[matheusmoreira]

Nope. People with the impulse to create will do it regardless. Sellouts without intrinsic motivation to create who are just looking to make money by creating products instead of real art? I won't mourn their disappearance at all.

[falcolas]

That's an assumption that has not been tested in modern times. At least in the past, an artist could sell their painting.

And even if the assumption proves to be true, the volume will decrease dramatically as people are no longer allowed to make a living to create their art.

And no, Patreon and its ilk is not a sufficient replacement, not for full time jobs. It mostly doesn't even replace a job for the (comparatively few) people on it today.

EDIT: I for one will miss movies like "Everything Everwhere All At Once", which could not have been made as an "impulse" project.

[matheusmoreira]

> That's an assumption that has not been tested in modern times.

It's a fact as old as humanity itself. People will create because that's what people do. What isn't guaranteed is the existence of the billion dollar copyright industry.

> an artist could sell their painting.

Still perfectly possible to sell the physical canvas you applied paint to.

> the volume will decrease dramatically as people are no longer allowed to make a living to create their art

So what? That's a good thing. The market is filled with cheap art that's made just to sell copies, stuff that wouldn't even exist at all if not for the profit. I don't consider that a big loss at all.

[JohnFen]

> I don't consider that a big loss at all.

And yet you're cheering on AI that will dramatically increase the amount of cheap art that's made just to sell copies.

[matheusmoreira]

So worst case scenario is just more of the same. I'm OK with that.

[CuriouslyC]

Um, people are still blacksmithing and riding old tymie bikes, so I'm pretty sure it has been tested.

[falcolas]

Yes. A tiny fraction of a percent of people (compared to the volume of smiths in the past) do continue traditional blacksmithing.

The results of their work is not IP though, which makes the comparison too weak to serve as proof that artistic works that create only IP will continue unabated.

[CuriouslyC]

Blacksmiths in America don't make money, it's a hobby they do for fun. If the argument is that people will stop doing hobbies because a machine can do the work faster and better I'm pretty sure that's been proven wrong.

[falcolas]

Sure they do it for money. You cant live in America without doing something for money, and many of these blacksmiths do it full time.

There’s probably one in your city.

[JohnFen]

> People with the impulse to create will do it regardless.

But they may not publicly release it. I've already removed my works from the public web, and I've heard from several others that have done the same.

[matheusmoreira]

That's OK. I don't publish everything I make either. Just stuff I actually want people to see and have access to.

[JohnFen]

No, you misunderstand. The stuff is still published, because these are works that people want to share. They're just not on the open web anymore, they're invite-only web spaces, or internet spaces that aren't web-based at all, because there appears to be no other way to avoid having them used to train AIs.

[matheusmoreira]

I have no problem with that. I'd like to warn you that this is essentially security through obscurity. Only one copy ever needs to make it out of that closed space. The more people in there, the higher the odds of that happening. Once it does, all bets are off.

[JohnFen]

That's certainly true. But compromises must be made. A solution isn't worthless just because it's not 100% effective.

The only other alternative would be to withdraw from society entirely, which is obviously not feasible.

[matheusmoreira]

There's also option to simply accept that you cannot own ideas. Let them go. Once I accepted this, I felt like I was finally free.

I released some software as GPL but truth be told I couldn't care less if someone violates it. I'm certainly not gonna waste my limited time on this earth going to court over it.

[hammyhavoc]

Why shouldn't people be able to earn a living with their originality and skill? Sounds like envy to me.

[matheusmoreira]

Go ahead and earn your living. Just don't expect me to take absurdities like delusional people thinking they own numbers seriously.

[falcolas]

> Just don't expect me to take absurdities like delusional people thinking they own numbers seriously.

The same governments that let you 'own' physical items are the ones who say you can 'own' IP as well.

If they didn't - and didn't back it up with force - you wouldn't 'own' anything at all. Cherry picking which version of ownership is 'absurd' is an exercise in futility, since it's not up to you.

[matheusmoreira]

Nah. I own physical things by literally holding onto them. Keeping them inside my property to which only I have the keys. Defending that property by force if necessary. Government doesn't have to "let" me own anything, it merely recognizes and formalizes the de facto reality of things. Meanwhile we have these people with their made up delusions of ownership of ideas and all the contradictions inherent in that, and I'm supposed to pretend it's not absurd?

Whether or not the world conforms to their made up copyright reality isn't really up to them either. The simple fact is: information, once discovered, is infinitely copyable. No amount of lobbying is ever gonna change that. People are still gonna train AI models with "their" data and there's nothing they can do about it short of destroying free computing as we know it by making it so we can only execute software they approve. Surely you don't want that, fellow Hacker News user, given that such tyranny is the antithesis of everything the word "hacker" stands for.

[dragonwriter]

> Government doesn't have to "let" me own anything,

You seem to be confusing possession with ownership.

Ownership is the social relationship by which you exert control independent of immediate possession, but you’ve just described how you can maintain possession.

[hammyhavoc]

Yup. By his logic, if a thief holds someone at gunpoint and takes their property then they now own x. Furthermore, if they are then caught, by his logic, that property shouldn't be returned to the victim because the thief now owns it apparently.

[hammyhavoc]

Do people own property? Do they even have money? Do you own a license to your software? If it is all just on paper or on a screen, it's just numbers. The entire system is make-believe. If you choose not to believe in intellectual property, you must also acknowledge that other aspects of capitalism also do not actually exist and is a shared delusion.

However, the shared delusion makes the world go round as-is.

OK, "copyright bad", "intellectual property rights bad", so what's the alternative?

[matheusmoreira]

> If you choose not to believe in intellectual property, you must also acknowledge that other aspects of capitalism also do not actually exist and is a shared delusion.

I already do. Dollars? It's just paper, not even backed by anything. People believe in it so it has value for the time being. It will literally go to zero if people stop believing in it though.

It was hard for me to accept these truths. I don't post them here lightly.

> However, the shared delusion makes the world go round as-is.

People who choose to believe in delusions don't get to complain when reality inevitably comes creeping in.

> OK, "copyright bad", "intellectual property rights bad", so what's the alternative?

Post scarcity. Automate everything and provide abundance, eliminating the need for an economy to begin with.

[OkGoDoIt]

But those artists with a true impulse to create still need to eat, pay for a place to live, etc. How exactly does that work?

[matheusmoreira]

Dunno. They'll probably get another job and use that to sustain their real interests. Or maybe AI will automate everything and we'll finally enter the age of post scarcity. I'm an optimist. What'll probably happen is we'll descend even further into cyberpunk hell.