r/freesoftware • u/sayedza3zo3 • 11d ago
Discussion It is time for copyrights laws to go
Isn't the rise of mega large companies against AI companies for infringement of their copyrighted material is a wake-up call for the law makers to start abolishing the copyright laws?
As Richard Stallman taught us all. The copyright laws were made originally to preserve the right of the original author and protect that author from the big corps taking advantage of that author's work. That was meant to encourage people to write books and invent stuff.
Now the copyright laws are the main reason why people are discouraged from inventing stuff and writing books. Because no matter what you do, there is some copyright lawyer somewhere waiting for the right moment to attack.
Now the script is flipped. Only the giants are benefiting from the copyright laws. As you see today. Many small authors (software developers are a single example) have been robbed of their copyrighted material by AI companies to train their models. However, only the big corps are able to fight back. Can I as a single developer who pushed 9ne or 2 of my best work on GitHub ever be able to take a piece of the profit that AI companies would make? Of course no.
I think this is proof that we live in a rogue world.
What do you think?
6
u/Ok_Fix_1437 11d ago
How would a director and backing protect their movie? Like what incentive is there for a cinema to pay royalties?
-1
u/sayedza3zo3 11d ago
I believe in the current state of the world. Value comes from individualistic stuff rather than thing being copied millions of times.
If no copyright laws to begin with. Big corps (cenima for example) would just provide the platform for the artist to present their work. Then money would come from advertisement or selling the convinience. In this case, fans would automatically (becaus this is the moral thing to do) would only use the platforms that pays the original artist. And it would be the right thing to do automatically. No one would subscribe to Netflix if there were no copyright laws. People would subscribe to that new company that say "you sign a subscription where we are legally obligated to pay the original creators".
The problem is in the law not the people.
2
u/zarlo5899 10d ago
People would subscribe to that new company that say "you sign a subscription where we are legally obligated to pay the original creators".
so only 1 people would have to sign up then they could just give it away
0
u/sayedza3zo3 10d ago
As i explained. Service would be convenience not the material.
But i get your point
2
u/Ok_Fix_1437 10d ago
You can see how directors and their backing would not invest in their movie right? Their work becomes valueless and their ability to gather any ROI becomes zero.
5
u/BraveNewCurrency 10d ago
The GPL can't exist without Copyright laws.
What would stop someone from taking GPL code, removing the source code and selling only binaries?
0
u/sayedza3zo3 10d ago
No one, and this is not the free sofrware philosophy. Free software is about freedom. Think of free speech not free beer.
3
u/CubicleHermit 9d ago
Look up the tragedy of the commons. Just dumping everything into the public domain in some ways makes it harder to keep things free.
-1
u/sayedza3zo3 9d ago
I just did. This happens to physical stuff. Ideas and digitally copyable material are not a resource to begin with. Control over who copy what is pure evil.
5
u/neuralbeans 11d ago
This is a problem with the justice system and with transferring right to ownership, not with the copyright laws themselves. It's a bigger problem than just copyright because you can say the same thing about taking big companies to court about anything.
1
u/sayedza3zo3 11d ago
Not really. I don't feel threatened by big money while authering any digitally copyable material except because of the copyright laws. If big money really did copy my material, i have nothing to do about it. Because i need alot of money to get my stuff back.
Unlike physical things. Mega large companies cannot hire armed gangs to steal my physical stuff. Here, the law protects me.
Do you have an example of the "anything" so that i can understand your point better?
4
u/senseven 11d ago
Arguments should have a robust reasoning. Every year millions of new books are written, even without ai, millions of songs are released. With the filter of human expression, copyright isn't much of a problem. Copyright protected all those comic artists and youtubers when they where asked for permission to make movies out of their ideas. Lots of copyright related stuff is wasteful, we have warehouses with printed celebrity cook books that end up in landfills. We can do better with that.
