[manholio]

What you and many other in the thread seem to be oblivious about is that algorithms are not people. Yes, it may come as a shock to autistic engineers, but the fact that a machine can do something to what a person does does not warant it equal protection under the law.

Copyright, and laws in general, exists to protect the human members of society not some abstract representation of them.

[weknowbetter]

It seems like you're using "autistic" as an insult here. If that's not your intention you might want to edit this comment to use different verbage.

[manholio]

What do you mean, autism is well established as a personality trait that diminishes empathy and the ability to understand other people's desires and emotions, while having a strong affinity to things, for example machines and algorithms.

Legislation is driven by people who are, on aggregate, not autistic. So it's entirely appropriate to presume that a person not understanding how that process works is indeed autistic, especially if they suggest machines are subjects of law by analogy with human beings.

It's not that autists are bad people, they are just outliers in the political spectrum, as you can see from the complete disconnect of up-voted AI-related comments on Hacker News, where autistic engineers are clearly over-represented, versus just about any venue where other professionals, such as painters or musicians, congregate. Just try to suggest to them that a corporation has the right to use their work for free and profit from it while leaving them unemployed, because the algorithm the corporation uses to exploit them is in some abstract sense similar to how their brain works. That position is so for out on the spectrum that presuming a personality peculiarity of the emitter is the absolutely most charitable interpretation.