this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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I welcome a lawsuit from any content creator who has enough money to put into it. That benefits all content creators, especially the ones that can't afford lawyers, from being exploited by giant corporations.
Does anybody think, for a moment, that the average person who creates art as a side job, who lives paycheck to paycheck, should be the one to fight massive plagiaristic megacorporations like OpenAI? That the battle between those who create and those who take should be fought on the most uneven grounds possible?
Sure. Trickle-down FTW.
Its wild to me how so many people seem to have got it into their head that cheering for the IP laws that corporations fought so hard for is somehow left wing and sticking up for the little guy.
Can you bring an actual argument to the table, instead of gesturing towards some perceived hypocrisy?
If your ideology brings you to the same conclusions as libertarian techbros who support the theft of content from the powerless and giving it to the powerful, such as is the case with OpenAI shills, I would say you are not, in fact, a leftist. And if all you can do is indirectly play defense for them, there is no difference between a devil's advocate and a full-throated techbro evangelist.
Just a heads-up, libertarian is usually understood, in the american sense, as meaning right libertarian, including so-called anarcho-capitalists. It's understood to mean people who believe that the right to own property is absolutely fundamental. Many libertarians don't believe in intellectual property but some do. Which is to say that in american parlance, the label "libertarian" would probably include you. Just FYI.
Also, I don't know what definition of "left" you are using, but it's not a common one. Left ideologies typically favor progress, including technological progress. They also tend to be critical of property, and (AFAIK universally) reject forms of property that allow people to draw unearned rents. They tend to side with the wider interests of the public over an individual's right to property. The grandfather comment is perfectly consistent with left ideology.
And your argument boils down to "Hitler was a vegetarian, all vegetarians are Fascists". IP laws are a huge stifle on human creativity designed to allow corporate entities to capture, control and milk innate human culture for profit. The fact that some times some corporate interests end up opposing them when it suits them does not change that.
Okay, we can set your support of cultural appropriation for profit aside for a moment, and talk about the thing I asked you to do earlier: actually provide an argument, rather than gesture at this imagined hypocrisy you are claiming.
The fact you can't do this, and the fact that you paint with a broad brush anyone who does not buy into your libertarian beliefs as a supporter of all copyright law (with zero nuance, of course) demonstrates your own hypocrisy, which is demonstrable.
I already have:
I thought that was a prima facie reason for why they are bad, And no I do not believe all copyright law is bad with no nuance, as you would have seen if you stalked deeper into my profile rather than just picking one that you thought you could have fun with.
Great, now do you have any sources for this? Because in the real world, authors appear to disagree with you.
“If my work is just going to get stolen, and if some company's shareholders are going to get the benefit of my labor and skill without compensating me, I see no reason to continue sharing my work with the public -- and a lot of other artists will make the same choice.”
- N.K. Jemisin
Then you shouldn't say things like "IP laws are a huge stifle on human creativity". In fact, since you don't believe it, you should edit your comments to say something like "Some IP laws are bad."
Where do you stand on the case of James Somerton and his plaigirism of the works of multiple small queer creators? Is he entitled to their cultural output while bashing the minorities they belong to?
There are plenty from people who actually study this stuff.
I don't have a significant opinion on the Disney case, though I will note that it stems from the fact that corporations are able to buy and sell rights to works as pieces of capital (in this case Disney buying it from Lucasfilm).
I appreciate you linking me a source that says the says the core goal of copyright is to promote the advancement of science and the arts.
"The problem with modern copyright doctrine is not copyright in itself, but the seemingly limitless grant of rights on an insufficiently particularized basis. The solution offered is two-fold: the extension of copyright protection should be more limited, and the allowance of copying should be broader. This would ensure that copyright doctrine most efficiently incentivizes creation, by protecting what is creative yet allowing individuals to build upon existing works."
Which I entirely agree with!
I appreciate you linking me a source that says the says the core goal of copyright is to promote the advancement of science and the arts, ie incentivizing creatives to create.
"The problem with modern copyright doctrine is not copyright in itself, but the seemingly limitless grant of rights on an insufficiently particularized basis. The solution offered is two-fold: the extension of copyright protection should be more limited, and the allowance of copying should be broader. This would ensure that copyright doctrine most efficiently incentivizes creation, by protecting what is creative yet allowing individuals to build upon existing works."
And I totally agree! And if you agree as well, I don't see why you would have any criticism of authors like GRRM and Jemisin who want to return those incentives.
Stifling a writing tool because GRRM wants a payday, on the basis that it can spit out small parts of his work if you specifically ask it too, is the opposite of advancing the art.
...yet allowing individuals to build upon existing works. Its literally the rest of the statement you put in bold, stop trying not to see on purpose.
OpenAI is a corporation
I already mentioned that poor authors cannot stand up to thieving corpos like OpenAI. Maybe address the argument, not your strawman.
GRRM has been relatively handwavey about piracy of the movie adaptations of his books, so I'm not sure why you're acting like he's evil but somehow giant corporations get the pass from you.
Just because Womble speaks in absolutes doesn't mean everybody else does. There are already exceptions in American copyright law, advocating for slightly different exceptions is not the same as eliminating it.
I'm clearly talking about the technology when I say tool (large language models) and not the company itself.
If we can't freely use copyrighted material to train, it completely and unequivocally kills any kind of open source or even small to medium model. Only a handful of companies would have enough data or funds to build LLMs. And since AI will be able to do virtually all desk jobs in the near future, it would guarantee Microsoft and Google owning the economy.
So no, I'm not taking the sides of the corporation. The corporations want more barriers and more laws, it kills competition and broadens their moat.
I don't think GRRM is evil, just a greedy asshole that's willingly playing into their hand. I also don't think loss of potential profit because the domain has been made even more competitive equals stealing. Nothing was stolen, the barrier for entry has been lowered.
This isn't helping anyone except big name author, the owners of publishing houses and Microsoft. The small time authors and artist arent getting a dime. Why should literally the rest of us get screwed so a couple of fat cats can have an other payday? How is this advancing the arts?
Didn't you notice you're on a post about Microsoft Corp and OpenAI Corp? Maybe you ended up in the wrong place by accident.
Ah, the typical Big Business conservative argument: "think about the business owner... The small business owner!" Always forgetting to add the word "small" until the last possible second.
And, for some reason, only jumping into converse when you must, by necessity, harm much smaller creators in the process. I guess that plays into a second conservative argument, maximizing harm per capita.
Why not simply ask for consent, instead of demanding it as an alleged right?
If someone knows that upon creation of something, it will simply be stolen, that tells them not to create. That's the foundation upon which copyright law was made, despite the misinformation peddled here by anti-artist ideologues.
It doesn't matter what the subject is about, tim clearly not saying OpenAI the company when I use the term "writing tool"
I'm advocating for us and society as a whole. If only google and Microsoft hold the keys to AI, we all end up paying a surtax on everything we buy because every business will be forced into a subscription model to use it and stay competitive.
There is too much data involved to ask for consent, you would just end up with big players trading with each other. The small artists wouldn't get a dime, only Getty and Adobe. It's literally not pheasible.
Nothing was stolen except future potential jobs. You can't own a style or anything of the kind.
The small artists aren't going to get any kind of benefit out of these lawsuits. It sucks that it's even more saturated of a market but the good ones learn to use these tools (LLMs and img/vid gen) to elevate their own art and push the boundaries.