Charlie StrossIf your corporation's business model relies on lawbreaking, your corporation has no legal legitimacy.
We don't let narcotic cartels and trafficking rings list themselves on the stock exchange: why should OpenAI or Facebook be any different?
NiceMicro@cstross copyright doesn't give you total control over your creative work.
under US and Canadian law, there are "fair use" exceptions, and "being transformative" is one of those, meaning, no consent of the original author is required. And as far as I know, most copyright lawyers expect "training an AI" as transformative.
So, artists are actually demanding a change to the law in free use, while the drug cartels are breaking law that already exists.
@nicemicro Firstly, there's existing court rulings in the US that the output of AI can't be copyrighted. Secondly, I'm not American: I'm in the UK, and "fair dealing" (here) is much more restrictive than US "fair use". Thirdly, OpenAI, Facebook, et al acquired copyrighted works illegally—by hoovering up warez sites—which remains illegal regardless of "fair use" doctrine.
@cstross the first point is irrelevant, the fact that the end user can't copyright the work, has no bearing on whether the creation of the tool broke any laws.
to the second point, I'm not in the US either, and in my country of residence it is also more restrictive, but the corporations are there, so how one would litigate it internationally is interesting, but kinda ruins the drug cartel analogy (like you want to go after american weed shops because weed in the UK is illegal?)
@cstross the third point is also a good point, but let's remember, that as a user *downloading* from warez sites is also considered by most countries to be "okay", because the illegal thing is not getting duped by someone selling you contraband, the real issue is distributing the contraband. This is why (and sorry, on the internet one hears mostly US examples) the IP holders go after torrent users: on torrent you also become distributor.
@cstross so I guess if one could prove that OpenAI and Facebook did use torrent and did seed whatever they torrented, that would be interesting.
The international aspects are also interesting from a nerdy point of view, I'm curious how people litigate IP laws in the age of the internet when you can host content from anywhere to everywhere.
Because in the '80s, in the Eastern Bloc, you were allowed to infringe on patents even from the West, but not on patents from the USSR 😂
@cstross 100% off-topic, but when I was working in a pharma company back in my home country, people told me how when in 1990, the socialist economic system was switched to capitalism and the government became democratic, there were multiple processes that had to be re-engineered because they were a 100% copy of western patents, and later they had to prove that they don't use that old process anymore in court to be allowed to sell in western countries.