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.
Wtf? Lemmy has absolutely lost the plot if you start calling the EFF “libertarian tech bros”. Some of you tankies are so far removed from reality that it sometimes feels like I am in a psych ward when I read these comments. Shame on you, really. The people at EFF have done more for the betterment of humanity than all of you combined, and more than you ever will.
k 🤣
If you think that copyright is there for the benefit of ordinary people, then I’ve got news for you.
I dislike the AI oligarchy as much as the next person. But copyright is never the tool to protect artistic integrity. Relying on it always fires back in favour of big corpos.
Wow, what a letdown…
and I thought eff was one of the good ones
They still are, even if you disagree with them on one point. It might be worth noting that the EFF isn’t a copyright defence house. Their mission is different. They support the open Internet.
I’m on dbzer0 and they’re pro-AI. I’m not, but I don’t disrespect their POV in their house. I feel like I’m skating a fine line being subbed here. They’re also one of the only instances that supports freedom of speech. I just understand that some of that speech I don’t agree with.
Well, it’s transformative, though when it’s AI that’s not automatically good. I think there is no way to win the copyright suits against the AI companies after Google book scanning was ruled transformative. What I don’t understand is why they aren’t in jail for the unauthorized access and disruption caused by the damn scraping.
This isn’t the first time. They already have supported the AI industry’s mass copytheft.
Damn, what the fuck?
Well they’re partially funded by Google for many years now…
Technically the truth. AI is trained on copyrighted works, but so is every artist alive today. There’s just a really important difference in human inspiration and creativity and a computer program piecing together what it’s already seen. One creates something new while standing on the shoulders of what came before, while the other just remixes what’s already there and tramples upon the backs of what came before. I think it’s important to know the difference.
The scale is also massively different. Some artist or intellectual reused the work of a few preceding people people and became famous (and sometimes rich) instead of them. But in the case of AI it’s a couple of already ultra rich owners vs millions of likely mostly struggling creators.
