Even before AI most people wanted to make art and basically nobody was earning a real living from it. The dream of getting enough success to escape from the rigours of capitalism largely ignores the cold reality that the vast majority of exhibiting artists have to work a day job to survive. IP laws allow corporations to dictate the going rate for artistic labour (peanuts) and the expected levels of creative control (basically none) and retention of IP rights (actually none) retained by artists while those same companies retain ironclad copyright for over a century.
“The danger to basic rights posed by intellectual property regulation is not an obviously visible danger. Rather it is a danger based on the quiet accretion of restrictions – an accretion hardly visible because it is hidden behind technical rule-making, mystifying legal doctrine, and complex bureaucracies, all papered over by seemingly plausible appeals to the rights of inventors and authors and the need to encourage innovation”
I’m curious - I see a lot of people espouse the evils of IP law, but I’ve never seen one person offer an alternative mechanism to protect creators from predatory corporate practice..
It always comes down to blaming artists because capitalism exists.
Well, capitalism exists.
Copyright laws may not be perfect, but they are the only thing standing between my work and corporate exploitation.
I would love to hear an alternative framework that protects creators in a universe where capitalism exists.
Creators are not protected by the current system. The whole thing is set up so that the corporations don't need to violate your copyright to exploit you. Like I said, most people who make art make no money from it, those who do generally (and there are some exceptions of course to keep the carrot on the end of the stick) retain no rights because the model is to sell those rights to a corporation to profit from infinitely.
It's the enclosure of the commons. Instead of a sea of ideas to build upon small creators are left with crumbs while corporations own pretty much any IP with profit making potential.
Please tell me - if I write a book, what is the current mechanism that prevents a well-resourced corporation stealing that work and selling it as their own?
I’ll wait.
I’m also still waiting for the alternative mechanism that would protect creators ina universe where capitalism exists.
As it stands only around 1% of books that are submitted to publishers are ever published and of those that are only around 7% of the money they generate goes to the author.
As much as I'd prefer it to the one we live in my goal isn't a world that still has capitalism but no IP laws. IP laws are a fundamental pillar of capitalism and a fundamental mechanism used to keep control and removing them is part of breaking the control of capital holders.
In a transition period maybe it would be harder for that 1% of writers currently winning the lottery in terms of book sales but honestly I'm far more concerned with building a world on more collectivist principles and I feel like people value authenticity enough that proving you wrote something should help.
Creatives will never be free under capitalism, that is the answer. Stop Jeff Bezos and take over Wal-Mart, start producing for people's needs outside of the profit motive, and you can free creatives as well.
You're asking for an alternative to make the current, broken system more palatable, it doesn't exist.
The premise is a rebuttal to the idea that IP law currently to does not protect creators.
That is factually untrue.
Copyright law is the mechanism that currently, right now, prevents a corporation (or anyone else) from taking my work and selling it without permission.
Therefore, it can be stated as fact that copyright laws do protect creators and are in fact a necessary mechanism to do so.
It's a bad question. The current system already disadvantages people who create art vastly more than it protects them but the question presumes the opposite is true.
It’s certainly a flawed system, but it’s what we have. Without it, there would be no protection. How else do you expect artists to make enough money, when there’s people out there with no imagination of their own who will take the work… you know, like AI users.
What is sold to you as protection is in reality exploitation. Like I said, basically nobody who writes is getting fairly compensated for it and going to bat for the system that ensures that is frankly stupid.
Instead of asking 'Why would we oppose IP laws when 1% of writers get to keep 7% of the proceeds from their books" you might as well ask "Why would we oppose the laws of the feudal lord when he lets 1% of us keep 7% of our crops?"
I don’t know why I’m going to do this, but here goes.
Just because you create something new doesn’t mean that you’re going to be successful. So, sure 1% make it a career, but that’s because they’re the best. Are we supposed to pay for things we don’t like?
And you’re still ignoring the question - without copyright, how would a non-corporate owner of an IP, like Stephen King, protect that IP from anyone else?
Copyright laws may not be perfect, but they are the only thing standing between my work and corporate exploitation.
They don't protect you. At all. Most creators working for large companies end up losing all rights to their own work. Taylor Swift was forbidden from playing her own songs by her record label a few years ago.
IP law exists to protect corporate monopolies, not you. That may have been different when distribution was a real limitation, but with the internet that barrier is gone. The primary purpose of copyright in modern times is to let companies own the work of artists and maintain intellectual monopolies.
Here's the reality of copyright. Protecting your copyright requires lawyers. Small creators can't afford lawyers. Big corporations can. The primary beneficiaries of the system are obvious.
I would love to hear an alternative framework that protects creators in a universe where capitalism exists.
Without capitalism, you wouldn't own anything anyway, so protections would be meaningless. Whoever held power would control your works. And that person wouldn't be you.
The open source community already shows alternatives. Most major open source projects exist purely on donations and community support without any copyright protections at all. You also have things like Patreon, Kickstarter, Backerkit, etc. where people make a living while releasing their media products essentially free.
Here's the thing. Without copyright, or minimal copyright, sure, a large corporation can use your work. But they can basically do that now though publishing deals (that heavily favor them) and by making similar products that you can't compete with that don't violate the laws (and, once again, they have the lawyers and you don't).
In that scenario, however, you know what large corporations can't do? Own your work. If you don't like what they're doing, screw it, you can make your own thing. You want to make a fan movie about Star Wars? Go for it, Disney can't stop you. Inspired by a famous musician? You aren't getting sued to oblivion for your beat being too similar.
Copyright is a cage on creative freedom, not a defense of it. And the vast majority of it exclusively benefits large corporations, not small artists.
The alternative is freedom and getting out of the large corporate ecosystem. If you don't have to go to them for permission, you can go directly to your customers, and there isn't a damn thing they can do about it.
What you write is radical but interesting - one must remember that the vast majority of writing (posted online), even fiction, is done with no expectation of profit or protection.
This is also true of art in general. The average person drawing in their notebook or making stuff in Photoshop isn't doing it for the purpose of making money.
Only a tiny percentage of those who create art are doing so for the intent of selling that art. And in modern times, more and more of those that make a living on art are doing so based on connecting with their audience, not threating legal action to those who try and compete with them.
Yeah if a company owns the copyrights to your work...
You're not arguing against copyright, you're arguing against predatory industry practices encouraged under _capitalism_.
Imagine thinking that the concept of private ownership is uniquely tied to capitalism. Then imagine being stupid enough to write paragraphs explaining your lack of understanding in longwinded detail on reddit.
So, if copyright doesn’t protect me at all, then what is currently stopping a large, well-resourced company from taking my book, selling it and keeping all the money?
Is it corporate good will? Altruism? Or maybe there’s a legal framework in action.
Not one single anti-IP proponent in the history of that ignorant argument has ever, ever prosed a viable alternative mechanism. Never.
You haven’t made an argument against IP. You have made an argument against capitalism.
What? Where did I make an argument against capitalism? I'm pro-capitalism. I outright dismissed other options because the concept of IP only makes sense in context of a system where ownership matters.
My entire argument was specifically against copyright laws and how they are used by corporations to create monopolies. This is potentially an argument against corporatism or crony capitalism, but not capitalism more generally.
Socialism or communism simply redirect it into an even more harmful direction. Having your ideas owned by the state is not an improvement over your ideas being owned by big corporations. At least in the latter case they can't outright imprison or kill you but have to go through a different process.
Suggest one - just one - alternative framework that protects my work against corporate theft in a universe where capitalism exists.
Corporate "theft" already assumes someone using your IP is a form of theft, which is just restating the copyright thesis. This is circular reasoning.
Basically, what you are asking is "show me how my copyright is protected without copyright!" Obviously this is impossible to answer, but it's also a meaningless question.
I already answered how you can make a living off of your work without copyright, and gave several examples of this being done even with copyright. And you ignored them.
Are you really arguing for who has the ability to capture the most “rent” (revenue)? In a system like the U.S. rent capture is a function of regulation and negotiating power (often driven by end-use demand).
As framed, the two ways to protect (make more) is to build demand (following) or have new regulation/legislation that dictates either contract terms or minimum floors.
Are you really arguing for who has the ability to capture the most “rent” (revenue)? In a system like the U.S. rent capture is a function of regulation and negotiating power (often driven by end-use demand).
This is true of all systems. Name a system where those with less power have the ability to capture more resources from those with more power. It doesn't exist.
As framed, the two ways to protect (make more) is to build demand (following) or have new regulation/legislation that dictates either contract terms or minimum floors.
Those powerful entities will just manipulate those terms for their benefit. They always do. The best solution is to prevent regulatory capture in the first place.
This is the same logic as anti-monopoly laws. We didn't "fix" monopolies by setting the contract terms of monopoly circumstances. We made a law saying "you can't legally do this."
