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Comment by conartist6

8 hours ago

God forbid we protect people from the theft machine

There's a lot of problems with AI that need some carefully thought out regulation, but infringing on rights granted by IP law still isn't theft.

  • It's theft. But not all IP theft, or theft in general, is morally equivalent. A poor person stealing a loaf of bread or pirating a movie they couldn't afford is just. A corrupt elite stealing poor farmers' food or stealing content from small struggling creators is not.

    • >pirating a movie they couldn't afford is just

      I wish this argument would die. It's so comically false, and is just used to allow people to pave over their cognitive dissonance with the real misfortunes of a small minority.

      I am a millennial and rode the wave of piracy as much as the next 2006 computer nerd. It was never, ever, about not being able to afford these things, and always about how much you could get for free. For every one person who genuinely couldn't afford a movie, there were at least 1000 who just wanted it free.

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    • When you steal a loaf of bread, somebody's loaf of bread is missing. That's worlds apart from making an unauthorized copy of something.

    • Ask yourself: who owns the IP you're defending? It's not struggling artists, it's corporations and billionaires.

      Stricter IP laws won't slow down closed-source models with armies of lawyers. They'll just kill open-source alternatives.

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  • Agreed. Regulate AI? Sure, though I have zero faith politicians will do it competently. But more IP protection? Hard pass. I'd rather abolish patents.

    • I think one of the key issues is that most of these discussions are happening at too high of an abstraction level. Could you give some specific examples of AI regulations that you think would be good? If we actually start elevating and refining key talking points that define the direction in which we want things to go, they will actually have a chance to spread.

      Speaking of IP, I'd like to see some major copyright reform. Maybe bring down the duration to the original 14 years, and expand fair use. When copyright lasts so long, one of the key components for cultural evolution and iteration is severely hampered and slowed down. The rate at which culture evolves is going to continue accelerating, and we need our laws to catch up and adapt.

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