Comment by strogonoff
6 days ago
One does not need to be a skeptic about machine learning and its potential as technology to refuse to engage with its practical applications when they are clearly based on suspect ethics (e.g., IP theft[0]).
The ends do not justify the means. It is a similar judgement as when refusing to buy products of forced labour or disproportionate environmental impact, or to invest in war and bloodshed. Everyone makes one for themselves.
Coincidentally (or not), if said suspect ethics were properly addressed, it would ameliorate some of the reservations even the actual skeptics have. Licensing training data would make everyone involved aware of what is happening, give them an ability to vote and freedom to choose, soften the transition as opposed to pulling ground from under people’s feet.
[0] Control over intellectual property has given us fantastic things (cf. Linux, Blender, etc.; you can’t have copyleft without an ability to defend it, and IP laws provide that ability). If yesterday we were sued for singing the happy birthday song in public, and today we see corporations with market caps the size of countries pretending that IP ownership is not much of a thing, the alarm bells should be deafening.
The article really uses some rhetorical tricks.
The stuff that Disney does to extend copyright is not the same as assuming daft punk is public domain.
And there’s a difference between what is human scale infringement and what’s going on now.
Nor does it mean that people don’t have the right to point out that it’s piracy.
If being more in line with the espoused values is the issue, then it’s to make an effort to ensure that we stop consuming pirated content. Or building tools to encourage piracy - this turns out to be a relatively small group of people, compared to everyone in tech.
And people have already stopped piracy - once alternatives showed up. There is the issue that you don’t own the stuff you stream, but that’s a separate topic.
The moral arguments presented persuasive.