I put "fix" in quotes because obviously companies have found ways around this, especially in industries like power generation, ISPs, phone carriers, and many other fields. But antitrust laws at least limit the damage.
Copyright law, however, protects the creation of monopolies. The only reason a small company can't make a movie set in the Star Wars universe is because Disney owns a monopoly on Star Wars. A monopoly they rent seek on by aggressively protecting their IP (often at considerable cost to themselves) while producing mostly unpopular works and corporate slop.
I would like to see that sort of behavior removed or at least heavily restricted. Things like Star Wars are party of US culture and belong to the people, and should be accessible to anyone who wishes to add to our shared creative space.
The fact that we can't is a violation of the social contract of culture as well as explicitly anti-creation of new works...which was ostensibly the purpose of copyright in the first place.
The idea of copyright was "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 is straight from the US Constitution.
How does Disney having exclusive rights to Star Wars promote the "progress of...useful arts," how is it for "limited times," and was Disney even involved in the creation of Star Wars? People often just assume that copyright today is working as intended, but the reality is that it has very little connection to what it was originally designed for.
Instead, it exists to steal people's ideas, put them in a corporate box that corporation can use for its own benefit, and stifle the creativity (and thus competition with those big corporations) of anyone trying to contribute to our culture for beloved and iconic stories and worlds.
How would you make it such that small entities can take IP from the big guys under the guise of adding to the shared cultural creative space AND big guys can’t take from small entities.
I am having a hard time imagining copyright law that differs by entity size.
Actually, I'm not. But even if I were, this isn't a counter-argument.
You said that nobody had an argument for an alternative, and when one was presented, rather than actually make a counter-argument, you assume what I believe by slapping a label on what I wrote and use that as justification for dismissal.
This obviously isn't going to be productive, but I feel confident I've made my case for anyone else who is at least open to listening to other ideas, even if they don't agree.
Nothing. It's generally just them being nice. They could just steal your book, sell it, ect. and there's nothing you could do. There are countless cases of corps doing this to people and just facing no consequences.
When a corpo like Kroc just stole McDonalds from it's creators, the creators were 100% legally in the right in owning the brand. They lost anyway.
I'm pro-ai but one of the arguments for IP that I can't disagree with is that in the far past it was used to encourage guilds not to take their valuable secret skills to the grave.
That just doesn’t comport with my lived experience as an artist. As a commercial artist, I work harder than I ever did when working a blue collar job. Deadlines are savage. You try working 60-70 hour weeks and explain how this is a way to “escape from the rigors of capitalism.” It’s just a bad take that only applies to ever you perceive as a professional creative, not what actual creatives do for their employers.
It doesn’t matter if you make marketing material in the form of art assets, write code, or pack boxes, you’re still generating revenue for a company first. You’re still deeply entrenched in capitalism, and in the US, you are still beholden to your employer for health insurance, so you’ll with like there’s a fire under your ass at all times. Business types have it far, far better than artists.
It’s sad that you think the people at the bottom of the corporate totem pole, who are often driven like slaves, work terrible hours, and oftentimes suffer physical conditions like carpal tunnel and detached retinas from overwork are “escaping the rigours of capitalism.” It’s a fucking joke.
I’m not an anti-AI, AI has a place in commercial art pipelines and won’t replace all artists any more than any other job- If you think otherwise, you are confusing the work product with the job.
I’m specifically anti-“these awful takes on what artists are and why it’s okay to replace them” from people who aren’t professional creatives and don’t know what we even do. For your reference, the amateurs on twitter begging for commissions aren’t professional artists and really never have been. They’re amateurs and that’s why they can’t afford to pay their bills. These amateurs 0% represent how an actual professional operates.
You seem to have misread what I was saying. My point was not that art is an escape from the rigours of capitalism. Quite the opposite it was that that isn't true and the idea that it is is used to defend the status quo that we both seem to be dissatisfied with.
Before capitalism, the goal of any artist was to attract a rich, aristocratic patron to keep them eating. Under communism, the goal of the artist was to suck up to the local party and their politics.
Which is why all the people talking about how we need to dispose of capitalism and implement communism to protect the workers in the age of AI irritates me so.
My brother in Christ, Stalin would've loved genAI. He tolerated the artists he forced to make propaganda for him, always keeping them on a short leash. AI wouldn't try to hide subversive messages in its work.
As I said before, if we're replacing capitalism, it'll be with something new. Not a system that was a contemporary of capitalism but managed to collapse under the weight of its flaws decades before the same happened to capitalism.
I’d like to think there was a better system, but can’t imagine what it would look like. How do you get people to do what needs doing, rather than what they feel like doing?
Artists already make petit-bourgeois arguments. When you ask them why AI is bad, it always ends up in a rabid defense of private property, specifically it's most idiotic form, intellectual property.
It just explicilty states an underlying assumption lol
Edit: as clarification, the fact the means of living of all these "artists" requires rejecting genAI, and the arguments that are used for it (that defend the sanctity of property) is the point.
In a real way, I think patent trolls are the "purest" form of copyright. If ideas are property, as the term "intellectual property" implies, what is the difference between buying a patent just to sit on the value and buying land for the same reason?
Most people intuitively understand there is something deeply wrong with patent trolling. But when those same tools are used to discourage other forms of competition and creativity, it's seen as a good thing, when the "value" being sat on is a story or world rather than an invention.
In the era of patreon and kcistarter, you can make money off your art without having to own it.
In most liberal capitalist countries, the welfare state is exansive enough that you wont literally die if you dont make money from your job. Phones, food, internet, and tablets are given out for free to everyone.
Surely if we look at all the ways the concept of property is abused in law, IP in the arts is one of the least egregiously malfuckerised forms in most of its implementation?
If you actually think that a school being sued by disney for having paintings of mickey or whatever is sensible and intelligent, not sure what to tell you.
It was too big of a leap in that bringing it up makes no sense in the context of the conversation or my comment.
I'm not arguing that IP law is perfect or immune from abuse. It very clearly isn't. But doing away with the concept of IP in the first place is stupid.
Yo, I said IP law isn't a necessarily bad thing. You responded with an example of it being used badly. Did you think that was a counterpoint to mine? And then you talk about intelligence... beautiful.
Right, It's STILL not relevant to what I wrote and you're STILL replying. Technically it's a breach of IP but realistically disney is leaning the fuck on their copyrights to protect them. Do I think laws are open to abuse by big companies? Yes. Does that mean laws are entirely bad? No.
LLMs and image generation can be tools to assist creative work or any work, whats an issue is Intellectual Property laws as they are written now, the technology is changing faster then the old systems can adapt.
So you want that styles, concepts and patterns could copyrighted? Do you REALLY want every company behave like Nintendo patenting flying on mount or summoning but for EVERYTHING?
It's pretty obvious what the end goal of companies like Disney is. They get copyright to ban training on works without "consent" of the artists. Artists cheer for five minutes.
Then they say "hey, we own the copyright to everything Disney, including the work you did for it, so we consent to this being trained on by DisneyGPT." All their works are still trained on but only Disney employees can use it while under contract with Disney. Gen AI becomes captured by media companies, permanently making them relevant even when they've lost most relevance otherwise.
And artists are in the same situation, but now those tools are locked out to independent artists, ensuring anyone who wants to make art in modern times must do so with the express permission of one or more entertainment megacorps. It's so obvious that this is the goal, but some are convinced that Disney et al are actually "on their side" this time and will ban the tech. It's both hilarious and a little depressing.
Edit: this isn't even speculation...this is exactly what Adobe is trying to do with Firefly, although in Adobe's case, it's to lock people into their creative ecosystem rather than a specific type of media.
not sure i follow you logic? is the assumption that all content is inherently owned by someone? Art belongs to everyone, whats controlled is the access to it. To me personally the people that are able to control access are in an advantageous position, we all have rights to our privacy, but when we put things out, they sort of surrender any “inherent” ownership. wether someone can tell others what they can or cannot do with it is a matter of capital. in your example Nintendo has enough capital to peruse people who misuse their perceived “property” but it doesn’t inherently stop people from making their own “art” with their “property” but they (Nintendo) are going to step in if for example i tried to make money off of their property in my own work that i’m trying to make money off of. Now, i’m no lawyer, i am a creative, i work in many roles and capacities, i tend to get compensated for the output i make or create, but i don’t have the capital, be it monetary, time, or social… to go litigating everyone who takes my works output into their own hands. Every situation is different, i was only speaking from what i have seen and experienced, this in no way was an endorsement one way or the other. simply that the rules that govern the “tools” are not keeping up. frankly they were already doing a pretty poor job before all the “AI hype” began to begin with imo.
