Comment by account42
9 hours ago
> Sometimes HN feels unrecognizable with how much the comments I read are pro- intellectual property.
How so? Many people just rightfully care mainly about the cultural exploitation aspect and the impact on society. Under that lens you can be anti-copyright when it is used by corporations to exploit individuals and pro-copyright or at least pro-equal enforcement when it is ignored by corporations to exploit individuals.
To be clear, I was never actually really one of the pro-piracy types. Honestly, I think very few people are really all that high-falutin' principled anyway. It really is hard when it's free to reproduce; you having something isn't preventing someone else from having it as well.
The one clear straight line I can draw is: people are pro- or anti-IP when it benefits them.
If you're a broke student, you were anti-IP (and convincing yourself you were really just sticking it to the record companies, not the musicians). If you were an indie musician who benefited from name recognition you could afford to be anti-IP to get your name out there. If you were a well-known musician back then, you were relatively pro-IP, to get your royalties.
These days, if you're a struggling artist you're pro-IP and screw the AI companies for crawling your work. If you're a small business plumber scrambling to make ends meet and AI helps you make business cards and flyers, you're anti-IP. (At least as far as AI and its training goes - if someone tries to use your brand, you're back to pro-IP.)
Anyway, since there's no physical basis, IP is a weird legal restriction solely there to benefit certain groups, and whether you support it (or should support it) or not depends on context and which groups you're in at the moment.
This nuanced take is appreciated less and less as HN grows.