If you haven't already done so, now is the time to cancel any donations to these libertarian tech bros.
The EFF has come out in support of AI vendors
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117215319335459732
https://mastodon.social/@eff/117215319335459732
If you haven't already done so, now is the time to cancel any donations to these libertarian tech bros.
32 Comments
ricdeh@lemmy.world · 56 pts · 14h
Wtf? Lemmy has absolutely lost the plot if you start calling the EFF "libertarian tech bros". Some of you tankies are so far removed from reality that it sometimes feels like I am in a psych ward when I read these comments. Shame on you, really. The people at EFF have done more for the betterment of humanity than all of you combined, and more than you ever will.
Lojcs@piefed.social · 8 pts · 7h
Not tankies, this comm is its own separate echo chamber
jaredwhite@humansare.social · -6 pts · 3h
Wow, you suck.
dickalan@lemmy.world · -35 pts · 14h
k 🤣
ripley@lemmy.world · 35 pts · 12h
After listening to Cory Doctorow's latest book, I did see a different perspective on this. His argument is that the technical analysis of a copyrighted work has been fair use - it's how we have search engines, for instance. The key is that you can't copyright that generated analysis.
He also argues that copyright right now is so ridiculously tilted towards the major media/tech companies that any perceived benefit to the artist from it gets absorbed by the companies because the marketplace has become so consolidated.
If your expectation is that the EFF will denounce anything AI-related you should certainly cancel your donations. I've found them to be great champions of the lost cause of trying to preserve our digital rights. That they haven't given up despite the insurmountable odds is inspiring to me.
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · -8 pts · 10h
Cory Doctorow has no credibility in regards to AI ever since he called opposition to AI "purity testing" among other strawman arguments. All the former "good guys", the EFF, Cory Doctorow, Linus Torvalds, even fucking Debian (who once shipped a renamed version of Firefox because of potential copyright issues) are one after the other showing their true colours. Meanwhile the fascist creators of AI models openly state that they want to push the very people who created the work they copied to "train" their product, out of the market. This is one of the reasons we even have copyright. Call it tilted towards media all you want, they don't just get to decide that it no longer matters now that it is inconvenient to the tech oligarchy.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 6h
Have you read the book or are you just dismissing the arguments without even considering them?
M154nthr0p3@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1h
I read the book and you are right to point out that this d-bag is totally misunderstanding Cory Doctorow's arguements.
What a chud.
e8d79@discuss.tchncs.de · -6 pts · 5h
No, and I have no plans on doing so based on the arguments outlined by the initial post. Arguing that search engines and AI systems are even remotely similar is a false equivalency and doesn't really make me hopeful that the rest of their book is worth reading. I don't really want to know what kind of mental gymnastics are necessary to come to that conclusion, but it probably involves talking to a chatbot for copious amounts of time.
Just for the slow kids in the back of the class. Search engines surface my work to a larger audience. They make it discoverable. I can use this audience to generate an income for myself. This is a fair deal. AI systems take my work without compensation, create a lossy compilation of multiple other works and sell it back to that audience while leaving me with nothing. Fuck anyone who calls that "fair use".
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 1h
dogma, got it. and in return, i didn't read the rest of your comment based on your asinine initial sentence. heavens forbid you should be exposed to ideas you don't agree with. there's no way that can enrich you, right??? certainly there's no way it could help inform what I'm going to generously describe as your activism. best tune it out LA LA LA LA
ExtremeDullard@piefed.social · 26 pts · 16h
Wow, what a letdown...
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net · 24 pts · 14h
If you think that copyright is there for the benefit of ordinary people, then I've got news for you.
I dislike the AI oligarchy as much as the next person. But copyright is never the tool to protect artistic integrity. Relying on it always fires back in favour of big corpos.
HetareKing@piefed.social · 5 pts · 9h
At the same time, though, as long as the economic system remains what it is, copyright is often the only thing that allows artists to make a living off their work, even when its implementation has many problems.
You can say that we should focus on changing the economic system then, and sure, but that's not going to happen tomorrow and in the meantime I'd rather not live in a world where art is economically unviable.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 0 pts · 6h
That's hardly universal. Most working artists don't get a lot of income from a back library of material, unless you're one of the last few independent stock photographers. They make income by working.