Your things are protected by copyright. Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works, but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
i can agree with that sentiment. personally for me i limit what i put out into the “digital” world. it’s not a panacea, but it is the control i can exercise over my creative output. broadly speaking people got too comfortable putting “all” their work online, i don’t say that as an accusation against you or your situation, but we all make choices and concessions in life. Not all those choices and situations are equal, i certainly empathize with people who put all their work out there to only have it scraped. that betrayal is real. Its a bit reductive, but image generation kind of automates a process that already existed. i have had friends who’s work was copied/stolen and printed on mech sold halfway around the world, they were not in a position to litigate, for one thing because of financials, but also jurisdiction. so i say all that to convey that these tools haven’t created any new novel grift, they have just automated and accelerated the rate at which advantageous and opportunistic bad actors may operate at. if i made any assumptions or mischaracterizations against your situation feel free to let me know, not that i wanted to assume, but just elaborate on a pattern i see in all the noisy discourse and binary arguments.
If I publish a book, then its rightful use is for people who have paid for that book (and anyone they lend it to or on-sell to). The library has to pay more than individuals, because they will show the book to lots of people.
That’s how an author makes a (fragment of a) living, and has the time and resources to write more books that people like to read.
Along comes OpenAI and buys one copy of my book (at an individual’s rates), and then uses it to train their industrial content machine.
Yay for the virtuous corporation who gets to commercially utilise the work for peanuts.
Shit out of luck for the writer if they care tha the corporation has used their work to train the industrial content machine without permission.
All hail the mighty warriors, fighting to prevent updates to copyright law that protects authors reform technological advancement.
"they will show the book to lots of people." AI is not selling your book.
Training AI is not commercial utilisation. Again they are not selling your book.
Companies selling their computational power, how it connects to your book?
I was specifically calling out publishers here. You think that is an amateur mindset, or are you just being butthurt that I pointed out what was going on there.
Everyone should be fairly compensated for their work and it shouldn't be stolen. As it stands everyone works for a one time payment for their works, there is no garuanteed source of revenue in this system, same with any contract work.
Copyright isn't some simple form of payment but a long legal process that isn't garuanteed to produce "revenue", and if doesn't usually work out for small time artists because they cannot afford a legal team on standby, unlike corporate entities.
"Everyone should be fairly compensated for their work and it shouldn't be stolen. As it stands everyone works for a one time payment for their works, there is no garuanteed source of revenue in this system, same with any contract work. " True, but posting images on social media is not contract work. Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works, but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
Who's arguing that posting images on social media should necessarily be compensated?
If I make something unique and it is used to make money, I expect to get some of it, because part of the value of what you're doing is in my output. If it wasn't adding value, you wouldn't be using it.
Me making money from it is not what stops someone using it, what stops someone using it is enforcement of copyright laws which recognise my work in conceptualising, developing and creating something as a component of ownership.
If you have an idea (a device to improve engine mileage, a new type of hammer, a piece of art, a particularly useful paperclip, whatever) are you ok with me copying your product and slapping my own logo on it? In fact, why even bother with that, I'll just sell it under your brand and keep the $. Hell, I'll cheap out on components which will lower quality but means I can undercut you. Then not only am I taking business from you but I'm also shitting over your product/brand reputation.
Also, that's not how it works legally. In practice this happens but if you are found to be doing it you're gonna get fucked over by copyright laws as they apply.
Old as fuck. Even before AI, there was always the old "if you really loved the work you do, you'd make what I want you to make for free. You just care about money".
I mean, if you really loved the work you do you'd make what YOU want without consideration for what others want and then perhaps in the end enough people would want it for it's merits... or more likely not.
Look at Minecraft for example. A guy making something he wanted because he wanted to that ended up being loved. He didn't even have to try to sell it, at first he gave it away for free.
Exactly. If I'm going to work on other people's projects, they better pay me for it. Otherwise I have enough stuff inside my head to keep me going for years. Ideas are a dime a dozen, nobody's going to work for free for someone just because their ideas are just that awesome.
Just adding a note -- there is a massively vast difference between the right to study, and the right to impersonate, and further still the right to distribute. These three things should not be conflated, as they are so different they are actually different career paths, different platforms, and different economic engines even.
We an already "recreate" anything in AI's training data because the training data is the public data on the internet, available to anyone on the internet to view and download.
If someone wants to keep back something they made and not share it, fine. If they want to post it on the internet, copying it outright or learning from it (either human or machine learning) is fair game.
I'm aware it requires labor, it should still be freely available to copy. I'd much rather see what people produce because they want to rather than what they think might make them rich. Amateur writers and creators working for donations/patronage produce far more interesting work than "professionals." And AI will further empower them to do so.
It is not about “getting rich”. It’s about “making a living”. You know, so you have the time and resources to keep creating the things that people like.
Expecting creative professionals to labour without pay so you can have nice things for free is the absolute height of entitlement.
It’s also extremely creator hostile. What’s up with that?
I'm not telling anyone what they have to do. If they don't want to do it for what they can make from people paying what they want, they don't have to make it. But allowing private ownership of ideas and all the shit that comes with this just so some creative people can make more money through their creativity is NOT a good deal for society. Patents, copyright, all these things hold back innovation in both creative and productive fields.
I am a big fan of the amateur writers of the early 20th century who used each others characters and ideas freely. That is the ideal for creativity, not locking down stuff because you put it on paper first.
If you are concerned primarily with making money and stability, having a day job is probably a good call. Ideally we will move to UBI as more and more work is automated.
Exactly. Capitalism is the problem. However, capital loves automation.
We live in a society that’s designed in a way where becoming “le petit bourgeois” is the only way for advancing in the social hierarchy. “Ethical” AI only needs to exist under capitalism where the labor can be exploited. If an artist did not need to make money off their labor to survive, this desire for compensation would be a legitimate impurity in the creative integrity of the artist. Unfortunately people need to get paid to live, artists are people too.
“Let the system exploit you or else you’re just as bad as the system. im the consumer, I’m always right”. Sounds like you’re not against capitalism, you just want to be able to afford capitalism.
If one defines "ethical" as unethical one creates a singular tautology (If I'm using the word correctly, not sure). Instead, the challenge is to define your own definition of ethical such that it does not have the deleterious effects you describe.
I, for example, and anti corporate ai, and pro open source ai , so according to the above definition I am not measurable.
So the power and the challenge of defining ethical, is to take time and care in the imagination of the consequences of incentive structures to create a situation that preserves a set of moral objectives. Then you can work backward using reasoning to arrive at some approximate ethics, and then you can arrive at some kind of differentiating ethical statement for sure, and each person will have their own.
If do this work, and share our thoughts, we can start to tease out some actual principles. However as a citizen such work takes labour, time, and thought, and I think we are moving much slower socially than the technology evolves, which is my main concern these days.
I know most people probably won’t. But I highly reccomend reading byung chul Han’s book shanzhai. About the perception of originality in western culture vs Eastern culture. He also goes into this topic more in his other works but for the sake of the whole debate I think it’s a really enlightening read.
I'm not against copyright as whole but against bloated version of it in present form. Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works (copyright protect you from that), but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
Would an artist not want passive income from their copyrighted content being used as training? Seems like a great way to solve the financial problem so that artists can work on passion projects.
That's the deal that everybody made knowingly and willingly even though they may ignorantly be unaware. No one is owed a platform to display or market themselves for free. There was always an ulterior motive behind offering free compute and a forum for one's works. We've known for decades about that. Crying foul in this day and age is just willful ignorance.
Yall are not artists and don’t know artists if the only thing you think they make art for is capital gain. This is projection. Not to mention a massive generalization. But ALSO under capitalism your life is tied to money. People like eating so you either do something that takes away from your ability to create or make your ability to create the thing that puts bread on the table. That doesn’t mean “ohhhh theyre just doing it for money ohhh” they need money to live and if art will get it than its a valid way to get it. Especially if it’s monetizing a skillset most people don’t have.
Theres no such thing as not doing something for the money under capitalism. Youre forced to. It’s the rotten system at play. You have to be doing SOMETHING for be money and why should it not be the skillset you’ve spent ntillion hours building.
I mean, yeah. Since you need money to buy food, shelter, and medication in a capitalist society, people that have artistic skills want to protect their trade and livelihood. But *all* AI is capitalism; it is being funded and backed by corporate interests that only care about it's potential for profit.
But even if we lived in a post-capitalist society and had all our needs met, it would still be unethical for AI to learn without permission of the artist. Even under systems that believe that property is theft, there are still personal possessions.
For example, you couldn't just walk into my apartment and take my records without my permission. My records are not private property (unless I donated them to something like a community center). One's artistic works would count as personal possessions; it's up to them to decide if they want AI to learn from it.
Unless of course you're in favor of a totalitarian regime that owns everything... In which case, we're back to the same oppressive system, even if we don't call it capitalism anymore.
If I publish a book, then its rightful use is for people who have paid for that book (and anyone they lend it to or on-sell to). The library has to pay more than individuals, because they will show the book to lots of people.
That’s how an author makes a (fragment of a) living, and has the time and resources to write more books that people like to read.
Along comes OpenAI and buys one copy of my book (at an individual’s rates), and then uses it to train their industrial content machine.
