The enforcement of copyright law is really simple.
If you were a kid who used Napster in the early 2000s to download the latest album by The Offspring or Destiny’s Child, because you couldn’t afford the CD, then you need to go to court! And potentially face criminal sanctions or punitive damages to the RIAA for each song you download, because you’re an evil pirate! You wouldn’t steal a car! Creators must be paid!
If you created educational videos on YouTube in the 2010s, and featured a video or audio clip, then even if it’s fair use, and even if it’s used to make a legitimate point, you’re getting demonetised. That’s assuming your videos don’t disappear or get shadow banned or your account isn’t shut entirely. Oh, and good luck finding your way through YouTube’s convoluted DMCA process! All creators are equal in deserving pay, but some are more equal than others!
And if you’re a corporation with a market capitalisation of US$1.5 trillion (Google/Alphabet) or US$2.3 billion (Microsoft), then you can freely use everyone’s intellectual property to train your generative AI bots. Suddenly creators don’t deserve to be paid a cent.
Apparently, an individual downloading a single file is like stealing a car. But a trillion-dollar corporation stealing every car is just good business.
@music@fedibb.ml @technology #technology #tech #economics #copyright #ArtificialIntelligence #capitalism #IntellectualProperty @music@lemmy.ml #law #legal #economics
- SocialistStan ( @SocialistStan@kolektiva.social ) 6•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml I don’t believe in copyright law anymore than I do in landlords. Information is free.
- atomicfurball ( @atomicfurball@lemmy.ml ) 1•1 year ago
Without copyright law, innovation is stifled because nobody can afford to spend time creating.
- salarua ( @salarua@sopuli.xyz ) English1•1 year ago
i’ve thought about this quite a bit, and i’ve come to a similar conclusion. abolishing copyright wouldn’t do much good if we didn’t also guarantee everything one needs to live to everyone. of course, the artist often doesn’t make enough to live on anyway, but making sure that one’s needs are taken care of would free one from the obligation of having a time-consuming job, and free up time for things one wants to do, like create art. i think abolishing copyright is an inherently leftist cause because of all the other issues that are intertwined with it, like paywalls and earning a living
- SocialistStan ( @SocialistStan@kolektiva.social ) 1•1 year ago
@atomicfurball 😂 😆 😂
- Richard Penner ( @Arpie4Math@mathstodon.xyz ) 5•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml
#Copyright does not protect the concept and themes of artistic presentation. So training autocomplete tools like #ChatGPT or generative art tools along the lines of #StabilityAI on huge amounts of copyrighted material available on the web doesn’t seem to trespass on the rights actually created by copyright law. That is, neither the trained model parameters nor the output qualifies as a infringing copy.
The fact that big corporations have heated the rhetoric with even small-scale copyright infringement being characterized as if it were an existential threat rather than free marketing perhaps misleads people to think copyright grants the owner total control of the future of their creations. But law is about statutes and precedents, not feelings, which is why big corporations aren’t likely to train their models on billions of copyrighted works if there was a credible risk of paying statutory damages on a per-work basis.
If there is a moral right to the “something” that has been gifted to these models by their training, it has not been well described, let alone recognized in law as property of the creators. How is this “something” which an AI model steals supposed to be distinguished from the piecewise appreciation for the art as summed over all human viewers?
So perhaps the real problem is the moral outrage created by the corporations who for decades equate copyright infringement with being ambushed by a gang of seagoing rapists, kidnappers, killers, and robbers (pirates). Towards that end, Germany is discussing adding copyright infringement as a form of “digital violence” making the analogy more exact.
- Marc Majcher ( @majcher@dice.camp ) 3•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml If corporations couldn’t get away with doing things that would get an individual fined or arrested, how would they maintain their competitive edge? Profits above everything, baby!
- nickapos :clubtwit: ( @nickapos@twit.social ) 3•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml i have the feeling that in using the platforms offered by these companies you have given them permission to use your work.
- Arthur Besse ( @cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ) 3•1 year ago
yeah, as others have already said, this isn’t how copyright law works: it’s how law in general works.
- RealGravitas ( @CWilbur@sfba.social ) 2•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@lemmy.ml @music@fedibb.ml And now you understand capitalism.
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml Sometimes I don’t have to wonder why giving up on pursuing any of my creative talents seems like the depressingly reasonable thing to do.
- nanook ( @nanook@friendica.eskimo.com ) 2•1 year ago
This is what happens under fascism.
- Simon 🐮 ( @Firesphere@cloudisland.nz ) 2•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml I don’t think you understand the problem.
You see, companies have long struggled due to piracy.
They have to come up with solutions to piracy, and implement them. That is hard work and doesn’t do a thing against piracy, and heck it even didn’t lower their revenue, because it was proven that those that pirate stuff, also buy stuff.
Therefore, it only makes sense that if you have a lot of money, you don’t have to pay…Wait, I lost my train of thought.
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml A post I saw over the weekend proposed a browser extension that replaces mentions of “AI” with “the Torment Nexus”. An alternative find-replace could be “AI” to “copyright laundering”!
- tychosoft ( @tychosoft@fosstodon.org ) 2•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@fedibb.ml @music@lemmy.ml and that’s how America works; The bigger you are, the smaller your crimes.
- BlinkerFluid ( @BlinkerFluid@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 year ago
I argue that copyright law is as pointless as it is to circumvent legally.
For instance, Google any song.
Did a YouTube video show up? The copyright law is fucking useless.
- down daemon ( @downdaemon@lemmy.ml ) 2•1 year ago
it can be selectively enforced to instill fear in the population. my sister’s long term bf (she already had 2 young kids) is from Iran and is really against me bring over pirated movies because he’s trying to get citizenship. Like they have to watch the new mario movie at my place lol
- Simon Brooke ( @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot ) 1•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@lemmy.ml @music@fedibb.ml That essay is such a complete misunderstanding of the issue that the author is either an idiot or a bad actor.
- David Benfell, Ph.D. ( @Benfell@hcommons.social ) 1•1 year ago
@ajsadauskas @technology @music@lemmy.ml @music@fedibb.ml
Some might notice an analogy in which if you kill a single man, you’re a murderer; kill millions and you’re a politician.
- David Benfell, Ph.D. ( @Benfell@hcommons.social ) 1•1 year ago
That may have been the quote I was thinking of. I was thinking Josef Stalin had said something similar but it turns out even that’s uncertain.
- down daemon ( @downdaemon@lemmy.ml ) 1•1 year ago
are you an actual phd and is that actually you in your profile
- David Benfell, Ph.D. ( @Benfell@hcommons.social ) 1•1 year ago
@downdaemon Yes…
- Niclas Hedhman ( @niclas@angrytoday.com ) 1•1 year ago
You GOT IT!
Comes back to Marxism’s You kill one person it is murder. You kill 1 million it is statistics.