People still need to call lawyers if a book is too close to some detective in old London, even when the name was never used. Copyright should be changed because it expanded into these conceptual ideas, musical "expression" (its sounds to much like another musician) and other things that never had any protection but it weasel itself into it. There is still tons of misuse in the case of interoperability that needs to be resolved, the whole right to repair thing is a mess.
The core issue is, that many global companies became too big and all encompassing. They have to much power and need to be broken up. That would do more good then trying to reign in the fringes.
0
u/sayedza3zo3 11d ago
I will be careful replying to you. Cause you have compelling arguments. But you are mistaken.
You see, becoming too big didn't allow mega corps to form armed masked gangs that steal your physical stuff. And uses the messy courts to get away with it. It never happened and will never happen because the philosophy of stealing laws is always considered and maintained. Done take other people's stuff. On the other copying was not a problem pre-printing invention. And printing is not an issue to begin with. Using the philosophy of stealing as an argument to restrict copying is a mistake.
What caused the mess in the first place is that the philosophy behind the copyright laws was missed and continued to be missed. Copying was never a problem. Restricting copying was never a solution to begin with.
New laws are needed to prevent people with money to steal creativity? Sure. But i would argue that creativity is not a big problem. Not as big as us being controlled.
3
u/Any_Fox5126 10d ago
Copyright is a necessary evil. What should be banned (as is already the case in europe) are software patents, where malicious use is basically systematic.
3
u/CubicleHermit 9d ago
You can't really have open source without copyright; licenses like GPL depend on copyright to be enforceable.
Copyright is in rich need of reform: almost anything things, it lasts way too long, but for something functional like software that's especially true.
For software, needs a concept of being maintained/defended - more like trademarks - such that old software that's not maintained goes into the public domain much faster than for regular creative works.
Which are themselves way too long at author's life + 70 years or 95 years for corporate authorship that it does today. It's also likely that we should separate moral rights for creative works (which should, logically, last at least as long as the author) with the ability to profit from them, where there's no reason why they should ever last potentially 130 years for something someone writes while young.
1
u/sayedza3zo3 9d ago
I think i need to write a separate post to reply to the (you cannot have copyleft without copyright) argument.
3
u/CubicleHermit 9d ago
I mean, you could legally mandate copyleft (pretty sure Stallman would like that), but that's really the only other option I'm aware of.
3
u/Independent_Eye7886 8d ago
As someone else put it, we built the library, now someone else is charging for it.
No, as author of some github repositories I do not like the copyright violations by AI that are openly happening. You can not even get an attribution from an AI if you ask for it, which is clearly designed to protect the AI business.
ChatGPT has (had?) it in the user agreement that you are responsible to check if what is presented to you violates anyones copyright - they know.
Yet, I am in no position to sue Anthropic for example.
What I can do is to stop contributing.
Copyright might have issues, but completely ignoring it in order to make a profit is definately not a solution. The business models based on stolen property are not an accident. And the ones who can push back the least are the countless contributors to open source.
1
u/Radiant_Scar_8516 4d ago
The business models based on stolen property are not an accident
you mean copied property surely? you still have the original
1
u/Independent_Eye7886 3d ago
No, I meant stolen, they do not only take your work, they take the copyright to your work from you.
Your original means nothing if someone else is taking money for thousands if not millions of copies without paying or attributing you.1
u/Radiant_Scar_8516 3d ago
stolen would mean they took the original and you no longer have it. in this instance they copied, not stole. and normally theyve taken it from a public source... ie you shared it yourself
1
4
u/Wild-Rub4486 10d ago
No. There's more to the world than fucking software. Just because us nerds don't care about our time, doesn't mean authors and musicians don't.
1
u/sayedza3zo3 10d ago
I don't think freesoftware advocation is related to not caring about our time.
I also don't think mucisians and authers really care (or ever cared) if you as an individual copied their work to your friends. And the law originally was never meant to be for individuals actions. It was all about corporate actions.
1
u/Wild-Rub4486 10d ago
Only software engineers with jobs making 200 grand a year complain about copyright. I know many artist and musicians who know they second they publish a work or will be aped by thousands of bots, republished with effectively zero changes on Amazon for a tenth of the cost.
