My mom once asked me "who told you life was fair?" in response to a statement @ 3-4 years old that something wasn't fair and it seems particularly applicable here...
"Independent music publisher Rou...
@nprofile1q...
You’re conflating big corporations weaponizing copyright law with small creators fighting to own the actual output of their labor. You’re also conflating copyright in expressive works (e.g., songs) with ordinary services and wage labor that do not fix a protectable work of authorship—e.g. a janitor’s job, which is work-for-hire employment, not a copyrightable composition. You’re additionally conflating both of the above with writing code, which sits between them: source code is generally protected as a literary work in its expression (which can be enforced via licensing), while algorithms, ideas, and methods of operation which are not.
So-called intellectual property law has flaws. But treating AI companies’ uncompensated scraping and generation of derivative works as just another case of “copyright is bad” is unpaid PR for non-FLOSS AI firms (and most prop too) and the bootleggers who ride with them. It's also just inaccurate. Handing over the master keys so they can monetize everyone else’s creative work for free is theft. You may disagree and think your business classes taught you this is fact/truth, but you don’t decide for other people, and you don’t override laws that emerged from consensus and time, beginning as far back as the early 18th century. It's also sloppy, with respect, to reify multiple different forms of work integrity and protections - not to mention legal concepts - as abuse or exercise of power, coercion, and or control.
Kindly,
Jonathan Haack
You’re conflating big corporations weaponizing copyright law with small creators fighting to own the actual output of their labor. You’re also conflating copyright in expressive works (e.g., songs) with ordinary services and wage labor that do not fix a protectable work of authorship—e.g. a janitor’s job, which is work-for-hire employment, not a copyrightable composition. You’re additionally conflating both of the above with writing code, which sits between them: source code is generally protected as a literary work in its expression (which can be enforced via licensing), while algorithms, ideas, and methods of operation which are not.
So-called intellectual property law has flaws. But treating AI companies’ uncompensated scraping and generation of derivative works as just another case of “copyright is bad” is unpaid PR for non-FLOSS AI firms (and most prop too) and the bootleggers who ride with them. It's also just inaccurate. Handing over the master keys so they can monetize everyone else’s creative work for free is theft. You may disagree and think your business classes taught you this is fact/truth, but you don’t decide for other people, and you don’t override laws that emerged from consensus and time, beginning as far back as the early 18th century. It's also sloppy, with respect, to reify multiple different forms of work integrity and protections - not to mention legal concepts - as abuse or exercise of power, coercion, and or control.
Kindly,
Jonathan Haack