Comment by runarberg
3 hours ago
No, I reject this framing. Copyright violations are orthogonal to labor theft. Labor theft can include copyright violation, but it doesn’t have to. My MIT licensed code may not have been violated (it probably was though; where is the copy of the notice that my license requires?) but my labor was for sure stolen.
I am fine with people using my work, copying my source code, and distributing derivative work. I am not fine with AI companies stealing everyone’s work and renting it back to us.
You already valued your own labor at zero by giving it away for free. How is taking something you give away for free suddenly considered "stealing"?
The same way that Fitzcarraldo stole the labor of the Amazon Indians when they moved the ship over the mountain in order to profit from the rubber.
Previously when I licensed my code with a liberal license I got something back, credit, contributions, connections, job opportunities, etc. The AI companies stole my labor, then they demanded I pay them, and finally they took my job.
Stealing labor itself isn’t actually a thing. Your wages could be stolen, except - what wages? Maybe the output from your labor could be stolen, but not if nothing material was lost. If you can’t point to a specific intellectual property violation, you have no case.
Did they steal Wikipedia? Wikipedia is still there.
Stealing my labor means that I do all the work, and they take all the profit.
This would be true even if I signed a contract stating that I give all my labor away for free to my exploiter. You cannot sign away your rights like that, and my exploiter is not allowed to abuse my goodwill this way.
It sounds like you're making a claim to someone else's profits with a very thin rationale for why you had anything to do with it. Basically, claiming something that never was yours and has next to nothing to do with anything you worked on.
1 reply →