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It's not theft
(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2025
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Are people really arguing that copyright infringement is theft?
We have come full circle.
we're focused on the double standard. it's theft and we go to prison when the people do it. it's innovation and good when the billionaires do it. who's always getting stolen from is the poor, and always by the billionaires. any attempt to reverse this flow is met with prison time.
No. They're saying that if the government is calling copyright theft by all other measures, this should be too.
It is the playing field being unlevel that is under question in both cases.
It’s only copyright theft when the poors do it.
If you are wealthy enough it is, if not then you are fucked.
Goes both ways doesn't it? People defending piracy of software but hating on AI.
But when an analog artist gets his inspiration (like AI) from other artists it's fine when an AI does it all hell breaks loose.
peak hypocrisy...
Only one of them is done out of corporate interest. If the courts want to hold individuals accountable, they should do the same to corporations. With an effort equal to gains.
Correct. I really don't give a rat's ass if someone uses my work to generate some derivative or even copies it indefinitely for some purpose where it is only used privately. It's incorporating it into a commercial for-profit product and attempting to sell it or pass it off as their own that's not going to fly with me.
I’m anti-AI and pro-piracy.
I object to paywalling access to culture and knowledge, because it degrades our society, cuts people out of participating in ongoing cultural conversations, and keeps people from enjoying the fruits of human creativity based solely on their income level.
I object to AI for basically the same reasons.
it's not complicated, yet people act like it is
I can understand why. They buy into AI vendors’ premise — that copyright is the only way to fight back.
But that’s not going to work. Because 1) they win either way, but more importantly: 2) if you zoom out, this is kinda the big tech playbook in general, right?
“Okay, define what constitutes a ‘taxi service’, so that I can compete against them while avoiding the regulations that apply to them.”
“Define ‘employment’, so I can use people’s labor without respecting their labor rights.”
“Define ‘purchase’, so I can charge money for access to something but take it away whenever I feel like it.”
So when we say “Hey, you’re being a jerk by using people’s own work to compete against them and disconnect them from their audience”, they say “Okay, define that in objective, quantifiable terms, and we’ll stop doing anything that fits that exact definition… but we’ll still continue doing basically that, obviously.”
So you’re fine with free open source models?
Not really, but I guess it depends whether you’re asking about my personal beliefs or policy positions.
My concerns about gen AI basically fall into these categories:
FOSS addresses some of those, to some degree. But none of them completely.
Should a technology be banned just because it’s not perfect? No. (And even if you decide a technology should be banned, you have to consider the practicality of actually enforcing it. It’s not like you can “uninvent” software.)
My biggest worry is actually the signal jamming. And there’s not really much we can do about that except to just decide not to use AI.
Edit: Btw, that was a good question and whoever downvoted you is a butt.
We don't have any state-of-the-art open source LLMs. We have open weights models. The reason for this is that for a true open source LLM you would need to open up your sources for training (which opens the possibility for people to sue you for using their content for training) and the techniques how you trained the model (which allows other developers to copy that to advance their own models)
The last true open source model was probably chatgpt 2 or something of that level.
Difference is for me, if I feed a LLM your work and now it can produce books, music, or art in your style, then yeah its infringement, especially if you monetise that output. Its devaluing your ability to make new and unique content if your work isn't protected if I can copy your style with a simple prompt for say a recruitment ad for ICE and there is fuck all you can do about it.
Why fight to prop up capitalism?
Which is more capitalistic, giant corporations like Facebook stealing others work and devaluing labour and talnet further or self created content that could be quite easily self published? Its classic big guy verses little guy.
Who's more likely to have the legal fees to pursue copyright infringement cases, the big corporations who do it all the time stringing people along until they go broke trying to fight them and than go and lobby for another 10 years copyright extension or the poor artist?
Copyright and IP exist for their benefit, not ours.
Seems like the opposite. Keeping the same legal considerations, but replacing LLM with a person
producing a derivative work with substantial changes (like a new idea) is a classic, time-tested way to produce similar work while upholding copyright. If that's not infringement when ordinary people do it, then how is that infringement for LLMs?
Not really at all.
Fifty shades of grey had to change its entire setting and characters to get published. I can't just produce princess monoke two and not get sued.
I can't even sell t shirts with either on via etsy or similar without risk. Yet I could steal studio ghibilis art style with zero talent involved using a llm to advertise my business, seemingly perfectly legal right now.
You never hear music in a show or movie that sounds like a shitty knock-off of popular music to comply with copyrights? It happens a lot.
"Princess Mononoke 2" would copy a bit more than merely style: characters, setting, theme, story, expression.
Imitating mere style (like Ghibli) for something substantially different was legal before just as it is now for human or LLM. I think people like you are throwing fits because they never realized it (or cared) until LLMs started doing what skilled people were already doing long before.
"Style" is not a trademarkeable asset, you buffon.