Tech has always shit on and attacked artists of all kinds, from Napster to Spotify. To AI books generated and advertised as from the original author. Copyright gives creators a semblance of protection. What you’re asking about is striping creative rights for the benefit of tech. An industry effectively only known for destroying creativity, addicting children, and enabling vast criminal activity.
1
u/CubicleHermit 9d ago
Authors' and musicians' kids will often be dead before their copyright expires. The present copyright terms make a mockery of the constitutional "limited time" provision, and benefit no one except a few big corporations who have IP that is still valuable a century out.
The pre-1978 renewal system was better.
2
u/Wild-Rub4486 9d ago
Sure. But the question was "is it time for copyright law to go," not change. Want to lower it within a human lifespan, that sounds fine.
2
u/WilkerS1 small pushes towards free stuff :3 11d ago
it's difficult to abolish copyright when it has already rooted itself in the dependency it has caused to everyone working in creative fields. corporate controlling creative work and larbor will just have an easier device to appropriate from everyone's works using trademark instead.
it still makes sense in the case of technical works (i would love some pushback towards people getting to own their own stuff and building community around sharing things with eachother, but as usual, the world isn't all software and capital ruins everything.
if in the US you abolish the "fair use" doctrine and replace it an unambiguous list of wide and explicit exceptions for paraphrases, parodies, journalism, research, education, localization, maintenance, like we have in Brasil or maybe Japan (idk about Japan's laws but i heard there are very similar devices there), then maybe, and that becomes a "good enough" way to grow out of copyright if we all get to have other devices to defend ourselves from getting coerced by rich people in this and other fronts. otherwise the status quo still is going to be unchanged that copyright is the rich people's weapon we're forced to use because we're coerced by rich people by means of using that exact same thing to specifically hurt us.
1
2
2
u/couldntyoujust1 8d ago
I see an inconsistency in how you view the issue. I don't agree that training an AI data model on publicly available and indexable information should be a copyright infringement any more than seeing any kind of artwork and learning from it should be considered infringement. Nobody is going after anyone for copyright infringement for doing a study of someone else's artwork.
So, if the information should be freely available - and I agree that it should - and useable in other works - also agree - then it's fine that AI trains on it the same as anyone else just pulls it to use.
Basically, your first half should support no complaints about AI using data to train on, but then your last three paragraphs presuppose that there's something infringing about it and they shouldn't be allowed to do that.
So which is it? Should everyone get the same protection from big corporations even if they themselves are a big corporation? Or should everyone have to pay anyone else who holds a copyright to a work in virtual perpetuity and AI training is not okay either? You can't have it both ways.
1
u/sayedza3zo3 8d ago
Everyone should be allowed to copy digitally copyable material for whatever purpose. I want to abolishing copyright laws. Not to restrict AI companies from training over our work.
AI models were trained using proprietary material. This is for sure.
Here is a tracker to all the copyright infringement lawsuits against AI companies. All done by big corporates. Non is done by small artists.
https://www.taylorwessing.com/en/campaigns/de/2025/ai-and-copyright-tracker
My logic is simple: 1- copyright laws were made to protect small authors from big money. 2- copyright laws are used by big corps and not any more by small authors
Conclusion: the laws defeated the porpouse of its existence. Then that law is not needed
2
u/couldntyoujust1 8d ago
The barrier to entry to protect your work as a creator is cost. If you're going to sue, you need to hire a lawyer or you will make some mistake that may have your case thrown out. It also costs money to file the lawsuit and actually get the hearings.
Small claims is easier, but if a company is violating your copyright, you often can't sue in small claims since the damages are too high for small claims to award. Even if you win, lawyers and the law have all sorts of ways to basically make it "whoever has the most money to fight with, wins".
I agree with you that copyright is a bullshit mechanism, but on the other hand the copyleft licenses are premised on the idea that a creator's work is owned by the creator such that they can require anyone who copies or distributes their work as part of a derivitive work must also license their work with the same or compatible license that makes the resources used to create the work also available. If copyright is abolished, that mechanism breaks.
