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Opinion: The Copyright Office is making a mistake on AI-generated art
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Technology
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Obviously I’m doing a poor job at getting my points through if you think I’m arguing for the current state of affairs.
It doesn’t mean I’m against copyright.
The principle of copyright is important, so is copy-left (eg. GPL).
Being for copyright doesn’t mean I am against artists being paid their fair share. These are not contradictory principles.
There are certainly huge problems with parts of copyright legislation, especially in the US, and in particular the DMCA.
I always recommend this TED Talk where Larry Lessig talks about the issues with DMCA, and even though it’s starting to get old now it’s still just as relevant and he is still just as on point:
https://youtu.be/7Q25-S7jzgs
However, the fact that you don’t care about how business works means you ignore the root of the problem - how business works.
I’m not going to argue for communism, but when politicians are for sale to the highest bidder the rest of us lose out.
Feel free to dive into other videos with Larry Lessig if the first one hits home.
I would particularly recommend these two:
https://youtu.be/mw2z9lV3W1g
https://youtu.be/PJy8vTu66tE
i can see how you might read that as me not understanding or otherwise being ignorant to how business functions, but its more that from the foundation upwards the way that we conceive of ownership and property is objectionable to me. the specific ways and methods by which capital is used to deprive people of resources and exploit their labor for profit are secondary to the problem of them doing the deprivation of resources and exploitation. i don't believe there is some sort of mechanistic solution that will give us good or fair capitalism, so all my solutions to the problem involve to the greatest extent possible providing all resources we can to everybody who needs them, and doing away with institutions that prevent us from doing that.
then we're definitely not on the same page lol.
according to Larry Lessig, i would be an extremist. i can admit that. i am. i am proudly pro-piracy. i would download a car, and i want everybody to have unfettered access to the sum total of human knowledge. i have negative respect for the intellectual property of corporations. i think generally looking to legal frameworks as a tool to prevent the exploitation of artists is kind of just a half step. we should be imagining a world where our ability to create, share, modify, and collaborate is unrestricted. that, to my mind, implies a world that does not have corporations owning our art, music, and technology.
I mean, it’s all fine on paper.
But… how… the… fuck… do…. we… get… there???
Communism is fine on paper. Fuck. Even capitalism is fine on paper.
However; through empiric data we can learn that humanity is full of shitheads who want to be in power and have control.
Sadly, as I see it, that is incompatible with any form of utopia.
I’m from Norway and we used to be fucking close to having an utopia for a short while. Politics were civil, the differences between low income and high income were low, and we actually pooled our oil money into a pension fund so that we would be wealthy when the oil age ended.
On top of that we were rich on natural resources and had abundant renewable electricity from harnessing our mountains (read: damming up valleys and putting rivers and falls in pipes) to create hydro power.
Combine that with a socialist government (“the Scandinavian model”) with free education for the masses, affordable housing, free healthcare, some of the best employee protections in the world, great consumer protection with the law basically granting consumers 5 years warranty on everything from cars to phones or TV’s.
Sadly, since everyone was feeling so wealthy everyone stopped caring. Housing is now anything but affordable. Electricity that we paid for by destroying beautiful nature is no longer a resource for the Norwegian people, but thanks to numerous new export cables to Europe and the fact that production is sold on a fucked-up “stock market” where the most expensive bid to produce electricity for any hour of the day sets the price for everyone, we now have extremely high and volatile electricity prices affecting inflation and reducing competitiveness of Norwegian businesses.
On top of that politicians keep getting caught with their hands in the cookie-jar at an ever increasing rate, and I think it must have been 20-30 years since we had a prime minister with actual work experience.
Call me cynical, but good things don’t last if we even get them at all.
The Romans knew it; the masses simply needs to be entertained by bread and circus and you can do what you want.
Social media is the best circus so far, and when everyone is busy debating pronouns or whatever flavor of distraction there is this week the political decisions that actually affect us gets made without anyone paying any attention.
Sincerely though, best of luck with your utopian society. I hope for all of us that we get what you describe.
I sadly suspect we will keep doing what we are doing until it kills the planet.
i am gonna call you cynical, at least a little bit. the reality is, we are today far closer to the kind of utopia i'm describing than in any other point in human history. access to knowledge has improved massively in only the span of a couple of decades, and even with how much things suck right now, its still like the best time to be alive. most of human history has been pretty miserable for most people.
climate change spooks me real bad, and i have felt the way you do. i have never lived in a country where we had the things you're describing you have lost. it doesn't matter. it doesn't even matter if we are going to kill the planet and everything's gonna die and things will just get worse and worse.
the reality is, our bodies have less than a hundred years, maybe even significantly less, before we become nothing, and in the long run, humanity and everything we've ever created will also become nothing. with that perspective, at least for me, the problem of what to do about the various injustices of the modern world becomes fairly simple. imma do what i can until i'm dead in the ground, then i won't care if we're in an anarcho-communist solar punk utopia or a nuclear wasteland.