HetareKing@piefed.social · 2 pts · 5h
Artists who are employed or do contract work are often hired because someone is trying to make money off something that makes use of their work, and their ability to make money off that often depends on copyright. So it's still ultimately a dependency on copyright, just with one layer of separation in between.
That leaves artists who make an income from doing some kind of performance, like concerts or plays. I guess that doesn't really require copyright, but it's a pretty limited subset of artists for whom this is possible.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1h
Software developers, graphics artists, window painters, live musicians, session musicians, photographers and cinematographers, copy writers, florists, chocolatiers, dancers, interior decorators, animators, chefs, composers, and virtually every other kind of artist would still have a job in a world without copyright protection. If your art isn't being mass produced, it's not really relevant.
jaredwhite@humansare.social · 1 pts · 3h
That's a ridiculous statement. I make royalties from sales of an audio sample library I once worked on. If people just pirated that sample library and got it for free and didn't buy it, I wouldn't receive any royalties.
That's called theft.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 1h
Your anecdote doesn't trump my anecdote; now we have two anecdotes.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 6h
As you say. Laws don't exist to shackle the ruling class.
jaredwhite@humansare.social · 2 pts · 3h
Funny, I know plenty of artists who care very much about copyright. I am one of them.
None of these anti-copyright arguments hold any water for me. Copyright protects everyone, regardless of if they're tiny or huge. If you believe that isn't true because of the legal system favoring those with big pockets, that's the problem, not the concept of copyright per se.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 1h
An economics system in need of copyright will always implement it in favour of the powerful. You're currently dependent on copyright. But that doesn't mean that it is set up in your favour.
Copyright lead to the fact that you can't use certain samples in your remix on youtube if you don't want to get copyright striked to infinity by sony.
asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev · 18 pts · 16h
and I thought eff was one of the good ones
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 47 pts · 16h
They still are, even if you disagree with them on one point. It might be worth noting that the EFF isn't a copyright defence house. Their mission is different. They support the open Internet.
I'm on dbzer0 and they're pro-AI. I'm not, but I don't disrespect their POV in their house. I feel like I'm skating a fine line being subbed here. They're also one of the only instances that supports freedom of speech. I just understand that some of that speech I don't agree with.
jerkface@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 6h
These people evaluate things through dogma above all else.
solrize@lemmy.ml · 17 pts · 16h
Well, it's transformative, though when it's AI that's not automatically good. I think there is no way to win the copyright suits against the AI companies after Google book scanning was ruled transformative. What I don't understand is why they aren't in jail for the unauthorized access and disruption caused by the damn scraping.
tenchiken@anarchist.nexus · 12 pts · 6h
Wait.... An attorney commenting on how an existing legal definition is likely to be interpreted....
This isn't the EFF saying "AI is great" from the linked article. This is the attorney saying that the DOJ comment unfortunately is accurate in line of the existing definition if the exception.
The only defense they use is from the take of individuals or smaller groups training.
I get the knee jerk reaction wanting the EFF to come out against all AI, but that isn't going to change the written laws. They've been fighting abuse via these laws for decades.
I hate Gemini etc as much as the next, but attacking the underlying capitalist and fascist push the big tech are doing via panic changes to what is supposed to be civil definitions instead of toward the criminal intent underlying is short sighted and will absolutely be leverage by those tech bros for even further destruction of what might be left of laws.
Anyone who thinks copyright law will stop bezos etc from harming the world is still thinking they can somehow get their government to tax them back to "normal wealth".
CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 16h
Damn, what the fuck?
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 14h
This isn't the first time. They already have supported the AI industry's mass copytheft.
JoeBidet@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 14h
Well they're partially funded by Google for many years now...
cerebralhawks@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -2 pts · 16h
Technically the truth. AI is trained on copyrighted works, but so is every artist alive today. There's just a really important difference in human inspiration and creativity and a computer program piecing together what it's already seen. One creates something new while standing on the shoulders of what came before, while the other just remixes what's already there and tramples upon the backs of what came before. I think it's important to know the difference.
oce@jlai.lu · 11 pts · 15h
The scale is also massively different. Some artist or intellectual reused the work of a few preceding people people and became famous (and sometimes rich) instead of them. But in the case of AI it's a couple of already ultra rich owners vs millions of likely mostly struggling creators.
Kangae_Hishiryo@scribe.disroot.org · 2 pts · 9h
The main problem is that AI just creates what I call "Collage Slop".