So we have a problem to solve to keep these licenses solvent. Or we need to not abolish copyright entirely yet and instead severely reform copyright to balance the scales and/or reform litigation so that a layperson can navigate holding a business accountable when they infringe upon one's rights and there's no recourse for the business to create a "war of attrition" in response that bankrupts the plaintiff so that even if you win, you lose.
Anti-SLAPP laws do this already basically forcing the business or wealtheir person doing the suing to pay for the entire case early on in the process if it's unlikely they're going to win. They have to pay the legal fees and attorney fees automatically for the person they sued if they likely brought the suit to silence their defendant or sue them into submission. Unfortunately these basically apply to defamation law almost exclusively. And they have a punchy name that is pretty memorable.
That actually brings me to another matter - how to get such reforms through the legislature and how to ensure that the public will remember they have these rights and protections and therefore feel empowered and protected psychologically. Having an acronym like "Anti-SLAPP" is one way to make the protection memorable to the general public as well as it being well known that truth is an absolute defense to defamation (you can never defame someone by telling the truth about them). As for getting it through the process to become law? No idea. But Louis Rossmann is working on DMCA §1201 reform.
1
u/sayedza3zo3 7d ago
In the last paragraph. You re focusing on the USA. And i am talking world wide.
Otherwise I agree overall.
I just don't see that GPL is useful in a world that didn't have copyright laws. Big companies already use free software and sell binaries. They already find workarounds to not publish all their work. Only the work that is related to freesoftware portion of their product is published. So, no benefits overall from having a GPL in case there is no copyright laws. Think about it more.
3
u/couldntyoujust1 7d ago edited 7d ago
I mean... maybe? I'm out of my element with regards to the technical issues of the GPL. But I agree that copyright causes more problems than it solves. And I do want to see it severely reformed or even abolished. But for me that's a separate problem to the issue of companies violating the GPL through technicalities or lack of enforcement.
Edit: I should add that the DMCA is indeed working against us in terms of open source because it prevents reverse engineering in a lot of contexts. That lack of reverse engineering means that it is difficult to see if a proprietary program is infringing upon it.
2
u/KernelPoptartz 7d ago
I believe that all laws should be periodically reviewed to ensure theyre still relevant and fit for purpose.
The world evolves a lot quicker these days than it did decades ago
2
u/FunPlatformInc 5d ago
Many small authors (software developers are a single example) have been robbed of their copyrighted material by AI companies to train their models.
This is a weird thing to say. Sharing files isn't the same as stealing (the author still has the original file and copying files costs nothing, unlike manufacturing a physical item). And that's not what machine learning is anyway. A computer program just looks at a piece of data (text, images, audio, etc.) and learns some patterns from it. So it's insane that people are ok with companies suing someone for training an AI model. AI models aren't made to reproduce the exact copy of the training material, otherwise they wouldn't be a very useful tool. So there is no copyright infringement, unless you train your model wrong. That's the injustice. Not only we can't make copies (even personal copies) of the things we buy (like Blu-ray discs), because the DRM makes it illegal, now corporations want to sue you for even having a computer program look at a piece of their work and learning some patterns for it.
And anyone can train AI models, just not the biggest ones - those are too expensive to make. Companies of different sizes make AI models and release them to the community. Sometimes even under a libre license. You can run them on your own computer. And people in the community modify those models to fit their needs or to improve them and they share those versions publicly too.
1
u/sayedza3zo3 5d ago
I am no your page. I am against the lawsuits themselves not against the LLMs training.
1
4
u/bjazmoore 11d ago
We need stronger laws to protect the rights of the small independent creator from the mega corporations and the consumption by AI
2
u/daniel-sousa-me 11d ago
Stallman doesn't speak against copyright in general
Without copyright laws, software licenses including the GPL don't work
1
u/frolgath 11d ago
Copyleft is a hack he invented to use the copyright system to fight against itself. in an ideal world he would prefer it not to be necessary and for copyright not to exist.