Yay for the virtuous corporation who gets to commercially utilise the work for peanuts.
Shit out of luck for the writer if they care tha the corporation has used their work to train the industrial content machine without permission.
All hail the mighty warriors, fighting to prevent updates to copyright law that protects authors from technological advancement.
Sorry, once you publish a book you cant control how many people read it. I would read it and then pass it on to some-one else who can pass it on to OpenAI. That's just how it works.
If that is the foundation of your argument its obviously flawed.
Sorry - I forgot that the invention of the industrial content machine has absolutely no impact on anything and is really not even worth mentioning given how super normal and precedented it is.
Yes. Exactly!The printing press is the perfect example here because it was an unprecedented technology that changed the world.
It was the inventing of the press that precipitated the creation of copyright in the first place.
Copyright did not exist before the printing press - it is the perfect example of legal frameworks evolving to protect creators against technological advancement.
The AI companies are not breaking into your fucking house. You post shit on reddit with has stuff in their TOS saying they can sell it to the AI companies for training, and that is exactly what they do. Apple does the same, Adobe does the same, every fucking clip art place in the world has done the same.
It's not being stolen, it's being given away by people who don't bother reading Term Of Service.
Look, if you are saying TOS are fucked and designed not to be read, I agree.
But even me, who is in AI regulation, can't change decades of existing legal structure.
I think the artists anger is honestly pointed at the wrong targets. If they actually wanted change they would be after the places which did that.
But, they target the companies who brought the art legally, to be used in training models, rather than going after the orgs which screwed them over with their TOS and fighting that there wasn't a meeting of minds for the contract to be valid.
But here in the AI regulation space? What do you want us to do? Try to shut them down over legally getting the training data?
Unless you can get the courts to say what Reddit does is theft, sure as hell you won't be able to get far with the AI companies.
"For example, you couldn't just walk into my apartment and take my records without my permission." Posting images on open internet is not taking something from your apartment. What ridiculous comparison.
Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works, but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
He's the thing though. I might open up my library of records if someone asks me. That's my issue with the way AI is being trained. It has absolutely nothing to do with compensation and everything to do with explicit consent. If just trained on public domain and had an opt in system? Cool, I'd have no issues at all.
But that's not the way it is. And I don't think it's all that radical to think maybe it shouldn't be that way.
Now go tell the subreddit that thinks AI is part of punk culture that, and they will likely ban you and rip you a new one over it.
I know this as that is exactly what I noted to them. Bending the knee to a corporation to support something like AI is not being punk. Being punk is standing up against corporate greed, always has been.
Capitalism will attempt to incorpórate any ideology and technology into itself, including AI, "fighting back" Is not shitting and whining that some new technology changes things too much, it's making sure that It changes things so much that the system no longer works, and to ensure that the benefits of that change aré for the general population, not those already at the top.
There is not a single chance, not one, that it will change things so that "the system doesn't work".
The likeliest scenario is a precarization of labour as "an AI is cheap, you have to be cheaper" leading back into feudalistic tendencies. The only reason some countries escaped the "work 14 hours a day just to eat" spiral was by violent uprisings, terror attacks, organization and sporadic action. Letting a massive reform just "ease in" is letting Capital win. The more work that can be automated, the more competition for the remaining positions will necesitate negotiating terms and salaries down.
I recently got to meet with people from a metro union in a third-world country. Automatization and AI incorporated into trains, maintenance and security systems led to a loss of almost 15% of the workforce because a compromise was struck to try and keep at least some people in those sectors.
The "AI is here and we need to accept it" mentality will negatively impact people's lives. There are roles AI can fulfill for the betterment of humanity, but the idea that a system with a strict hierarchy will be weakened or toppled by reforms pushed by the same hierarchy reeks of naivety.
Im not talking about reforms, the system itself Will not change itself for the benefit of everyone when the entire purpose of that system Is to benefit a few, It Will simply adapt to new circumstances, i am talking about making sure that the changes this technology makes are fast and hard enough so that people can wake up from their lethargy and actually get shit done for once, not just wait for someone else to change things for them, and that change requieres people be aware WHERE to direct their anger and not be mindlessly reactionary against the technology that can help us push us towards a different mindset.
It's not the progress of the technology itself, but it's progress in tandem with the societal consecuences, and the reactions of the population directed in an effective manner that will make the system no longer work, and change in our benefit, that's my point, the system Will change regardless, Its up to us to determine if It will be for our or for their benefit.
The technology is already among us and the reform is happening before our very eyes. The impact is already real and its too late to prevent it; as the whole of AI is confounded into a single unit (Generating a picture of a cat drinking wine, videogame NPC behaviour and cameras that detect delinquent behaviour all tumbled together in the same metaphorical bag) causing the layman use, the effective use, and the exploitative use to become fused.
Being "against AI" in one sense becomes extrapolated to "all senses" (by people with a variety of positions) which helps the dominant position of the ruling class.
The necessary intellectual, moral and ethical debate, education and safeguards are not there and it is too late (by design)
Of course this isn't AI's fault, its the usual suspects, who do want a hard and fast implementation (hence the "bubble") so that it slips by unattended and automatization succeeds in lowering the value of labour. As services become automated, manual labour again becomes saturated.
Sadly, the original punk rock was a corporate front and it still is today. The new system that gets made after the punks do their work never benefits them.
Even before AI most people wanted to make art and basically nobody was earning a real living from it. The dream of getting enough success to escape from the rigours of capitalism largely ignores the cold reality that the vast majority of exhibiting artists have to work a day job to survive. IP laws allow corporations to dictate the going rate for artistic labour (peanuts) and the expected levels of creative control (basically none) and retention of IP rights (actually none) retained by artists while those same companies retain ironclad copyright for over a century.
“The danger to basic rights posed by intellectual property regulation is not an obviously visible danger. Rather it is a danger based on the quiet accretion of restrictions – an accretion hardly visible because it is hidden behind technical rule-making, mystifying legal doctrine, and complex bureaucracies, all papered over by seemingly plausible appeals to the rights of inventors and authors and the need to encourage innovation”
I’m curious - I see a lot of people espouse the evils of IP law, but I’ve never seen one person offer an alternative mechanism to protect creators from predatory corporate practice..
It always comes down to blaming artists because capitalism exists.
Well, capitalism exists.
Copyright laws may not be perfect, but they are the only thing standing between my work and corporate exploitation.
I would love to hear an alternative framework that protects creators in a universe where capitalism exists.
Creators are not protected by the current system. The whole thing is set up so that the corporations don't need to violate your copyright to exploit you. Like I said, most people who make art make no money from it, those who do generally (and there are some exceptions of course to keep the carrot on the end of the stick) retain no rights because the model is to sell those rights to a corporation to profit from infinitely.
It's the enclosure of the commons. Instead of a sea of ideas to build upon small creators are left with crumbs while corporations own pretty much any IP with profit making potential.
Please tell me - if I write a book, what is the current mechanism that prevents a well-resourced corporation stealing that work and selling it as their own?
I’ll wait.
I’m also still waiting for the alternative mechanism that would protect creators ina universe where capitalism exists.
As it stands only around 1% of books that are submitted to publishers are ever published and of those that are only around 7% of the money they generate goes to the author.
As much as I'd prefer it to the one we live in my goal isn't a world that still has capitalism but no IP laws. IP laws are a fundamental pillar of capitalism and a fundamental mechanism used to keep control and removing them is part of breaking the control of capital holders.
In a transition period maybe it would be harder for that 1% of writers currently winning the lottery in terms of book sales but honestly I'm far more concerned with building a world on more collectivist principles and I feel like people value authenticity enough that proving you wrote something should help.
So the problem isn’t IP laws then, it’s capitalism. iP law is a natural consequence of capitalism.
As I thought.
You didn’t answer the question.
Creatives will never be free under capitalism, that is the answer. Stop Jeff Bezos and take over Wal-Mart, start producing for people's needs outside of the profit motive, and you can free creatives as well.
You're asking for an alternative to make the current, broken system more palatable, it doesn't exist.
That still doesn’t answer the question. You’re talking around it.
Yes, the question presents a false premise.
No it doesn’t.
The premise is a rebuttal to the idea that IP law currently to does not protect creators.
That is factually untrue.
Copyright law is the mechanism that currently, right now, prevents a corporation (or anyone else) from taking my work and selling it without permission.
Therefore, it can be stated as fact that copyright laws do protect creators and are in fact a necessary mechanism to do so.
That is the point you keep talking around.
What premise is that?
It's a bad question. The current system already disadvantages people who create art vastly more than it protects them but the question presumes the opposite is true.
You’re still not answering the question.
It’s certainly a flawed system, but it’s what we have. Without it, there would be no protection. How else do you expect artists to make enough money, when there’s people out there with no imagination of their own who will take the work… you know, like AI users.
