Thread

1. jacquesm · 1789726316 · focus · HN ↗

   It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up. Crimes this large are crimes against humanity. So many people whose life's work got appropriated without consideration, compensation or consent it is baffling.

   It is said that at the heart of every great fortune there is a great crime, so it should be no surprise that the most valuable companies on the planet will most likely result from this crime. And given that justice can be bought by those with the most money you can forget about anything coming of this.

   1. pingou · 1789726907 · focus · HN ↗

      >It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up

      Would regulation help with that? Right now you can download free models that have been trained on that "stolen" data.

      With regulation and compensation, only rich companies would be able to do that, and they would definitely not give it back for free. I put "stolen" in quotation marks because it's still unclear if we can call that stealing. Nobody would say a human reading a book and learning from it is stealing. I'm not saying that a machine doing the same is equivalent, but the only thing I am sure of is that I am not sure we can call it "stealing".

      1. CJefferson · 1789727885 · focus · HN ↗

         We don’t have to treat people reading books and companies stealing all human knowledge the same.

         Also, companies spent a long time telling us downloading single songs via Napster was the worst thing ever, before torrenting every book in existence themselves. I don’t believe any of these companies have paid for all the books they have trained on.

         1. philipallstar · 1789729783 · focus · HN ↗

            > companies spent a long time telling us downloading single songs via Napster was the worst thing ever

            One's world cannot be so drawn in crayon that "companies" is a useful level of detail with something like that. There's no irony in two totally different companies (one of which was actually an industry body, the RIAA) doing two totally different things.

            1. card_zero · 1789730251 · focus · HN ↗

               However, there is irony in a subscription to pirated material.
            2. dbspin · 1789730816 · focus · HN ↗

               Does ones world view get upgraded to oil paint if one acknowledges that it's the same class of people - and in many cases literally the same people, PE firms and family offices - profiting from 2000s era record industry profits and on the hook for / in line to profit from Open AI, Anthropic and the rest if they IPO?

               1. philipallstar · 1789733959 · focus · HN ↗

                  No, for obvious reasons. "acknowledging" implies it's a self-evident truth that people are just refusing to see as such, when it just isn't. Completely different companies - in fact one is the Recording Industry Association of America, an industry body that exists to protect the IP of artists for the mutual benefit of artists and publishers.

                  While it's seductive to carve the world up into goodies and baddies, it doesn't make it true.

                  1. TeMPOraL · 1789735138 · focus · HN ↗

                     Moreover, it's the people/companies from RIAA and adjacent circles (news publishing) that are stoking the "AI training is theft" arguments that people here are so breathlessly repeating - in a twist of irony, it's the people that suddenly decided to align themselves with media/news conglomerates.
                  2. dbspin · 1789748834 · focus · HN ↗

                     > an industry body that exists to protect the IP of artists for the mutual benefit of artists and publishers.

                     This is the most unintentionally hilarious misunderstanding of what the RIAA does, and the power relationship between artists and publishers I've read in years. In practice the RIAA exists to maintain the copyright monopoly of a few major labels. Rent seeking from the non-artist owned catalogues of the enormous majority of musicians who never 'recoup' their initial record deal.

                     > While it's seductive to carve the world up into goodies and baddies, it doesn't make it true.

                     It's far more seductive (since it's the default) to assume class relations don't exist, and wealth distribution is meritocratic. There may not be 'goodies and baddies', but there absolutely are rentiers and workers, billionaires and plebs.

                     All the major labels are public companies. Which means it's the very same people - the investment class, who claim ownership and extract wealth from say Warner and Open AI (should it make any money - obviously the whole house of cards could come down first).

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