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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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That's a good litmus test. If asking/paying artists to train your AI destroys your business model, maybe you're the arsehole. ;)
Not only that, but their business model doesn't hold up if they were required to provide their model weights for free because the material that went into it was "free".
There's also an argument that if the business was that reliant on free things to start with, then it shouldn't be a business.
No-one would bat their eyes if the CEO of a real estate company was sobbing that it's the end of the rental market, because the company is no longer allowed to get houses for free.
You misspelled capitalism.
Unregulated capitalism. That’s why people in dominant market positions want less regulation.
Entrenched companies often want more regulation to prevent startup competition. Pulling the ladder up behind them.
To be fair, they want more regulation n others, not on them. Specially if they’re doing shady things.
Not to be contrarian, but there is a cost to extract those "free" resources; like labor, equipment, transportation, lobbying (AKA: bribes for the non-Americans), processing raw material into something useful, research and development, et cetera.
Was about to post the same thing
While true, they tend not to bare the costs of the environmental damage, at least when these activities are poorly regulated.
If basic economics get you upset, then alright.
Bye o/
The entire internet is built on free things.
Just saying.
Doesn't mean that businesses should allowed to be.
Agribusiness in shambles after draining the water table (it is still free)
even the top phds can learn things off the amount of books that openai could easily purchase, assuming they can convince a judge that if the works aren't pirated the "learning" is fair use. however, they're all pirating and then regurgitating the works which wouldn't really be legal even if a human did it.
also, they can't really say how they need fair use and open standards and shit and in the next breathe be begging trump to ban chinese models. the cool thing about allowing china to have global influence is that they will start to respect IP more... or the US can just copy their shit until they do.
imo that would have been the play against tik tok etc. just straight up we will not protect the IP of your company (as in technical IP not logo, etc.) until you do the same. even if it never happens, we could at least have a direct tik tok knock off and it could "compete" for american eyes rather than some blanket ban bullshit.
You are correct, copyright is ownership, not income. I own the copyright for all my work (but not work for hire) and what I do with it is my discretion.
What is income, is the content I sell for the price acceptable to the buyer. Copyright (as originally conceived) is my protection so someone doesn't take my work and use it to undermine my skillset. One of the reasons why penalties for copyright infringement don't need actual damages and why Facebook (and other AI companies) are starting to sweat bullets and hire lawyers.
That said, as a creative who relied on artistic income and pays other creatives appropriately, modern copyright law is far, far overreaching and in need of major overhaul. Gatekeeping was never the intent of early copyright and can fuck right off; if I paid for it, they don't get to say no.
https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf
This research paper from Rufus Pollock in 2009 suggests that the optimal timeframe for copyright is 15 years. I've been referencing this for, well, 16 years now, a year longer than the optimum copyright range. If I recall correctly I first saw this referenced by Mike Masnick of techdirt.
Copyright does not give the holder control over every "use", especially something as vague as "using it to undermine their skillset".
Copyright gives the rights holder a limited monopoly on three activities: to make and sell copies of their works, to create derivative works, and to perform or display their works publicly.
Not all uses involve making a copy, derivative, or performance.
Bingo. I was being more general in my response, but that is the more technical way of putting it.
By gatekeeping I mean the use of digital methods to verify or restrict use of purchased copyright material after a sale such as Digital rights management, encryption such as CSS/AACS/HDCP, or obfuscation.
The whole "you didn't buy a copy, you bought a license" BS undermines what copyright was supposed to be IMO.
Wrong in all points.
Copyright has paid artists (though maybe not enough). Copyright was intended to do that (though maybe not that alone). Copyright does currently pay artists (maybe not in your country, I don't know that).
I know several artists living off of selling their copyrighted work, and no one in the history of the Internet has ever watched a 55 minute YouTube video someone linked to support their argument.
I know quite a few people who rely on royalties for a good chunk of their income. That includes musicians, visual artists and film workers.
Saying it doesn’t exist seems very ignorant.
Any experienced union film director, editor, DOP, writer, sound designer comes to mind (at least where I’m from)
I don’t know where you are, but here in Norway, people tend to get paid when their work is used for commercial or entertainment purposes.
Of course, very few can live off of royalties alone, but a lot of artists get a considerable amount income from their previous works.
(Edited in total, I matched the anger I felt from what I was answering to, and decided to moderate)
You forgot to link a legitimate source.
YouTube is not a legitimate source. The prof is fine but video only links are for the semi literate. It is frankly rude to post a minor comment and expect people to endure a video when a decent reader can absorb the main points from text in 20 seconds.
Interesting copyright question: if I own a copy of a book, can I feed it to a local AI installation for personal use?
Can a library train a local AI installation on everything it has and then allow use of that on their library computers? <— this one could breathe new life into libraries
First off, I'm by far no lawyer, but it was covered in a couple classes.
According to law as I know it, question 1 yes if there is no encryption, and question 2 no.
In reality, if you keep it for personal use, artists don't care. A library however, isn't personal use and they have to jump through more hoops than a circus especially when it comes to digital media.
But you raise a great point! I'd love to see a law library train AI for in-house use and test the system!
I wonder if there's some validity to what OpenAI is saying though (but I certainly don't completely agree with them).
If the US makes it too costly to train AI models, then maybe China will relax any copyright laws so that Chinese AI models can be trained quickly and cheaply. This might result in China developing better AI models than the US.
Maybe the US should require AI companies to pay a large chunk of their profits to copyright holders. So copyright holders would be compensated, but an AI company would only have to pay if they generate profits.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable in this field will tell me I'm totally wrong.
No, it means that copyrights should not exist in the first place.