In the US, everything you write anywhere online is copyrighted by you, unless you sign a copyright assignment agreement. It's automatic any time you put an expression into a fixed form, and there is no way to revoke that copyright.
As I understand it copyright has failed. Or rather we are into an age
of naked double standards where courts will enforce the copyright of
big-tech against you for "stealing" a movie, but will not enforce your
copyright against big-tech for "stealing" your data for its AI.
Copyright is still deeply important to prevent behemoths from just straight-up taking stuff individuals wrote and profiting from it with no consequences.
For instance, without copyright, traditional publishers could just take everything the authors they currently contract with have written, and every other current author, and publish it without paying the authors a cent.
ML training is a legal gray area right now, because it's a new thing, and we haven't had time to properly sit down and both understand what its effects are, and how it should be treated legally. It is possible that this process, when it ends up happening, will be captured by corruption; it is possible that it won't. But using the current frustrations and anger about ML training as evidence that copyright has "failed" is a vast oversimplification that ignores the very real good that copyright does in our society.
It's failing right now to protect millions/billions of people,
because we've decided that it's "legal gray area right now".
Maybe it should be, I don't know. I mean maybe it's time we said bye
bye to copyright?
There could be flip sides. If the world decides that ML sidesteps
copyright then I look forward to the entire corpus of LibGen, SciHub
etc being legally released as open models and the overnight demise of
Elsevier et al. (I once wrote a fiction about that [0])
My objection here is to seeing the clear wishes of the majority being
trodden over roughshod.
> I mean maybe it's time we said bye bye to copyright?
This is exactly the kind of oversimplified, baby-with-the-bathwater proposal I was talking about.
No, we should not "say bye bye to copyright". We should actually take the harder, more complex steps, requiring actual critical thinking and analysis, to fix the problem, rather than just pretending that a one-step grand gesture will be a magic bullet.
> We should actually take the harder, more complex steps, requiring
actual critical thinking and analysis,
Those are fine words. We're all about critical thinking and analysis
round here. But way I see it, folks already did some real hard critical
thinking and their analysis was "bollocks to that!"
And the judges said, "sorry the law that applies to you doesn't apply
when big money is involved". One rule for you, another rule for them.
So I'm kinda thinking we'll maybe have to get a little more critical
than you might be comfortable with.
> to fix the problem
It's always a good idea to pause right there. What is the problem? I
mean seriously... what exactly is the problem going on here? Because
from where I see it, the problem is a massive power imbalance
And it's a structural one. Because AI training compute and global
crawling/scraping is expensive and in the hands of the few.
I don't think this problem would look the same if every kid was
running AI training on a Raspberry Pi, and hoovering down JSTOR like
Aaron Swartz. People would be getting arrested, no?
Well, yes. The problem you are identifying is primarily a structural power imbalance.
It is not a structural power imbalance that can be fixed by abolishing copyright. Indeed, abolishing copyright is vastly more likely to hugely increase the power imbalance.
You are looking at the problem too narrowly (identifying it as "a problem with copyright", rather than "a problem with the power structures in our society"; "AI training and compute...in the hands of the few" rather than "most of the money and resources in the hands of the few"), and thus coming to counterproductive conclusions about how we might solve it.
It's very satisfying to imagine taking a big hammer to a system we know to be corrupt and serving those without our interests at heart. But just smashing the system does not build a new one in its place. And until you address the power imbalances, any system built to replace one you smash—assuming you can manage to do the smashing, which is highly suspect—is nearly guaranteed to simply be designed to serve the desires of the powerful even more than the one we have now.
Some good thoughts, though maybe you underestimate my bead on the
world, and perhaps overestimate my desire for "smashing". A more
peaceful, and just, time when we simply take their toys away will
come. That is certain. A question of "intellectual property"
remains. In a post-exploitation world, would we still want or need it?
Let's hope we keep living to see how it pans out. Respects.
