lynn / clarissaDec 4, 2022

It hit me this morning that often what I find frustrating in discussions around "intellectual property", piracy, large datasets for training things like CLIP, &c. is that IP is a really really poor substitute for actually useful conversations around consent and respect

Like Elsevier asking me to "pwease no steal uwu" about journal articles is very different than, like, an individual selling self-published books on the side saying "hey I need this money to pay rent, so please purchase it legit"

An artist saying "hey I don't like for-profit companies building generators from my work that I posted to deviant art" is very different than Disney cracking down on people making shit with characters they "own".

Someone saying "hey this is really personal work, I don't really want it passed around and edited without my consent" is not the same as pebbleyeet getting mad at anti-fash edits of his comics.

IP is bullshit but that doesn't mean we have to take unnuanced all-or-nothing approaches to things.

That would be like saying if you want to support squatters taking over an airbnb then you can't have a lock on your bathroom door: it's conflating such wildly different things that it's a little silly.

Show threadGargravarDec 7, 2022
@left_adjoint to be fair, that's your point of view. There are others. The system of balancing conflicting interests is politically moderated through the creation of law. Those laws mean we don't have to negotiate each and every interaction, nor appreciate or anticipate side-effects others have seen but we haven't. If you don't like it, vote differently, or convince more people to align their vote with yours. Not understanding this is partly why democracy is being captured by corps.
Show threadCharlotteDec 7, 2022
@brrbrr @left_adjoint The way you've phrased this, you're glossing over how often laws are already slanted in favour of the more powerful interest, how frequently unjust laws get passed, and how political equality (in terms of who actually has influence on what laws get passed and what exactly they say) is at least 75% an illusion in our current system. "Just go vote" is at this point only a slogan to silence criticism.
Show threadGargravarDec 7, 2022
@chaostheorie @left_adjoint odd interpretation. Think about how radically things would change if Trump came to power again? Hitler was elected. Putin was elected. Bolsinaro was elected. Disastrous. Voting isn't irrelevant. Imagining it is, is precisely what lends corporate capture legs, as I mentioned. I'm not sure how you regard that as "glossing over"...
Show threadCharlotteDec 7, 2022
@brrbrr @left_adjoint Of course voting is not irrelevant; never said that. But it's also not the only legitimate way of effecting political change.
Edit: Replaced "it" with "voting" to make toot clearer without context.
Show threadGargravarDec 7, 2022
@chaostheorie @left_adjoint In a democracy every other path to change, outside of corruption or revolution, ends in choices being made by elected representatives. Doesn't it?
Show threadCharlotteDec 7, 2022
@brrbrr @left_adjoint No, actually. Many changes are made directly by civic organisations and the like; and those are often far more immediate.
Show threadGargravarDec 7, 2022
@chaostheorie @left_adjoint but only within the scope of the law, or by challenging the law's interpretation which throws the ball back into the law makers court. My original point is only that social systems are complex. They are an eco system of organisations, from the individual up, which exist in radically differing local environments and have radically differing expected lifespans. The OP was being more than a little naiive in how government could/should work.
Show threadCharlotte
@brrbrr @left_adjoint Of course not only within the law! (Note that I'm not saying all law-breaking is legitimate political action, but being against the law doesn't automatically make it illegitimate.)
Resistance against the Nazis (you brought up Hitler, not me), was illegal, but legitimate; so were the actions taken by the black civil rights movement in the US and many others...
I don't think the OP was in any way denying the complexity of social systems.
Dec 7, 2022 at 6:10pmWeb