Submitted 4 weeks ago by juergen@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
Copyright law needs to be fixed, and not in favor of these corporations, but in favor of artists.
Wanting copyright law to be fixed does not mean wanting it go away entirely.
Check out the research of Rufus Pollock who did a bunch of complex math to show ideal copyright length should be 15 years.
Good stuff. Too many people lately are all “no copyright would be an improvement.” Yeah, maybe for the corps who could freely use your output as they wish.
What a brilliant Idea. Hover up all copyrighted works then regurgitate it in different forms without having to pay the copyright owners. Sounds like a great tech bro idea.
The finance bros tried that one too. Mortgage-backed security was the magic word. Cut up all the little mortgages, repackage them, and sell for profit. Then it all crashed down in 2008.
And what is the problem? I see no problem.
If humans have to pay for knowledge with expensive student loans and book purchases, why should AI get that same knowledge for free?
Because if AI has to pay, you kill the open-source scene and give a fat monopoly to the handful of companies that can afford the data. Not to mention that data is owned by a few publishing house and none of the writers are getting a dime.
Yes it’s silly that students pay so much, but we should be arguing for less copyrights so we can have both proper prices in education and a vibrant open source scene.
Most people argue for a strengthening of copyrights which only helps data brokers and big AI players. If you want subscription services and censorship while still keeping all the drawbacks of AI, this is how you do it.
The article explains the problems in great detail.
Here’s just one small section of the text which describes some of them:
All of this certainly makes knowledge and literature more accessible, but it relies entirely on the people who create that knowledge and literature in the first place—that labor that takes time, expertise, and often money. Worse, generative-AI chatbots are presented as oracles that have “learned” from their training data and often don’t cite sources (or cite imaginary sources). This decontextualizes knowledge, prevents humans from collaborating, and makes it harder for writers and researchers to build a reputation and engage in healthy intellectual debate. Generative-AI companies say that their chatbots will themselves make scientific advancements, but those claims are purely hypothetical.
(I originally put this as a top-level comment, my bad.)
The claims aren’t entirely hypothetical, LLM AI has mapped nearly every known protein which humans were unable to do…
YSK that scientists, engineers, and mathematicians are not paid for the knowledge they create. The knowledge is public domain.
When they publish articles, they typically transfer the copyright to the publisher, which is why they will happily assist you in pirating articles.
Patents are public with the express purpose that others may learn from them. Only the actual use of an invention requires permission. Even that lasts only 20 years rather than 100+ years as is the case with copyrights.
So, this quote is not an explanation of any problems. It is (probably deliberately) misleading. Researchers will not receive any license fees. Rather, these fees will subtract from research budgets.
These authors (and my work is in there) did not write so that Mark Zuckerberg could steal our work and profit from it
This is just a perfect breakdown of the problem. Keep Zuckerberg away from your work.
Those authors aren’t in the equation anymore. They gave their work to publishing houses and won’t be asked about what it is to be used for.
AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I like Molly White’s recent take, that it might be more productive to treat this as a labor issue instead of a copyright issue (at least in principle). Even if the AI corporations aren’t technically re-selling copyrighted works, they’re still profiting from the authors’ unpaid labor.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
That’s an evergreen. Tried and trusty.
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