Training AI models on copyrighted works is "squarely what transformative use is," EFF’s Tori Noble told Reason - these are "general purpose tools" and "exactly the kind of creation that copyright is designed to foster.” https://reason.com/2026/09/04/doj-says-barring-ai-training-on-copyrighted-material-could-severely-hamper-tech-progress/
If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to cancel any donations to these libertarian tech bros.
After listening to Cory Doctorow’s latest book, I did see a different perspective on this. His argument is that the technical analysis of a copyrighted work has been fair use - it’s how we have search engines, for instance. The key is that you can’t copyright that generated analysis.
He also argues that copyright right now is so ridiculously tilted towards the major media/tech companies that any perceived benefit to the artist from it gets absorbed by the companies because the marketplace has become so consolidated.
If your expectation is that the EFF will denounce anything AI-related you should certainly cancel your donations. I’ve found them to be great champions of the lost cause of trying to preserve our digital rights. That they haven’t given up despite the insurmountable odds is inspiring to me.
Cory Doctorow has no credibility in regards to AI ever since he called opposition to AI “purity testing” among other strawman arguments. All the former “good guys”, the EFF, Cory Doctorow, Linus Torvalds, even fucking Debian (who once shipped a renamed version of Firefox because of potential copyright issues) are one after the other showing their true colours. Meanwhile the fascist creators of AI models openly state that they want to push the very people who created the work they copied to “train” their product, out of the market. This is one of the reasons we even have copyright. Call it tilted towards media all you want, they don’t just get to decide that it no longer matters now that it is inconvenient to the tech oligarchy.
No, and I have no plans on doing so based on the arguments outlined by the initial post. Arguing that search engines and AI systems are even remotely similar is a false equivalency and doesn’t really make me hopeful that the rest of their book is worth reading. I don’t really want to know what kind of mental gymnastics are necessary to come to that conclusion, but it probably involves talking to a chatbot for copious amounts of time.
Just for the slow kids in the back of the class. Search engines surface my work to a larger audience. They make it discoverable. I can use this audience to generate an income for myself. This is a fair deal. AI systems take my work without compensation, create a lossy compilation of multiple other works and sell it back to that audience while leaving me with nothing. Fuck anyone who calls that “fair use”.
dogma, got it. and in return, i didn’t read the rest of your comment based on your asinine initial sentence. heavens forbid you should be exposed to ideas you don’t agree with. there’s no way that can enrich you, right??? certainly there’s no way it could help inform what I’m going to generously describe as your activism. best tune it out LA LA LA LA
After listening to Cory Doctorow’s latest book, I did see a different perspective on this. His argument is that the technical analysis of a copyrighted work has been fair use - it’s how we have search engines, for instance. The key is that you can’t copyright that generated analysis.
He also argues that copyright right now is so ridiculously tilted towards the major media/tech companies that any perceived benefit to the artist from it gets absorbed by the companies because the marketplace has become so consolidated.
If your expectation is that the EFF will denounce anything AI-related you should certainly cancel your donations. I’ve found them to be great champions of the lost cause of trying to preserve our digital rights. That they haven’t given up despite the insurmountable odds is inspiring to me.
Cory Doctorow has no credibility in regards to AI ever since he called opposition to AI “purity testing” among other strawman arguments. All the former “good guys”, the EFF, Cory Doctorow, Linus Torvalds, even fucking Debian (who once shipped a renamed version of Firefox because of potential copyright issues) are one after the other showing their true colours. Meanwhile the fascist creators of AI models openly state that they want to push the very people who created the work they copied to “train” their product, out of the market. This is one of the reasons we even have copyright. Call it tilted towards media all you want, they don’t just get to decide that it no longer matters now that it is inconvenient to the tech oligarchy.
Have you read the book or are you just dismissing the arguments without even considering them?
I read the book and you are right to point out that this d-bag is totally misunderstanding Cory Doctorow’s arguements.
What a chud.
No, and I have no plans on doing so based on the arguments outlined by the initial post. Arguing that search engines and AI systems are even remotely similar is a false equivalency and doesn’t really make me hopeful that the rest of their book is worth reading. I don’t really want to know what kind of mental gymnastics are necessary to come to that conclusion, but it probably involves talking to a chatbot for copious amounts of time.
Just for the slow kids in the back of the class. Search engines surface my work to a larger audience. They make it discoverable. I can use this audience to generate an income for myself. This is a fair deal. AI systems take my work without compensation, create a lossy compilation of multiple other works and sell it back to that audience while leaving me with nothing. Fuck anyone who calls that “fair use”.
dogma, got it. and in return, i didn’t read the rest of your comment based on your asinine initial sentence. heavens forbid you should be exposed to ideas you don’t agree with. there’s no way that can enrich you, right??? certainly there’s no way it could help inform what I’m going to generously describe as your activism. best tune it out LA LA LA LA