What is sold to you as protection is in reality exploitation. Like I said, basically nobody who writes is getting fairly compensated for it and going to bat for the system that ensures that is frankly stupid.
Instead of asking 'Why would we oppose IP laws when 1% of writers get to keep 7% of the proceeds from their books" you might as well ask "Why would we oppose the laws of the feudal lord when he lets 1% of us keep 7% of our crops?"
I don’t know why I’m going to do this, but here goes.
Just because you create something new doesn’t mean that you’re going to be successful. So, sure 1% make it a career, but that’s because they’re the best. Are we supposed to pay for things we don’t like?
And you’re still ignoring the question - without copyright, how would a non-corporate owner of an IP, like Stephen King, protect that IP from anyone else?
They don't protect you. At all. Most creators working for large companies end up losing all rights to their own work. Taylor Swift was forbidden from playing her own songs by her record label a few years ago.
IP law exists to protect corporate monopolies, not you. That may have been different when distribution was a real limitation, but with the internet that barrier is gone. The primary purpose of copyright in modern times is to let companies own the work of artists and maintain intellectual monopolies.
Here's the reality of copyright. Protecting your copyright requires lawyers. Small creators can't afford lawyers. Big corporations can. The primary beneficiaries of the system are obvious.
Without capitalism, you wouldn't own anything anyway, so protections would be meaningless. Whoever held power would control your works. And that person wouldn't be you.
The open source community already shows alternatives. Most major open source projects exist purely on donations and community support without any copyright protections at all. You also have things like Patreon, Kickstarter, Backerkit, etc. where people make a living while releasing their media products essentially free.
Here's the thing. Without copyright, or minimal copyright, sure, a large corporation can use your work. But they can basically do that now though publishing deals (that heavily favor them) and by making similar products that you can't compete with that don't violate the laws (and, once again, they have the lawyers and you don't).
In that scenario, however, you know what large corporations can't do? Own your work. If you don't like what they're doing, screw it, you can make your own thing. You want to make a fan movie about Star Wars? Go for it, Disney can't stop you. Inspired by a famous musician? You aren't getting sued to oblivion for your beat being too similar.
Copyright is a cage on creative freedom, not a defense of it. And the vast majority of it exclusively benefits large corporations, not small artists.
The alternative is freedom and getting out of the large corporate ecosystem. If you don't have to go to them for permission, you can go directly to your customers, and there isn't a damn thing they can do about it.
What you write is radical but interesting - one must remember that the vast majority of writing (posted online), even fiction, is done with no expectation of profit or protection.
This is also true of art in general. The average person drawing in their notebook or making stuff in Photoshop isn't doing it for the purpose of making money.
Only a tiny percentage of those who create art are doing so for the intent of selling that art. And in modern times, more and more of those that make a living on art are doing so based on connecting with their audience, not threating legal action to those who try and compete with them.
Yeah if a company owns the copyrights to your work...
You're not arguing against copyright, you're arguing against predatory industry practices encouraged under _capitalism_.
Imagine thinking that the concept of private ownership is uniquely tied to capitalism. Then imagine being stupid enough to write paragraphs explaining your lack of understanding in longwinded detail on reddit.
No, I'm arguing against copyright. If you choose to interpret it as something else, that's on you.
Communism: everything is owned by the collective (and ends up managed by the state).
Socialism: skip the collective, everything is owned by the state.
I mean, these are definitional terms. "Seizing the means of production" isn't an idle term.
At least I made an argument rather than throwing out smug ad hominem attacks without saying anything of substance at all.
So, if copyright doesn’t protect me at all, then what is currently stopping a large, well-resourced company from taking my book, selling it and keeping all the money?
Is it corporate good will? Altruism? Or maybe there’s a legal framework in action.
Not one single anti-IP proponent in the history of that ignorant argument has ever, ever prosed a viable alternative mechanism. Never.
So you are just going to ignore my entire argument? I'm sure nobody makes a good argument when you don't listen to them.
Answer my question.
You haven’t made an argument against IP. You have made an argument against capitalism.
Suggest one - just one - alternative framework that protects my work against corporate theft in a universe where capitalism exists.
Don’t worry, I won’t hold my breath.
What? Where did I make an argument against capitalism? I'm pro-capitalism. I outright dismissed other options because the concept of IP only makes sense in context of a system where ownership matters.
My entire argument was specifically against copyright laws and how they are used by corporations to create monopolies. This is potentially an argument against corporatism or crony capitalism, but not capitalism more generally.
Socialism or communism simply redirect it into an even more harmful direction. Having your ideas owned by the state is not an improvement over your ideas being owned by big corporations. At least in the latter case they can't outright imprison or kill you but have to go through a different process.
Corporate "theft" already assumes someone using your IP is a form of theft, which is just restating the copyright thesis. This is circular reasoning.
Basically, what you are asking is "show me how my copyright is protected without copyright!" Obviously this is impossible to answer, but it's also a meaningless question.
I already answered how you can make a living off of your work without copyright, and gave several examples of this being done even with copyright. And you ignored them.
Are you really arguing for who has the ability to capture the most “rent” (revenue)? In a system like the U.S. rent capture is a function of regulation and negotiating power (often driven by end-use demand).
As framed, the two ways to protect (make more) is to build demand (following) or have new regulation/legislation that dictates either contract terms or minimum floors.
This is true of all systems. Name a system where those with less power have the ability to capture more resources from those with more power. It doesn't exist.
Those powerful entities will just manipulate those terms for their benefit. They always do. The best solution is to prevent regulatory capture in the first place.
This is the same logic as anti-monopoly laws. We didn't "fix" monopolies by setting the contract terms of monopoly circumstances. We made a law saying "you can't legally do this."
I put "fix" in quotes because obviously companies have found ways around this, especially in industries like power generation, ISPs, phone carriers, and many other fields. But antitrust laws at least limit the damage.
Copyright law, however, protects the creation of monopolies. The only reason a small company can't make a movie set in the Star Wars universe is because Disney owns a monopoly on Star Wars. A monopoly they rent seek on by aggressively protecting their IP (often at considerable cost to themselves) while producing mostly unpopular works and corporate slop.
I would like to see that sort of behavior removed or at least heavily restricted. Things like Star Wars are party of US culture and belong to the people, and should be accessible to anyone who wishes to add to our shared creative space.
The fact that we can't is a violation of the social contract of culture as well as explicitly anti-creation of new works...which was ostensibly the purpose of copyright in the first place.
The idea of copyright was "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 is straight from the US Constitution.
How does Disney having exclusive rights to Star Wars promote the "progress of...useful arts," how is it for "limited times," and was Disney even involved in the creation of Star Wars? People often just assume that copyright today is working as intended, but the reality is that it has very little connection to what it was originally designed for.
Instead, it exists to steal people's ideas, put them in a corporate box that corporation can use for its own benefit, and stifle the creativity (and thus competition with those big corporations) of anyone trying to contribute to our culture for beloved and iconic stories and worlds.
How would you make it such that small entities can take IP from the big guys under the guise of adding to the shared cultural creative space AND big guys can’t take from small entities.
I am having a hard time imagining copyright law that differs by entity size.
Oh dear, you’re a libertarian.
Not much else to say then, is there.
Actually, I'm not. But even if I were, this isn't a counter-argument.
You said that nobody had an argument for an alternative, and when one was presented, rather than actually make a counter-argument, you assume what I believe by slapping a label on what I wrote and use that as justification for dismissal.
This obviously isn't going to be productive, but I feel confident I've made my case for anyone else who is at least open to listening to other ideas, even if they don't agree.
Sorry - what was the proposal for the alternative again? Patronage?
I meant credible alternatives.
Nothing. It's generally just them being nice. They could just steal your book, sell it, ect. and there's nothing you could do. There are countless cases of corps doing this to people and just facing no consequences.
When a corpo like Kroc just stole McDonalds from it's creators, the creators were 100% legally in the right in owning the brand. They lost anyway.
Incorrect answer and no alternative framework.
As I thought.
I'm pro-ai but one of the arguments for IP that I can't disagree with is that in the far past it was used to encourage guilds not to take their valuable secret skills to the grave.
That just doesn’t comport with my lived experience as an artist. As a commercial artist, I work harder than I ever did when working a blue collar job. Deadlines are savage. You try working 60-70 hour weeks and explain how this is a way to “escape from the rigors of capitalism.” It’s just a bad take that only applies to ever you perceive as a professional creative, not what actual creatives do for their employers.
It doesn’t matter if you make marketing material in the form of art assets, write code, or pack boxes, you’re still generating revenue for a company first. You’re still deeply entrenched in capitalism, and in the US, you are still beholden to your employer for health insurance, so you’ll with like there’s a fire under your ass at all times. Business types have it far, far better than artists.
It’s sad that you think the people at the bottom of the corporate totem pole, who are often driven like slaves, work terrible hours, and oftentimes suffer physical conditions like carpal tunnel and detached retinas from overwork are “escaping the rigours of capitalism.” It’s a fucking joke.
