Comment by CamperBob2
17 hours ago
No one cares. Copyright in general is done, and we are all stronger now. Don't fight AI, fight for open models.
17 hours ago
No one cares. Copyright in general is done, and we are all stronger now. Don't fight AI, fight for open models.
Great! So I assume it is now Completely Fine to rip Netflix / Hulu / Disney+ / whatever and share it with everyone I know?
Copyright isn't "done", copyright has just been restricted to the rich and powerful. AI has essentially made it legal to steal from anyone who isn't rich enough to sue you - which in the case of the main AI companies means everyone except a handful of giants.
TIL I'm "rich and powerful." It doesn't feel any different, I've got to say.
The thing is, copyright is not done. The legal framework still exists and is enforced so I am not sure how to read your reply as anything other than a strongly worded opinion. Just ask Disney.
I use AI every day in my dev workflows, yet I am still easily able to empathize with those who did not intend for their code to be laundered through AI to remove their attribution (or whatever other caveats applied in their licensing.)
> Just ask Disney.
Disney saw which way the wind is blowing and invested over a billion into OpenAI
If they saw the wind they wouldn't have chosen OpenAI
The thing is, nobody in China gives a rat's patoot about copyright. If we do, they win.
A compromise might have been possible, based on treaties engineered by the people who brought us the TPP, but nobody in the current US government is capable of negotiating anything like that or inclined to try. And it wouldn't exactly leave the rest of us better off if they did.
As a result, copyright is a zero-sum game from a US perspective, which matters because that's where the majority of leading research happens on the majority of available compute. Every inch of ground gained by Big IP comes at America's expense.
So they must lose, decisively and soon. Yes, the GPL will be lost as collateral damage. I'm OK with that. You will be, too.
I know tech normally breaks the rules/laws and have been able to just force through their desired outcome (to the detriment of society), but I don't think they are going to be able just ignore copyright. If anything those who depend on copyright see how ruthlessly/poor faith tech has treated previous industries and/or basically anyone once they have the leverage.
Tech is becoming universally hated whereas before it was adored and treated optimistically/preferably.
there are no open models. none. zero.
there are binary files that some companies are allowing you to download, for now. it was called shareware in the old days.
one day the tap will close and we'll see then what open models really means
From a political perspective there's no closing that tap, only opening it further. As long as China exists there will be constant pressure to try to stay ahead, or at least match Chinese models. And China is gleefully increasing that pressure over time, just waiting for the slip that causes a serious migration to their models.
Not true; e.g. https://allenai.org/open-models .
For my own purposes, open weights are 95% as good, to be honest. I understand that not everyone will agree with that. As long as training takes hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of somebody else's compute, we're always going to be at the big companies' mercy to some extent.
At some point they will start to restrict access, as you suggest, and that's the point where the righteous indignation displayed by the neo-Luddites will be necessary and helpful. What I advocate is simply to save up enough outrage for that battle. Don't waste your passion defending legacy copyright interests.
> and that's the point where the righteous indignation displayed by the neo-Luddites will be necessary and helpful
At that point it will be far, far, faaaaar too late.
> Don't waste your passion defending legacy copyright interests
The companies training big models are actively respecting copyright from anyone big enough to actually fight back, and soaking everyone else.
They are actively furthering the entrenchment of Big IP Law.
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