Comment by moron4hire
16 days ago
It's really weird to me how people on this site used to have a much bigger problem with ripping off other people's designs and work, but the minute it became turnkey it was like, "sorry art nerd guess you starve now roll coal".
It wasn't that many years ago when startups or open source software were being built on the back of stealing others' art: Napster, Mega, Bit Torrent, etc. Not everyone, but forums like this were filled with apologists claiming it was the fault of those rights owners for not making their content available cheaper.
I don't anything about Mega, but BitTorrent was not designed for stealing other's art. That's an unfair claim to make.
Yes, Napster was specifically started for sharing files people didn't have the rights to share, but I still don't think it's a fair comparison because nobody sharing files on Napster ever tried to claim it was their music they were sharing. If people were taking Metallica's music and recording their own versions of it that were 99% identical and then claiming they were the original artist, that would be a closer analogy. Napster also didn't receive the massive PR campaigns, huge institutional investment, the government blind-eye-turning, etc. that AI is enjoying today. Napster was also successfully sued for promoting copyright infringement.
I didn’t make it this way. It’s not my fault.