I see a lot of people responding to the LLMs-and-copyright situation with calls for stricter enforcement of copyright, and honestly I think that's a terrible take.
Not because these LLM companies shouldn't see consequences (they should!), but because there's a much more important observation to make: this situation demonstrates how the whole "copyright protects artists" has always been a myth.
If copyright truly protected artists, there would have been swift enforcement against these LLM companies, in the same way that there's swift enforcement when you start a piracy website in eg. the US. But there wasn't.
And that shows what copyright *really* is; a tool of power for those with a lot of money to spend on legal warfare. It's always been like that; granting power to those who already have lots of it, and taking it away from those who have very little of it.
That's why these LLM companies seem immune to copyright law - they have money, and you as the artist do not.
Copyright is a fundamentally bad solution to protecting artists, it's designed to benefit the rich and powerful. You don't solve that by doing more of it! What we *should* be talking about is better solutions that *do* actually work.
great point!
https://social.pixie.town/@joepie91/114506690645972126
#ai #llm
@joepie91@social.pixie.town unbelievably cultured, true, real, correct, and good post
@joepie91 Us pirates have known this for decades. You can get in a lot of trouble for infringing upon the copyright of a company with lawyers or the money to hire them, but for an individual artist without that backing any attempt to enforce their copyright is futile. The only valuable thing you can do with your copyright is find a publisher willing to take it and do the enforcing for you, in return for most of the revenue.
Cory Doctorow has a few.
@joepie91 I've been pondering some kind of library-model kind of solution for income (assuming we're still in the same general economic system as now) for artists, whereby each (or approximate) use of a work would just get recorded in some monthly pool and then tax-funds can be distributed to the creators based on their proportional use.
I believe e.g. TV-ratings (that is, how many viewers each show had) at least used to be statistically generated by having a very much smaller number than the total populace have some device recording what they watched and then those were presumed statistically representative and the numbers scaled up as appropriate to make the total viewers numbers, so that could be a foundation, with maybe tweaks for smaller creators.
Seems like something like that should be possible.
@joepie91 Copyright can work if you pay/file it registered and probably alcan afford a decent lawyer.
@joepie91 I also feel that treating an infinitely copyable and shareable thing as a finite resource is a flawed idea.
Information "wants" to be free, we should find a better way to supports artists, and benefit the public, while leaning into this quality.
Also, this isn't a case of "better something than nothing".
Any kind of 'stricter enforcement' for copyright that gets called for and instituted as a result of LLM companies, *will* be weaponized against the powerless (independent artists and others alike) in the future.