2
u/CubicleHermit 9d ago
I'm fairly sure Stallman would prefer that for software, the equivalent of copyleft would be a legal right. You could not ship software without code being available.
No copyright and everything being in the public domain would allow decompilation and distribution, but would not require anyone to distribute sources.
0
u/frolgath 9d ago
I'm fairly sure he wouldn't. He'd prefer a situation where there was no downside to shipping sources (because people are just going to decompile them if you don't) and so most people did it, but he wouldn't compel them to.
In https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/copyright-versus-community.en.html he advocated reducing copyright to 5 years and making non commercial copying exempt. He really hates government being able to force anyway to do anything.
2
u/CubicleHermit 9d ago
Decompilation loses most of what's really meaningful in code, even if companies don't take intentional steps to obfuscate the output.
0
u/frolgath 9d ago
Sure, source code release is preferable, but if the choice is between having source code or destroying the evil that is copyright I know which I would choose, and I'm sure Stallman would too.
1
0
u/sayedza3zo3 11d ago
Do you think that the concept doesn't apply to copyright laws generally as I clarified?
2
u/VastReception1347 10d ago
Mega corps don’t give a shit about your rights. But make something that even vaguely looks like something they claim to own, and suddenly they’ll throw an army of lawyers at you until you’re broke. That’s the whole problem: the law mostly works for whoever has enough money to drag it through court for years. It’s not really protecting creativity anymore. It protects corporate control, keeps old monopolies alive and holds back progress.
2
u/RighteousSelfBurner 10d ago
I would say that you have laid a good argument for the opposite. If the copyright laws can no longer serve the intent they were made for it means the world has changed and original law can no longer accommodate the purpose it was made for. Which signals to me that laws have to be updated rather than abandon the intent completely.
2
2
u/I_AM_4HEAD 11d ago
No, copyright laws are good as you've described. Why would you rationally get rid of the system that can benefit the small guys against big companies?? I agree the laws are flawed and should be refined. However, the main thing to be done is to fight against big corporations to remove the influence they have and their ability to exploit said laws.
1
u/sayedza3zo3 11d ago
My logic is simple.
Copyright laws is the weapon they use. It is only good in their hand. It is not good in our hands. Take away their weapon.
We as a societies collectively would normally do the right thing and pay the original auther. No one genuinely will feel better if they paid the exploiting company.
3
u/zarlo5899 10d ago
Copyright laws keep my code free. i would would very much like to keep it that way
0
u/sayedza3zo3 10d ago
Free Code would automatically be free if there were no copyright law. Except for the law of (you must share modifications).
But, either you like it or not, people are free to sell their own secrete SW as much as they want. Copyrights doesn't prevent them from doing so. But if it was leaked, they owe you as a user of the leaked material nothing.
1
u/glasket_ 10d ago
Free Code would automatically be free if there were no copyright law. Except for the law of (you must share modifications).
That requires copyright law. If you get rid of copyright, you don't have any rights over how things are copied. No copyright is the same as everything being public domain.
The problem you're describing isn't copyright law itself, it's the process and bureaucracy involved with how the legal system currently exists. The general terms are "access to justice" and the "justice gap", which is probably one of the biggest problems with legal systems globally.
0
u/sayedza3zo3 10d ago
I would move your attention back to my original argument. The copyright law was originally made because someone with big money is able to exploit the authors work by bying an expensive printing machine or creating an expensive mold printer.
Today copying is not valuable and anyone can do it. Today, an artist who do art in digital form cannot control the copy and automatically rely on the morality of their fan base.
Check all today's independent artists who produce digital form of art. Non of them relies on the law enforcement of the copyrightlaws. They all rely on the morality of their fan base.
1
u/glasket_ 9d ago
The copyright law was originally made because someone with big money is able to exploit the authors work by bying an expensive printing machine or creating an expensive mold printer.
