• Ebby
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    4393 days ago

    That’s a good litmus test. If asking/paying artists to train your AI destroys your business model, maybe you’re the arsehole. ;)

    • @TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      323 days ago

      This particular vein of “pro-copyright” thought continuously baffles me. Copyright has not, was not intended to, and does not currently, pay artists.

      Its totally valid to hate these AI companies. But its absolutely just industry propaganda to think that copyright was protecting your data on your behalf

      • Ebby
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        3 days ago

        Copyright has not, was not intended to, and does not currently, pay artists.

        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.

          • Ebby
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            3 days ago

            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.

        • @Arcka@midwest.social
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          53 days ago

          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.

          • Ebby
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            13 days ago

            Bingo. I was being more general in my response, but that is the more technical way of putting it.

      • @NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Copyright has not, was not intended to, and does not currently, pay artists.

        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).

        • @TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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          33 days ago

          Wrong in all points.

          No, actually, I’m not at all. In-fact, I’m totally right:

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhBpI13dxkI

          Copyright originated create a monopoly to protect printers, not artists, to create a monopoly around a means of distribution.

          How many artists do you know? You must know a few. How many of them have received any income through copyright. I dare you, to in good faith, try and identify even one individual you personally know, engaged in creative work, who makes any meaningful amount of money through copyright.

          • @Leavingoldhabits@lemmy.world
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            63 days ago

            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.

                • @TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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                  3 days ago

                  Cool. Name one. A specific one that we can directly reference, where they themselves can make that claim. Not a secondary source, but a primary one. And specifically, not the production companies either, keeping in mind that the argument that I’m making is that copyright law, was intended to protect those who control the means of production and the production system itself. Not the artists.

                  The artists I know, and I know several. They make their money the way almost all people make money, by contracting for their time and services, or through selling tickets and merchandise, and through patreon subscriptions: in other words, the way artists and creatives have always made their money. The “product” in the sense of their music or art being a product, is given away practically for free. In fact, actually for free in the case of the most successful artists I know personally. If they didn’t give this “product” of their creativity away for free, they would not be able to survive.

                  There is practically 0 revenue through copyright. Production companies like Universal make money through copyright. Copyright was also built, and historically based intended for, and is currently used for, the protection of production systems: not artists.

                  • @Leavingoldhabits@lemmy.world
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                    3 days ago

                    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)

          • @superkret@feddit.org
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            193 days ago

            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.

            • @TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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              3 days ago

              Cool. What artist?

              Edit because I didn’t read the second half of your comment. If you are too up-your-own ass and anti-intellectual to educate yourself on this matter, maybe just don’t have an opinion.

    • @BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
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      1003 days ago

      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”.

      • @T156@lemmy.world
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        773 days ago

        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.

        • NicoleFromToronto
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          233 days ago

          Businesses relying on free things. Logging, mining, ranching, and oil come to mind. Extracting free resources of the land belonging to the public, destroying those public lands and selling those resources back to the public at an exorbitant markup.

          • finder
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            3 days ago

            Extracting free resources of the land

            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.

            • richmondez
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              12 days ago

              While true, they tend not to bare the costs of the environmental damage, at least when these activities are poorly regulated.

              • finder
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                3 days ago

                If basic economics get you upset, then alright.

                Bye o/

        • Tavi
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          23 days ago

          Agribusiness in shambles after draining the water table (it is still free)

          • SeekPie
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            113 days ago

            Doesn’t mean that businesses should allowed to be.

      • @freely1333@reddthat.com
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        103 days ago

        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.

    • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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      33 days ago

      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

      • Ebby
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        13 days ago

        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!

    • @SleafordMod@feddit.uk
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      11 day ago

      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.