In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."

Both are copyright infringements, but only the latter is art theft.

As the article has pointed out, it's not the principle that has changed, but the scale. Lots of things that are tolerable at small scale (e.g. lying, stealing) become disruptive to society at larger scale.

Copyright has been used in the past as a way for corporations to rent-seek and limit innovation. Now it may be the only legal means to stop them from doing that.

The problem is that AIs don't have rights. So you literally can't treat it the same.

If I "make" something in a way I'm not allowed to (e.g. copying), the law will go after me. If AI makes something I'm not allowed to, I can just say "whoopsie doodle", blame the AI, and there are no repercussions for anyone.

For example, if you rent a movie, you can watch it with your family. Nobody is going to sue you for distributing the movie with 5 people in your room. That's pure nonsense. Same with music, books, etc.

If you try to play the movie in an establishment with dozens of people, then it can become a problem, because you're essentially a theater now.

I'm not a lawyer so I don't know what the law is on selling fan art on a convention or even privately commissioned fan artwork. But things aren't as draconian as people assume it is.

So if you draw sonic in your living room you are indeed creating an unauthorised derivative work. And someone can call it an unauthorised derivative work. And the only reaction that should induce is raising an eyebrow and replying “ok?”

"We can't do this legally, so we should be allowed to ignore the law."

If you can't build a model while respecting licenses, don't build a model.

I don't want copyright to exist, at any duration, and I certainly think it should be much shorter than it is. However, as long as it exists, AI should not get any exception to it; such an exception inherently privileges massive entities over small entities or individuals.

You could create some great masterpiece at 18 and live off of it until you are 62 and starting to take social security payments.

That excess exists precisely because of the industry’s clout. For decades, rightsholders successfully lobbied Congress to extend copyright term again and again. That process appears to have finally plateaued, which is why early Mickey Mouse has now entered the public domain.

And notably, since the rise of AI, the government has not been especially quick or eager to step in and defend rightsholders.

Last but not least, generating csam and deep fakes porn on social medias and having to see it called free speech

Every day hundreds of links to archive.is are posted[1] to this website to get around paywalls. Technologists built file sharing tools to subvert copyright. It has never been one of the worst crimes imaginable in tech circles.

[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastWeek&page=0&prefix=tru... (85 instances in the last week)

This is rather the opinion of the copyright-industrial complex, as Spivak implied in his comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46874194) by referring to Hollywood.

The attitude of the tech industry has always been much more vague (example: Google Books), and people from the hacker culture, who often work as programmers, are traditionally rather sceptical of at least the concrete manifestation of the copyright system ("information wants to be free", circumvention of paywalls, Guerilla Open Access Manifesto, ...).

In the last few years, we had Google scanning books, Google threatening to shut down News in Canada rather than pay publishers, LLMs summarizing articles on social platforms, crawlers bypassing paywalls, and so on.

Each time, the industry frames it as their interpretation of the current law, which were usually not written with these specific future use cases in mind.

In my view the current discussion regarding Gen AI is similar.

Yes, but they were found not liable for copying the books they purchased. They were found liable for the books they torrented.

The former is something publishers still want to address

Yes.

Laws usually don't describe the bigger societal context in which they were conceived.

St. Augustine: "an unjust law is no law at all."

John Marshall, in Marbury v. Madison: "a law repugnant to the constitution is void."

This is actually a fairly well established principle in common law. So, yes.

At a human scale, those boundaries get clarified through litigation on a case by case basis once an infringement becomes large or obvious enough. But there has always been a gray area around when a derivative work crosses the line into infringement.

And AI didn’t create that ambiguity, it just pushed it to a more extreme scale

There are just companies big enough to ignore those institutions for which copyright law was created, like Google, etc, and the fair use exceptions Google carved out empowered AI companies to make similar moves. To an extent.

What's hurting artists and smaller companies and various licensing schemes intended to push back is the fundamental structure of the laws.

All copyrights need to be nuked and replaced. If we want to support individuals and maximize protections of individuals, and we want to disincentivize data hoarders that do nothing but recycle old content and IP in perpetual rent-seeking schemes, we should implement a 5 year copyright system.

The first 5 years, you get total copyright, any commercial use has to be licensed explicitly, fair use remains largely as it is now. From year 6-10, fair use gets extended - you have to credit the creator, pay a 15% royalty direct to the creator, but otherwise you can use it for anything. Year 10-20, you must credit the creator, but otherwise the media is in the public domain.

We should be pushing for and incentivizing creative use of data, empowering as many people as possible to use it and riff on it and make the culture vibrant and active and free from centralizing, manipulative actors.

99% of commercial profits come from the first 5 years after any piece of media gets published - book, music, film, artwork, etc. Copyright should protect that, but after that 5 years, things open up so the price you pay in order to participate in the marketplace which the US fosters is that your content thereafter becomes available for use by anyone, and they have to pay a fair markup for the use. You don't get to deny anyone the use of the media. You'll get credited, paid, and then after 10 years, it's public domain + mandatory credits, kinda like an MIT license style. After 20 years, it's fully public domain.

Throw in things like "if you're not paid the royalty, you can sue for up to half of the total revenues generated by the offending work" or something appropriately scaled to prohibit casual abuses, but not totally explode someone's life over honest mistakes, and scale between the two extremes accordingly.

Things like Sony and Disney and Hollywood studios are evil. They're effectively data cartels and hoarders, rarely producing anything, gatekeeping access and socializing, imposing obscene contracts on naive artists and creators, exploiting everything and everyone they touch without returning concurrent value to society. They don't deserve consideration or protection under a sane copyright system, especially in a world with gigabit internet everywhere. Screw the MAFIAA and all the people responsible for things ending up like they have.

Until then, pirate everything. If you feel an ethical obligation to pay, then do the research and send some crypto or a $20 bill in the mail to the author or creator. All sorts of people have crypto wallets, these days.