I’m not an anti-AI, AI has a place in commercial art pipelines and won’t replace all artists any more than any other job- If you think otherwise, you are confusing the work product with the job.
I’m specifically anti-“these awful takes on what artists are and why it’s okay to replace them” from people who aren’t professional creatives and don’t know what we even do. For your reference, the amateurs on twitter begging for commissions aren’t professional artists and really never have been. They’re amateurs and that’s why they can’t afford to pay their bills. These amateurs 0% represent how an actual professional operates.
You seem to have misread what I was saying. My point was not that art is an escape from the rigours of capitalism. Quite the opposite it was that that isn't true and the idea that it is is used to defend the status quo that we both seem to be dissatisfied with.
Before capitalism, the goal of any artist was to attract a rich, aristocratic patron to keep them eating. Under communism, the goal of the artist was to suck up to the local party and their politics.
Which is why all the people talking about how we need to dispose of capitalism and implement communism to protect the workers in the age of AI irritates me so.
My brother in Christ, Stalin would've loved genAI. He tolerated the artists he forced to make propaganda for him, always keeping them on a short leash. AI wouldn't try to hide subversive messages in its work.
Plenty wrong with capitalism, but it’s easier to find fault, than to find a better alternative.
As I said before, if we're replacing capitalism, it'll be with something new. Not a system that was a contemporary of capitalism but managed to collapse under the weight of its flaws decades before the same happened to capitalism.
I’d like to think there was a better system, but can’t imagine what it would look like. How do you get people to do what needs doing, rather than what they feel like doing?
Artists already make petit-bourgeois arguments. When you ask them why AI is bad, it always ends up in a rabid defense of private property, specifically it's most idiotic form, intellectual property.
Yeah, because they need to make a living to survive. This isn't a hard concept.
This is not a counter-argument...
It just explicilty states an underlying assumption lol
Edit: as clarification, the fact the means of living of all these "artists" requires rejecting genAI, and the arguments that are used for it (that defend the sanctity of property) is the point.
In a real way, I think patent trolls are the "purest" form of copyright. If ideas are property, as the term "intellectual property" implies, what is the difference between buying a patent just to sit on the value and buying land for the same reason?
Most people intuitively understand there is something deeply wrong with patent trolling. But when those same tools are used to discourage other forms of competition and creativity, it's seen as a good thing, when the "value" being sat on is a story or world rather than an invention.
2 flaws with this:
In the era of patreon and kcistarter, you can make money off your art without having to own it.
In most liberal capitalist countries, the welfare state is exansive enough that you wont literally die if you dont make money from your job. Phones, food, internet, and tablets are given out for free to everyone.
How is IP a stupid form of ownership?
Surely if we look at all the ways the concept of property is abused in law, IP in the arts is one of the least egregiously malfuckerised forms in most of its implementation?
If you actually think that a school being sued by disney for having paintings of mickey or whatever is sensible and intelligent, not sure what to tell you.
What are you talking about?
Nobody mentioned disney until you did.
Did you think you were making a point or did you just want to move your fingers for fun?
... I am bringing up a specific example that highlights the absurdity of ip. Was it too big of a leap for you?
Idk then, copy paste it into chatgpt and ask it to explain it.
It was too big of a leap in that bringing it up makes no sense in the context of the conversation or my comment.
I'm not arguing that IP law is perfect or immune from abuse. It very clearly isn't. But doing away with the concept of IP in the first place is stupid.
Did you think you were making a point?
lol ok. You don't seem very intelligent so I'm just gonna stop replying.
Yo, I said IP law isn't a necessarily bad thing. You responded with an example of it being used badly. Did you think that was a counterpoint to mine? And then you talk about intelligence... beautiful.
Ok, I'll reply a last time: that wasn't an example of misuses of ip, it's used exactly as intended.
Right, It's STILL not relevant to what I wrote and you're STILL replying. Technically it's a breach of IP but realistically disney is leaning the fuck on their copyrights to protect them. Do I think laws are open to abuse by big companies? Yes. Does that mean laws are entirely bad? No.
Do you feel more intelligent or less now?
LLMs and image generation can be tools to assist creative work or any work, whats an issue is Intellectual Property laws as they are written now, the technology is changing faster then the old systems can adapt.
So you want that styles, concepts and patterns could copyrighted? Do you REALLY want every company behave like Nintendo patenting flying on mount or summoning but for EVERYTHING?
Yes this is what they want because antis see themselves as future IP owners getting paid for their furry OCs.
They don't understand that this will NEVER happen and they will ALWAYS be the ones paying the rich, not the other way around.
It's pretty obvious what the end goal of companies like Disney is. They get copyright to ban training on works without "consent" of the artists. Artists cheer for five minutes.
Then they say "hey, we own the copyright to everything Disney, including the work you did for it, so we consent to this being trained on by DisneyGPT." All their works are still trained on but only Disney employees can use it while under contract with Disney. Gen AI becomes captured by media companies, permanently making them relevant even when they've lost most relevance otherwise.
And artists are in the same situation, but now those tools are locked out to independent artists, ensuring anyone who wants to make art in modern times must do so with the express permission of one or more entertainment megacorps. It's so obvious that this is the goal, but some are convinced that Disney et al are actually "on their side" this time and will ban the tech. It's both hilarious and a little depressing.
Edit: this isn't even speculation...this is exactly what Adobe is trying to do with Firefly, although in Adobe's case, it's to lock people into their creative ecosystem rather than a specific type of media.
Failed online artists: "Finally we can copyright our artstyles so AI bros can't steal them hurrr"
Disney: "Hey there! Your artstyles are almost identical to the artstyles WE have patented, so we own all your work now lol"
Antis are morons who fell for the oldest trick in the capitalism book.
not sure i follow you logic? is the assumption that all content is inherently owned by someone? Art belongs to everyone, whats controlled is the access to it. To me personally the people that are able to control access are in an advantageous position, we all have rights to our privacy, but when we put things out, they sort of surrender any “inherent” ownership. wether someone can tell others what they can or cannot do with it is a matter of capital. in your example Nintendo has enough capital to peruse people who misuse their perceived “property” but it doesn’t inherently stop people from making their own “art” with their “property” but they (Nintendo) are going to step in if for example i tried to make money off of their property in my own work that i’m trying to make money off of. Now, i’m no lawyer, i am a creative, i work in many roles and capacities, i tend to get compensated for the output i make or create, but i don’t have the capital, be it monetary, time, or social… to go litigating everyone who takes my works output into their own hands. Every situation is different, i was only speaking from what i have seen and experienced, this in no way was an endorsement one way or the other. simply that the rules that govern the “tools” are not keeping up. frankly they were already doing a pretty poor job before all the “AI hype” began to begin with imo.
I want the things I create to be protected from exploitation by corporations.
Your things are protected by copyright. Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works, but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
I don’t want compensation. I want to be able to opt out of my work training the industrial content machine.
Then you make that deal with the publisher, and you don't post your shit on the net.
If you don't make that deal with your publisher, they will sell your shit to the AI companies for training.
You don't sell on platforms which get rights to scrape it for AI training, so presumably no kindle sales for you.
lol. You think ai is only trained on few shit from internet. How quaint.
I guess you forgot when I talked about anthropics deal with the publishers.
How quaint.
i can agree with that sentiment. personally for me i limit what i put out into the “digital” world. it’s not a panacea, but it is the control i can exercise over my creative output. broadly speaking people got too comfortable putting “all” their work online, i don’t say that as an accusation against you or your situation, but we all make choices and concessions in life. Not all those choices and situations are equal, i certainly empathize with people who put all their work out there to only have it scraped. that betrayal is real. Its a bit reductive, but image generation kind of automates a process that already existed. i have had friends who’s work was copied/stolen and printed on mech sold halfway around the world, they were not in a position to litigate, for one thing because of financials, but also jurisdiction. so i say all that to convey that these tools haven’t created any new novel grift, they have just automated and accelerated the rate at which advantageous and opportunistic bad actors may operate at. if i made any assumptions or mischaracterizations against your situation feel free to let me know, not that i wanted to assume, but just elaborate on a pattern i see in all the noisy discourse and binary arguments.
Then don't put them in places with have a TOS which lets them sell them to the AI companies.
The cost of protection is actually reading the agreements you sign up to.
Aka don't put shit in adobe cloud, on reddit, don't sell to any clip art site, etc.
The moment you agree they can fucking take it and give it to the AI companies, you lose your rights.
The artists are not having their shit stolen by the AI companies, they are buying them of the places which do take them from you with legal bullshit.
Have you read Reddit's TOS? It will be an enlightening experience.
Yes, down vote me rather than actually learning. I'm sure that will fucking work out for you.
If I publish a book, then its rightful use is for people who have paid for that book (and anyone they lend it to or on-sell to). The library has to pay more than individuals, because they will show the book to lots of people.
