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#AaronSwartz

I wonder anyways how stealing in idea space works. In the physical world if I steal something I gain something while somebody else loses it. In idea space I copy something and then we both have it. Imagine world hunger and I am the only one with a bread. Luckily copying bread has been made available, but everybody has to stay hungry because I invented bread (actually I didn't invent it, discovered would be the better word).
Its only about power and control.

@appassionato @enron @bookstodon

@TheSecondVariation @appassionato @enron @bookstodon

Now suppose that you work hard to write a novel. Really pour your heart and soul into it. Then someone makes a copy and starts selling it with their name on it.

@SnerkRabbledauber That's plagiarism, fraud, false advertising, not robbery.

@TheSecondVariation @enron @appassionato

@clacke @TheSecondVariation @enron @appassionato

And plagiarism is how theft in idea space works. If you copy something, the copy is still there. It is still available. But when someone reads your copy they no longer need to read the original. So if you charge them to read it, then you have, in a sense, stolen potential income from the original author. It would be a similar model for infringing on patents.

So that is how theft in idea space works.

@SnerkRabbledauber Indeed. And because it works completely differently, there are other words to describe it that don't drag with them the assumptions that the theft analogy does.

The freerider problem is entirely different from omg where did my bike go I need it now problem, even though both can give a person a sense of loss.

@TheSecondVariation @appassionato @enron

In the ongoing generative AI crisis, people are talking about copyright as a solution, as it's the only pre-existing legal lever that seems like it might be applicable.

But copyright was a bad tool used for multiple unrelated purposes already before, and it's an even worse tool for this. People go there because of the theft analogy and the "intellectual property" metaphor. Don't even get me started on patents.

What the generative AI crisis is really about, and which already happened before AI, with the slow paper-and-brains AI of corporations, is the commoditization of culture and how soulless mass production depletes and pollutes the soil it grows from.

Copyright isn't the solution, because arguably copyright is part of the problem, as we see when corporations build on folklore and then fence it in to prevent others from doing the same thing. This is core to the commoditization of culture and enables it.

hackers.town/@jakimfett/111746… is exactly right, the problem isn't about the "theft" of some virtual "property", it's the violation of consent.

And that's why the same person can feel ok getting a free copy of a blockbuster movie but get upset when someone is repurposing a comic strip without attribution. One is a product by an entity and the other is a personal creation. With a lot of gray space in between, obviously.

@SnerkRabbledauber @TheSecondVariation @appassionato
@jakimfett @7666 @f4grx @enron