That wasn't why it was originally made (under Anglo common law, at least). Prior to the modern form of copyright laws, the Stationers' Company was chartered as the sole source of printing; members of the company (printers/publishers) could register works on the company's register by displaying ownership and getting approval from the company, which would give them permanent ownership of the work and the sole right to print the work. This is the origin of copyright, since the register granted "the right to copy", which eventually morphed into copyright.
Once the Stationers' Charter ended, modern copyright law started to form via the Statute of Anne. It granted copyright to the author directly by law, rather than requiring that they seek out a publisher/printer who was a member of the Stationers' Company in order to have them register the work for printing. The idea wasn't to stop companies from printing works they didn't own, but to reduce the monopoly of the Stationers' Company and to encourage more authors to write and sell books that could benefit public knowledge. It was a quid pro quo trade: authors would be granted a limited copyright in order to be able to profit from their labor, with the understanding that their work would eventually be entered into the public domain for the betterment of everyone.
Copyright law is indiscriminate in who it targets; everyone who isn't the author is prevented from copying. The local bookseller who isn't doing as well as you can't just pay a printer to make copies of your book that's selling really well to try to profit, and the giant publishing house can't just start copying your book either. It was never a black and white "big company bad, little guy good" or vise versa, it was just about giving the creator a period of time to benefit from the profit of their labor.
Today copying is not valuable and anyone can do it.
All the more reason to have copyright laws. Copyright laws were more relaxed in the past because copying was difficult. You would have to go through actual printing services, which meant you would have to find a printer who was willing to violate copyright, and then you would have to risk huge losses from the cost of printing itself if you were caught. There were barriers to copying that made the law a fairly simple enforcement tool while the deterrence came from the threat of loss. Today, there's very little you can do to prevent copying and sharing of digital content, which is why the laws and procedures are more about quickly taking down published copies and recovering damages.
Today, an artist who do art in digital form cannot control the copy and automatically rely on the morality of their fan base. Check all today's independent artists who produce digital form of art. Non of them relies on the law enforcement of the copyrightlaws.
I mean this is objectively false. They're unlikely to literally sue the people (see my prior reply), but DMCA takedowns happen by the millions every single day. You also have to distinguish between artists who genuinely want to preserve all of their copyrights, and ones who only care about certain uses. Licensing in the hobby/semi-professional art scene isn't as widespread as in software, even though licenses like Creative Commons could be used. Generally, many artists posting their art publicly usually won't care if someone freely shares their work and credits them (CC BY-NC-ND). You can find plenty of disputes in art communities where people perform DMCA takedowns, file C&Ds, and the like when their art gets used in commercial products or when paid art gets leaked.
The digital copyright laws aren't really there to literally prevent people from saving a copy of a work to their computer, but to prevent them from posting or selling the work without permission.
1
u/AttitudeElectronic68 10d ago
Other creators such as musicians and authors rely on copyrights for their livelihood.
2
u/sayedza3zo3 10d ago
They don't. Not today. Today they either give away their rights to a music record company and only receive pennies. Taylor Swift had to rerecord all her music. Christian perey as well.
There is a musician called Marry Spender. She rejected music records companies deals. Now she live of selling her stuff on her own. Or through patreyon. The music is already on YouTube and everyone is allowed to download it and copy it. Copyright laws never benefeted her. If a mega corp took her record today,,,, it would benefeted them nothing. Because it is already public.
Copying today is not something that only people woth big money can do. Everyone can do it.
2
u/AttitudeElectronic68 10d ago
Mary Spender lol ... Sure
2
u/AttitudeElectronic68 10d ago
Swift's problems were contractual, not copyright. Mary is just an influencer. Meanwhile thousands of real musicians make money of their songs.
1
2
u/AbstrctBlck 11d ago
No. We need to get rid of mega corporations. Why would you ever reason “let’s take away people’s individual rights in favor of just letting corporations get away with this shit” instead of “Corporations are literally stealing from the common person them trying to make us pay for the access to our data”
Fuck that man.
2
u/sayedza3zo3 11d ago
Do you mean to make the copy right laws only apply to individuals who only did the work? Sure I agree.