That’s how an author makes a (fragment of a) living, and has the time and resources to write more books that people like to read.
Along comes OpenAI and buys one copy of my book (at an individual’s rates), and then uses it to train their industrial content machine.
Yay for the virtuous corporation who gets to commercially utilise the work for peanuts.
Shit out of luck for the writer if they care tha the corporation has used their work to train the industrial content machine without permission.
All hail the mighty warriors, fighting to prevent updates to copyright law that protects authors reform technological advancement.
The corporations thank you for your service.
"they will show the book to lots of people." AI is not selling your book. Training AI is not commercial utilisation. Again they are not selling your book. Companies selling their computational power, how it connects to your book?
A company using my book to train their profit-driven industrial content machine is utilisation.
They did not pay them license for that.
I see you didn't remotely even engage with what I said.
I did - but it’s a metaphor, so you’ll have to read between some lines.
I presented you with a problem that does not involve putting shit up for free on the internet.
If you can't make a direct argument against it, it's because there isn't one.
I've described the situation with the artists. You can either accept it or you can't.
Anthropic did a deal with the publishers. They were given the rights from the authors. Again, you have to be careful what you sign or agree to.
You didn’t say anything of value.
I don’t give a shit about corporations training on free shit I uploaded to the internet. I care about corporations stealing protected work.
Not my fault you can’t think beyond an amateur mindset.
I was specifically calling out publishers here. You think that is an amateur mindset, or are you just being butthurt that I pointed out what was going on there.
In your hypothetical what does the individual actually lose?
The agency to prevent a corporate entity from exploiting their work.
You never had that.
https://i.redd.it/mcue78lyap8g1.gif
Everyone should be fairly compensated for their work and it shouldn't be stolen. As it stands everyone works for a one time payment for their works, there is no garuanteed source of revenue in this system, same with any contract work.
Copyright isn't some simple form of payment but a long legal process that isn't garuanteed to produce "revenue", and if doesn't usually work out for small time artists because they cannot afford a legal team on standby, unlike corporate entities.
Shit these people are giving away their art in exchange for the ability to shitpost about it. They don't even need payment.
Reddit's TOS are interesting to read.
"Everyone should be fairly compensated for their work and it shouldn't be stolen. As it stands everyone works for a one time payment for their works, there is no garuanteed source of revenue in this system, same with any contract work. " True, but posting images on social media is not contract work. Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works, but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
Who's arguing that posting images on social media should necessarily be compensated?
If I make something unique and it is used to make money, I expect to get some of it, because part of the value of what you're doing is in my output. If it wasn't adding value, you wouldn't be using it.
"Who's arguing that posting images on social media should necessarily be compensated?" This is whole "my art is stolen" argument.
You making money from that thing should not prevent others from using idea of that thing.
Me making money from it is not what stops someone using it, what stops someone using it is enforcement of copyright laws which recognise my work in conceptualising, developing and creating something as a component of ownership.
If you have an idea (a device to improve engine mileage, a new type of hammer, a piece of art, a particularly useful paperclip, whatever) are you ok with me copying your product and slapping my own logo on it? In fact, why even bother with that, I'll just sell it under your brand and keep the $. Hell, I'll cheap out on components which will lower quality but means I can undercut you. Then not only am I taking business from you but I'm also shitting over your product/brand reputation.
Is that the world you want to live in?
Your second paragraph described how brands in our world work. You can sell burgers but you cant sell big macs because its brand name.
My guy, what area of law protects brand names?
Also, that's not how it works legally. In practice this happens but if you are found to be doing it you're gonna get fucked over by copyright laws as they apply.
A trademark can protect your company name, as well as any logos, design elements, or marketing phrases unique to your brand.
Copyright protect your image, but not your style. Copyright protect your characters, but not generalized concepts.
The same laws that protect your brand name and logo are the laws that protect artists' work, it's all IP.
If I use your brand to make money should you get any of it?
If I use your brand its infringement, doing what you do under another brand is not.
Hippity hoppity abolish intellectual property.
Stop dickriding Disney, antis.
The dream of artists under capitalism is to be able to scrape a living from their work, so they actually have time to do the work.
This petit-boojy narrative is just an outdated anti-artist attack vector.
Old as fuck. Even before AI, there was always the old "if you really loved the work you do, you'd make what I want you to make for free. You just care about money".
I mean, if you really loved the work you do you'd make what YOU want without consideration for what others want and then perhaps in the end enough people would want it for it's merits... or more likely not.
Look at Minecraft for example. A guy making something he wanted because he wanted to that ended up being loved. He didn't even have to try to sell it, at first he gave it away for free.
Exactly. If I'm going to work on other people's projects, they better pay me for it. Otherwise I have enough stuff inside my head to keep me going for years. Ideas are a dime a dozen, nobody's going to work for free for someone just because their ideas are just that awesome.
You got a problem with that?
Yes. Information should not be owned.
Great, so AI should be able to recreate anything that it can ingest with no restrictions on training data?
Trained with no restrictions yes, recreate no.
Just adding a note -- there is a massively vast difference between the right to study, and the right to impersonate, and further still the right to distribute. These three things should not be conflated, as they are so different they are actually different career paths, different platforms, and different economic engines even.
We an already "recreate" anything in AI's training data because the training data is the public data on the internet, available to anyone on the internet to view and download.
You think free internet stuff is the only thing they train on? Oh my sweet, summer child.
Yes.
And you are not entitled to the product of another person’s labour - which is not merely “information”, but the execution of an idea.
"you are not entitled to the product of another person’s labour" True, but with AI no labour comes from another person.
If someone wants to keep back something they made and not share it, fine. If they want to post it on the internet, copying it outright or learning from it (either human or machine learning) is fair game.
What if I’m not talking about free shit that amateurs post on the internet? But the theft of published works?
Information should be free and copying is not theft.
A book or a work is not “information” - it is an execution and requires labour.
It is information.
I'm aware it requires labor, it should still be freely available to copy. I'd much rather see what people produce because they want to rather than what they think might make them rich. Amateur writers and creators working for donations/patronage produce far more interesting work than "professionals." And AI will further empower them to do so.
Jesus, you have no idea.
It is not about “getting rich”. It’s about “making a living”. You know, so you have the time and resources to keep creating the things that people like.
Expecting creative professionals to labour without pay so you can have nice things for free is the absolute height of entitlement.
It’s also extremely creator hostile. What’s up with that?
I'm not telling anyone what they have to do. If they don't want to do it for what they can make from people paying what they want, they don't have to make it. But allowing private ownership of ideas and all the shit that comes with this just so some creative people can make more money through their creativity is NOT a good deal for society. Patents, copyright, all these things hold back innovation in both creative and productive fields.
I am a big fan of the amateur writers of the early 20th century who used each others characters and ideas freely. That is the ideal for creativity, not locking down stuff because you put it on paper first.
If you are concerned primarily with making money and stability, having a day job is probably a good call. Ideally we will move to UBI as more and more work is automated.
Yes, because they dont even want admit it hiding behind "soul" and moral superiority.
Buddy if you make something and someone steals it, how would you avoid claiming moral superiority in that instance without just letting them take it?
Quite a lot of people have problems with capitalism, people have literally fought, killed and died over less.
"petit-boojies", I love it! :-D
Exactly. Capitalism is the problem. However, capital loves automation.
We live in a society that’s designed in a way where becoming “le petit bourgeois” is the only way for advancing in the social hierarchy. “Ethical” AI only needs to exist under capitalism where the labor can be exploited. If an artist did not need to make money off their labor to survive, this desire for compensation would be a legitimate impurity in the creative integrity of the artist. Unfortunately people need to get paid to live, artists are people too.
“Let the system exploit you or else you’re just as bad as the system. im the consumer, I’m always right”. Sounds like you’re not against capitalism, you just want to be able to afford capitalism.
Capitalism is awesome so that's good.
If one defines "ethical" as unethical one creates a singular tautology (If I'm using the word correctly, not sure). Instead, the challenge is to define your own definition of ethical such that it does not have the deleterious effects you describe.
I, for example, and anti corporate ai, and pro open source ai , so according to the above definition I am not measurable.
So the power and the challenge of defining ethical, is to take time and care in the imagination of the consequences of incentive structures to create a situation that preserves a set of moral objectives. Then you can work backward using reasoning to arrive at some approximate ethics, and then you can arrive at some kind of differentiating ethical statement for sure, and each person will have their own.
If do this work, and share our thoughts, we can start to tease out some actual principles. However as a citizen such work takes labour, time, and thought, and I think we are moving much slower socially than the technology evolves, which is my main concern these days.
I know most people probably won’t. But I highly reccomend reading byung chul Han’s book shanzhai. About the perception of originality in western culture vs Eastern culture. He also goes into this topic more in his other works but for the sake of the whole debate I think it’s a really enlightening read.
