[jillyboel]

> This falls under the "two wrongs don't make a right" adage, I'd argue. (To clarify... I agree, at least insofar as LLM training is plagiarism.)

The argument is that so far society at large seems to have decided that what bigtech has done with LLMs is not wrong. Everyone is happily using it, pretty much every company is touting their new "AI" features, and lawsuits haven't gained any traction. So if it's not wrong for an LLM, I'd argue it's not wrong for a human, either.

> Personally, I do sometimes get upset about things that don't directly affect me, as the result of empathy, sympathy, and having principles. I think if you really think about you'd agree.

True, in this case I feel sympathy for the poor developers who put time into making a free open source tool that brought many people joy now being harassed over something as insignificant as a license dispute. It's all just made up nonsense designed to protect the big boys who can afford the fancy lawyers anyway.

The rest of the post is mostly about the legal angle where I'm sure you're right, but the main take-away is that these people did not really do anything morally wrong. It's just because of legal bullying that they have to be careful. So my distaste is aimed at those who perform the legal bullying and those who enable it, not at their victims.

[jchw]

> The argument is that so far society at large seems to have decided that what bigtech has done with LLMs is not wrong. Everyone is happily using it, pretty much every company is touting their new "AI" features, and lawsuits haven't gained any traction. So if it's not wrong for an LLM, I'd argue it's not wrong for a human, either.

Right, because if one wrong thing is allowed, we should allow... Other wrong things.

That sounds a lot like two wrongs making a right.

> True, in this case I feel sympathy for the poor developers who put time into making a free open source tool that brought many people joy now being harassed over something as insignificant as a license dispute. It's all just made up nonsense designed to protect the big boys who can afford the fancy lawyers anyway.

Okay. Well I feel sympathy for the poor developers who put time into making a free open source tool that brought many people joy now having their work ripped off without credit because I guess it's okay if LLM training is legal for some reason.

I mean, honest to God, how much rationalizing are we going to go through here? It's okay because LLMs? It's okay because it's free so that means plagiarism is fine? Copyright licenses are "made up nonsense"?

Marcan's response is disproportionate, I never even denied this. Doesn't really have any bearing on whether or not this libogc issue is a problem, and it is still a problem.

[jillyboel]

> Right, because if one wrong thing is allowed, we should allow... Other wrong things.

Unless you think LLMs deserve more rights than actual flesh and blood humans, yes. Either that or get bigtech to stop what they're doing, but we both know that's not going to happen.

> Okay. Well I feel sympathy for the poor developers who put time into making a free open source tool that brought many people joy now having their work ripped off without credit because I guess it's okay if LLM training is legal for some reason.

If LLMs get to do it, so do humans. If humans don't get to do it, then LLMs don't either. Society has embraced LLMs and bigtech is not going to give up their new toy, so it has to become okay for humans, even if you think this is unfortunate.

> I mean, honest to God, how much rationalizing are we going to go through here?

The same amount as people go through to excuse legal bullying.

> It's okay because LLMs?

Again, humans deserve more rights than machines, not less. So apparently, yes.

> It's okay because it's free so that means plagiarism is fine?

Yeah. No one was hurt, not even financially. You can think it's distasteful, that's fine.

> Copyright licenses are "made up nonsense"?

Yup, only serves to make the rich richer anyway.

[jchw]

> Unless you think LLMs deserve more rights than actual flesh and blood humans, yes. Either that or get bigtech to stop what they're doing, but we both know that's not going to happen.

> If LLMs get to do it, so do humans. If humans don't get to do it, then LLMs don't either. Society has embraced LLMs and bigtech is not going to give up their new toy, so it has to become okay for humans, even if you think this is unfortunate.

> Again, humans deserve more rights than machines, not less. So apparently, yes.

Man, you are fucking obsessed with LLMs. This incident predates the existence of LLMs, has nothing to do with LLMs, and plagiarism and ML training are two completely different issues. And, you keep acting like I am saying I think what happened with LLMs is fine, which I have never said at any point. I didn't say that what happened and is happening with LLMs is fine, only that it is a completely different thing that bears no relation to this whatsoever. Nobody mentioned LLMs. It's not a thing here. Stop talking about fucking LLMs.

> Yup, only serves to make the rich richer anyway.

The GPL is a great example of a copyright license that is explicitly not designed to make the rich richer.