[space_firmware]

Really great that European courts have created all the legal tools for authoritarian control of the internet in the future, to prevent the scourge of watching sports streaming without paying.

Before this, it was much easier for ISPs / DNS providers / VPN providers to push back against governments wanting to censor the internet because the companies wouldn't have the tools installed to do this kind of blocking. The companies can then argue it is a burden to be forced to implement the tools. That is no longer the case in Europe, and the use of these tools is likely to expand outside the sports domain.

[pjc50]

Copyright law has always been the most powerful force on the Internet. Which is why its collision with AI companies who pirate the whole Internet is very interesting.

[tim333]

Copyright law struggles against information wanting to be free. You can get almost anything in contravention of it by typing the odd magic word like libgen or pirate bay or scihub. I imagine even if the French crack down on the big VPNs there will be offshore ones that ignore the French courts.

[Imustaskforhelp]

when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object

One must only imagine the outcome.

[rusk]

Copyright is long overdue a check but I don’t think AI is going to be what does it somehow. I can see an opportunity for copyright holders to seek retrospective damages for AIs that mimic their work.

[ta1243]

The already rich get richer and more powerful

[LunaSea]

There won't be any collision. Some companies will get some cash, the same way that Google paid to make Google Search the default search engine and the issue will die down.

[ainiriand]

Collusion one might say.

[ranger_danger]

If AI training is piracy then all art made by humans is also piracy... we cannot create anything without drawing inspiration from something else.

The question is exactly how much is copied, and how obvious it is.

[dragonwriter]

> If AI training is piracy then all art made by humans is also piracy

That would only be true if human mental impressions were “fixed media” and therefore (potentially infringing) copies ubder copyright law the way data stored in electronic media in the course of AI training is.

[Dylan16807]

The law can be different between humans and machines!

Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't make sense, but either way the law can do it. The law doesn't have to follow first principles.

[const_cast]

Yes, this exactly. I don't know how people keep missing this.

There's no rule anywhere saying we have to treat computer programs as if they're humans and extend them the same rights. Why would we do that? Says who?

Also, we don't do that, not with AI. We're not talking about paying AI for their labor, or giving them digital housing or something. We only care about the human rights we can extract profits from, other than that these are digital slaves.

Which, I'm fine with digital slaves. They're bits on a computer. But then we need to do that, and we can't be doing this whole "welllll they're basically people" bit we're doing with learning.

[Dylan16807]

I don't know about that slavery argument. If you had a human slave doing unpaid paintings, they would still have the full benefit of a fair use defense.

I don't think there's any "trying to have it both ways" with AI in this context. Copyright and labor laws are very different concepts.

[const_cast]

> Copyright and labor laws are very different concepts.

I agree, with the similarity of course that both concepts are explicitly related to humans. Not machines or programs.

If we want to extend these concepts to machines or programs we can, but that's naturally complicated and there's a lot of questions about that. That, to me, needs to be a deliberate thing we do - not some foregone conclusion like people treat it. I mean, these people talk about AI fair-use as if it's obvious. It's not even obvious for humans...

[rusk]

No because fair use is for humans not machines

[hulitu]

> If AI training is piracy

If it is not, can I install a pirated Windows or Offiice version ? (I use it to train "AI")

[ben_w]

The Windows source code is almost certainly part of the training data given the leaks. You can use LLMs trained on that to make your own OS if you like.

For the same reason that I think it is (1) a bad idea to use an LLM to make your own OS, (2) when the AI is good enough to do that, it won't matter which OSes are or are not open-sourced, nor which OS's source code was used to train a model, as by that point the AI can make any OS for peanuts anyway — given those two points, I think the copyright holders fighting against their stuff teaching AI are missing the forest for the trees.

[isodev]

Is it just Europe though? Have you tried uploading something on YouTube including a remote semblance of a melody from a song? Or accessing porn in some parts of the US? And then there are the App Stores and walled gardens regulating apps, content and really every aspect of one’s digital life.

[space_firmware]

Yeah you're right this didn't originate here, it is part of a continuum. What is different is before you had to go directly to the website owner with the content (porn blocking in various states, online gambling blocking, copyright on youtube) instead of going to the infrastructure providers and requiring they stop letting a user go to that site. The VPN and DNS provider requirements in Europe are new for Western country internet. OpenDNS pulled out of many European countries rather than comply.