Comment on Judge Rules Training AI on Authors' Books Is Legal But Pirating Them Is Not
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 day agoLawsuits are multifaceted. This statement isn’t an argument for innocence and doesn’t support that, it’s what it says - an assertion that the proposed damages are too high. If the court agrees, the plaintiff can always propose a lower damage claim that the court thinks is reasonable.
Thistlewick@lemmynsfw.com 22 hours ago
You’re right, each of the 5 million books’ authors should agree to less payment for their work, to make the poor criminals feel better.
If I steal $100 from a thousand people and spend it all on hookers and blow, do I get out of paying that back because I don’t have the funds? Should the victims agree to get $20 back instead because that’s more within my budget?
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
None of the above. Every professional in the world, including me, owes our careers to looking at examples of other people’s work and incorporating those ideas into our own work without paying a penny for it. Freely copying and imitating what we saw around us has been the norm for thousands of years - in a process known as “the spread of civilization” - until relatively recently, when it was demonized (for business reasons, not moral ones) by people who got rich selling copies of other people’s work and paying them a pittance for the privilege, known as a “royalty”. That little piece of bait on the hook convinced our whole culture to put a black hat on behavior that had been standard for millennia. If angry modern enlightened justice warriors want to treat a business concept into a moral principle and rant about it, that’s fine with me, but I’m more of a traditionalist.