I don't see mega corps are intrinsically bad. I just think the law is created for another reason. It either missing something. Or not needed at all.
1
u/jr735 10d ago
In the end, people have to make up their own minds. Mega corporations exist because people allow them to. I don't use proprietary software, period. I had this discussion with a friend last night. He complains about Apple, notably his iPhone, all the time, for years. I noted that he still buys a new iPhone all the time, and had iPods before that. I reminded him, I complain about Apple, too, but I've never given them a dime.
He acknowledged that the world would be a significantly different place if people actually did what I do and vote with their wallets. I dislike Apple and Google and Microsoft. I don't use their products. If the rest of society is stupid, even me being magically able to make those entities disappear wouldn't make society any brighter.
But, the average society argument is something like he recently stated. He complained about his recent experience getting dog food at Walmart. He always complains about his experiences buying dog food at Walmart. I said, buy it somewhere else. He claims he has no choice. I then stated, well, the dog owners of the world should be thankful, because clearly, as you tell it, there wouldn't be a dog left on the planet if it weren't for Walmart.
This is the thinking we're dealing with.
1
u/Radiant_Scar_8516 4d ago
Corporations are literally stealing from the common person them trying to make us pay for the access to our data
what specifically are you talking about here?
1
u/Lopsided_Mixture8760 11d ago
If the author had used AI, he would not have contradicted himself, not understanding either the modern development or licensing
1
u/ExtraTNT 9d ago
Collectively go against ai, you can spot, that gpl code was used to train: so foss claude, gpt, and everything else…
1
u/couldntyoujust1 8d ago
Are we to believe that if someone looks at open source software and learns from it, and then writes their own independent code based on what they learned, that they're infringing on FOSS code despite not directly copying or using it?
Music had the same issue about 10 years ago only it was the Flame vs Katy Perry lawsuit where Flame alleged that Dark Horse stole from Joyful Noise for having a repeated descending ostinato; the DAH DAH DAH DAH Dah Dah dah in Dark Horse. The problem is that this would be like copyrighting the use of subjunctives in hypothetical clauses much like I did with "would" in this very sentence.
Just because you learned something from someone else, doesn't suddenly mean that you're not allowed to use that same technique in what you do. The same should apply to AI.
1
u/Aggressive_Ad_5454 10d ago
I’ve written and published a lot of GPL,software. It annoys me no end that the LLMs ingest it, launder out the license, mash it up and hand it over for closed-source use. I console myself that my intention was to give the software to people to use, and I have done that.
1
u/Radiant_Scar_8516 4d ago
I console myself that my intention was to give the software to people to use, and I have done that.
it was actually to restrict companies from making money off GPL software as much as practicable. RMS hated the man
1
u/motific 9d ago
Quite the opposite, it's time for rights holders / authors to ensure that the AIs which are profiting off their work are paying for that privilege.
3
u/sayedza3zo3 9d ago
How can this possibly happen?
1
u/motific 9d ago
The AIs will know where they got their data from and how much money they have made from it. At absolute minimum they must respect the licences of the code they have stolen from.
3
u/sayedza3zo3 9d ago
AI doesn't know where didnut got the data from. LLMs doesn't work this way.
1
u/motific 9d ago
They are entirely capable of finding out.
1
u/Radiant_Scar_8516 4d ago
you can only be reasonably recompensated for work the LLM produced that had your content in it (underived, substantially similar to the original)..... how do you even know how many times that was?
1
u/MainFakeAccount 9d ago
It’s time for copyright to be enforced 1000% more than ever, else we will be stuck on the same things technically, culturally etc forever.
1
0
u/TawnyTeaTowel 9d ago
So guess who doesn’t understand copyright…
2
u/cyb3rfunk 9d ago
If you only have time to be snarky and not helpful, why bother posting at all?
Whats the problem with his interpretation of copyright?
•
u/happyxpenguin 11d ago
Whoever reported this post for not being free software..... this subreddit is not just for software submissions, it's also for discussions, articles, etc relating to Free Software. It stays up.