more that they’re misdirected when it comes to having an actual solution, the worse things will get.
The fear angle makes a lot of sense, but I wonder how many people are really so immediately threatened that it would cloud their judgment.
Well, when you consider that more than 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck - I’d say a lot of them.
Yeah I think that this is showing a lot of people only really care about espousing anti-privatization ideas as long as it suits their personal interests and as long as they feel they have more to gain than to lose. People are selfish, and a lot of progressive, or really any kind of passionate rhetoric is often conveniently self-serving and emotionally driven, rather than truly principled.
You're not wrong but how many people here are actually pursuing their own personal interest. Most people here are probably wage-earners. Yet so many people support giving more money to property owners without any kind of requirement or incentive for work. Just a rent for property owners. It feels like this should be met with knee-jerk rejection.
I'm not sure what you're referring to as a far-right position?
The first is very pro-corporation in one way, but can lead to an argument for all intellectual works to be public domain.
The second is pro-mega-rights-owners, but also allows someone to write a story, publish it themselves, and make money without having it stolen from them.
Fair use has always been a thing in the US.
The US constitutions allows congress to limit the freedom of the press with these words: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.
This has no room for fuck you, I got mine. Framing the abolition of fair use as enforcing copyright is an absolute lie.
The view of copyright as some sort of absolute property right that can be exercised against the public is a far right position. (I'd argue that's true for all property rights but that's a different subject.) What makes it far right is that it implies unfettered, heritable power for a small elite. Saying that everyone has an equal right to property, as such, is so inane that it is worthy only of ridicule. The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.
The NYT is suing for money. It owns the copyright to all those articles published in the last century; all already paid. Every cent licensing fee is pure profit for the owners; beautiful shareholder value. Benefit to society? Zero. But you have to enforce copyright. It's property! You wouldn't want some corporation to steal the cardboard boxes of the homeless.