Are you really arguing against artists owning the work they produce?
I'm not against copyright as whole but against bloated version of it in present form. Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works (copyright protect you from that), but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
Imagine getting so close and then getting it this wrong...
What so close and whats wrong?
If you’re anti AI you’re pro capitalism
Would an artist not want passive income from their copyrighted content being used as training? Seems like a great way to solve the financial problem so that artists can work on passion projects.
Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works, but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
It’s not really concept per se. It's data. Think of it like tutoring. Or better yet, writing a study material.
The issue is a regular artist would see maybe a 1/10 of a cent from it.
More so, why would they do that when the artist posts it to places which have in their TOS that they can sell it to the AI companies.
The AI companies just use that stream, and don't have to worry about the cost to the artists (which is how it works now)
That's how it works now because we don’t have proper regulations in place and every social media/tech/OS company think they can make an AI.
That's the deal that everybody made knowingly and willingly even though they may ignorantly be unaware. No one is owed a platform to display or market themselves for free. There was always an ulterior motive behind offering free compute and a forum for one's works. We've known for decades about that. Crying foul in this day and age is just willful ignorance.
Yall are not artists and don’t know artists if the only thing you think they make art for is capital gain. This is projection. Not to mention a massive generalization. But ALSO under capitalism your life is tied to money. People like eating so you either do something that takes away from your ability to create or make your ability to create the thing that puts bread on the table. That doesn’t mean “ohhhh theyre just doing it for money ohhh” they need money to live and if art will get it than its a valid way to get it. Especially if it’s monetizing a skillset most people don’t have.
Theres no such thing as not doing something for the money under capitalism. Youre forced to. It’s the rotten system at play. You have to be doing SOMETHING for be money and why should it not be the skillset you’ve spent ntillion hours building.
I mean, yeah. Since you need money to buy food, shelter, and medication in a capitalist society, people that have artistic skills want to protect their trade and livelihood. But *all* AI is capitalism; it is being funded and backed by corporate interests that only care about it's potential for profit.
But even if we lived in a post-capitalist society and had all our needs met, it would still be unethical for AI to learn without permission of the artist. Even under systems that believe that property is theft, there are still personal possessions.
For example, you couldn't just walk into my apartment and take my records without my permission. My records are not private property (unless I donated them to something like a community center). One's artistic works would count as personal possessions; it's up to them to decide if they want AI to learn from it.
Unless of course you're in favor of a totalitarian regime that owns everything... In which case, we're back to the same oppressive system, even if we don't call it capitalism anymore.
Under which oppressive regime is it unethical to learn from a public performance without permission?
Sure, stealing a trade secret is clearly unethical, but a public performance?
A published work is not a “public performance”.
If I publish a book, then its rightful use is for people who have paid for that book (and anyone they lend it to or on-sell to). The library has to pay more than individuals, because they will show the book to lots of people.
That’s how an author makes a (fragment of a) living, and has the time and resources to write more books that people like to read.
Along comes OpenAI and buys one copy of my book (at an individual’s rates), and then uses it to train their industrial content machine.
Yay for the virtuous corporation who gets to commercially utilise the work for peanuts.
Shit out of luck for the writer if they care tha the corporation has used their work to train the industrial content machine without permission.
All hail the mighty warriors, fighting to prevent updates to copyright law that protects authors from technological advancement.
The corporations thank you for your service.
Sorry, once you publish a book you cant control how many people read it. I would read it and then pass it on to some-one else who can pass it on to OpenAI. That's just how it works.
If that is the foundation of your argument its obviously flawed.
Sorry - I forgot that the invention of the industrial content machine has absolutely no impact on anything and is really not even worth mentioning given how super normal and precedented it is.
The printing press?
Yes. Exactly!The printing press is the perfect example here because it was an unprecedented technology that changed the world.
It was the inventing of the press that precipitated the creation of copyright in the first place.
Copyright did not exist before the printing press - it is the perfect example of legal frameworks evolving to protect creators against technological advancement.
You do get it after all.
The AI companies are not breaking into your fucking house. You post shit on reddit with has stuff in their TOS saying they can sell it to the AI companies for training, and that is exactly what they do. Apple does the same, Adobe does the same, every fucking clip art place in the world has done the same.
It's not being stolen, it's being given away by people who don't bother reading Term Of Service.
...yeah, and I think all that shit is fucked up, my dude. It should require explicit consent and that shouldn't even be controversial.
Look, if you are saying TOS are fucked and designed not to be read, I agree.
But even me, who is in AI regulation, can't change decades of existing legal structure.
I think the artists anger is honestly pointed at the wrong targets. If they actually wanted change they would be after the places which did that.
But, they target the companies who brought the art legally, to be used in training models, rather than going after the orgs which screwed them over with their TOS and fighting that there wasn't a meeting of minds for the contract to be valid.
But here in the AI regulation space? What do you want us to do? Try to shut them down over legally getting the training data?
Unless you can get the courts to say what Reddit does is theft, sure as hell you won't be able to get far with the AI companies.
"For example, you couldn't just walk into my apartment and take my records without my permission." Posting images on open internet is not taking something from your apartment. What ridiculous comparison. Companies cannot use commercially exact or near exact copies of your works, but you cant pretend for compensation from generalized concepts in images.
He's the thing though. I might open up my library of records if someone asks me. That's my issue with the way AI is being trained. It has absolutely nothing to do with compensation and everything to do with explicit consent. If just trained on public domain and had an opt in system? Cool, I'd have no issues at all.
But that's not the way it is. And I don't think it's all that radical to think maybe it shouldn't be that way.
Welcome to reality.
Now go tell the subreddit that thinks AI is part of punk culture that, and they will likely ban you and rip you a new one over it.
I know this as that is exactly what I noted to them. Bending the knee to a corporation to support something like AI is not being punk. Being punk is standing up against corporate greed, always has been.
Capitalism will attempt to incorpórate any ideology and technology into itself, including AI, "fighting back" Is not shitting and whining that some new technology changes things too much, it's making sure that It changes things so much that the system no longer works, and to ensure that the benefits of that change aré for the general population, not those already at the top.
IS THAT PUNK ENOUGH FOR YOU?
Being anti AI is being pro capitalism
There is not a single chance, not one, that it will change things so that "the system doesn't work".
The likeliest scenario is a precarization of labour as "an AI is cheap, you have to be cheaper" leading back into feudalistic tendencies. The only reason some countries escaped the "work 14 hours a day just to eat" spiral was by violent uprisings, terror attacks, organization and sporadic action. Letting a massive reform just "ease in" is letting Capital win. The more work that can be automated, the more competition for the remaining positions will necesitate negotiating terms and salaries down.
I recently got to meet with people from a metro union in a third-world country. Automatization and AI incorporated into trains, maintenance and security systems led to a loss of almost 15% of the workforce because a compromise was struck to try and keep at least some people in those sectors.
The "AI is here and we need to accept it" mentality will negatively impact people's lives. There are roles AI can fulfill for the betterment of humanity, but the idea that a system with a strict hierarchy will be weakened or toppled by reforms pushed by the same hierarchy reeks of naivety.
Im not talking about reforms, the system itself Will not change itself for the benefit of everyone when the entire purpose of that system Is to benefit a few, It Will simply adapt to new circumstances, i am talking about making sure that the changes this technology makes are fast and hard enough so that people can wake up from their lethargy and actually get shit done for once, not just wait for someone else to change things for them, and that change requieres people be aware WHERE to direct their anger and not be mindlessly reactionary against the technology that can help us push us towards a different mindset.
It's not the progress of the technology itself, but it's progress in tandem with the societal consecuences, and the reactions of the population directed in an effective manner that will make the system no longer work, and change in our benefit, that's my point, the system Will change regardless, Its up to us to determine if It will be for our or for their benefit.
The technology is already among us and the reform is happening before our very eyes. The impact is already real and its too late to prevent it; as the whole of AI is confounded into a single unit (Generating a picture of a cat drinking wine, videogame NPC behaviour and cameras that detect delinquent behaviour all tumbled together in the same metaphorical bag) causing the layman use, the effective use, and the exploitative use to become fused.
Being "against AI" in one sense becomes extrapolated to "all senses" (by people with a variety of positions) which helps the dominant position of the ruling class.
The necessary intellectual, moral and ethical debate, education and safeguards are not there and it is too late (by design)
Of course this isn't AI's fault, its the usual suspects, who do want a hard and fast implementation (hence the "bubble") so that it slips by unattended and automatization succeeds in lowering the value of labour. As services become automated, manual labour again becomes saturated.
Sadly, the original punk rock was a corporate front and it still is today. The new system that gets made after the punks do their work never benefits them.
AI art is punk af: it's fun, fast, creative, and makes you clutch your pearls.
so whats your position? not sure it has to be a binary choice myself, but maybe i misunderstood your point?
Of course this got down voted