[sanderjd]

I think the concern goes to the point of copyright to begin with, which is to incentive people to create things. Will the inclusion of copyrighted works in llm training (further) erode that incentive? Maybe, and I think that's a shame if so. But I also don't really think it's the primary threat to the incentive structure in publishing.

[qup]

> the point of copyright to begin with, which is to incentive people to create things

Is it?

(I don't agree)

[sanderjd]

Yes, it is. It's not actually an opinion thing. It's a "what did the people who came up with the idea of copyright think it was for?" thing.

I haven't read the primary source material, so you could teach me something here, but my understanding is that the idea was to incentive creators.

[roguecoder]

That is not actually the goal of it.

Copyright was invented by publishers (the printing guild) to ensure that the capitalists who own the printing presses could profit from artificial monopolies. It decreases the works produced, on purpose, in order to subsidize publishing.

If society decides we no longer want to subsidize publishers with artificial monopolies, we should start with legalizing human creativity. Instead we're letting computers break the law with mediocre output while continuing to keep humans from doing the same thing.

LLMs are serving as intellectual property laundering machines, funneling all the value of human creativity to a couple of capitalists. This infringement of intellectual property is just the more pure manifestation of copyright, keeping any of us from benefitting from our labor.

[sanderjd]

Interesting! I'd love a citation on this...

[satvikpendem]

People have created for millennia before the modern institution of copyright, so I'm not sure how that's a cogent argument.

[sanderjd]

Yeah it's an interesting point, but it was also hard to physically copy things for all of those millennia.

[greenie_beans]

i wrote a book and copyright was not once on my mind. having created something is the incentive to create for most artists

[sanderjd]

I don't think we can infer the motives of most artists from your personal motives.

[greenie_beans]

fine, because that means your claim that artists create for the copyright incentive is also false