[jtfrench]

Until the industry addresses the Original Sin of Generative AI (and the ascendance of Thievery Corporations), we should expect more and more of this. So far, theft has been rewarded. As long as you make enough money, people seem to be okay with ignoring long-lasting impacts of intellectual theft. As long as you become King of the Cannibals, it seems many are happy to remember you as King and not as the Cannibal.

[semiquaver]

IP infringement is not theft. There’s a whole “you wouldn’t download a car” meme about this.

Intellectual property has always been a made up idea that has been abused for years by big companies far in excess of its societal value. I’m not sad that the force of IP restrictions seems to be weakening, but I am surprised to see so many people in tech that previously were pretty lassez faire on IP to suddenly take it so seriously now that it’s become a useful means to criticize AI companies with.

[panhandlecrow]

The “tech worker” of today is nothing like the SF based hackers and early product designers of Web 2.0, twitter era.

Artists in their own right and yet fundamentally pirates who opened the browser ecosystem, pioneered open APIs, invented ad blocking, embraced open source, engineered browser based telephony and streaming, gave us modern services like PopcornTime carrying the torch from torrents/piratebay into the modern era.

Give me Photoshop and JavaScript and I care not who makes the laws.

Today we have charlatans, hackademics, and heavily moderated sites like HN. The tech industry is nothing like it used to be - if anything it’s inverted with all the corporate replicas in every role and the creatives kicked out. There is no rebellion even slightly, no originality - they sound like hens, predictable and unprofound in every way.

The real creative hacker type needs a new vertical, this one has been taken over like ants on a sandwich.

[sealeck]

I think this comment is quite disingenous -- it's like if there's a rule that says "nobody can walk on the grass" that you object to because you'd like to have a picnic with some friends; your claim is that if someone gets out a bulldozer and drives it across the lawn to make a parking lot followed by an army of lawyers that anyone who wanted to picnic is objecting purely because it's a convenient way to criticise the bulldozers.

[wrsh07]

These examples don't really add up to me.

You can continue to enjoy the books and articles etc

They are just also used to create a new thing

In the picnic example, the picnickers can't use the lawn anymore.

As an aside: as somebody who lives in a dense area, I also would stay off the lawn. There's a utilitarian element where you have to rotate which lawns are used, and avoid using them when wet etc so as to maximize their utility. The picnickers should find a lawn that's open.

[keoneflick]

> You can continue to enjoy the books and articles etc

No you can't, because those people have stopped creating because the creation economy was destroyed by AI. We just keep getting recycled slop based on what existed in 2025.

[wrsh07]

I think this is confused

All of the people who I was reading and listening to and watching before AI are all still creating. Many of them are even creating new things or new types of things

I imagine breaking into the creative industry is "harder" today than it was five years ago and much harder than it was ten years ago etc, but in some ways everything is still so new.

This dismissal of creativity or people's drive to create or anything created after "the ChatGPT moment" is simply wrong and lazy thinking

[preg_match]

But then there's the morality of it, because you're essentially expecting people to be highly motivated by not-money for your own pleasure. Which might be the case today, but I don't necessarily think will be the case forever.

Yes, musicians for instance will always create music, even if they're dirt poor. That doesn't mean though we should strive to make them as dirt poor as possible to maximally optimize the agreement in our favor. That's a separate issue.

[anematode]

> You can continue to enjoy the books and articles etc

Except for the books that Anthropic bought and destroyed?

There's also the cultural displacement element: while yes, some people (including me) would seek out original content, AI slop is drowning it out. This is decreasing my and others' enjoyment.

[semiquaver]

I’m not being disingenuous. This genuinely is my opinion. Did you mean to say “I disagree and here is why?”

[collinmcnulty]

Which is why OpenAI and Anthropic think it’s fair play for other companies to distill their models, right?

[semiquaver]

They are free to use the mechanisms available to them to act (within the law) in their own best interest, exactly as every independent entity is. You and I are free to criticize stances that look like hypocrisy (and I’ll certainly stipulate that the behavior you point out is hypocritical) and vote for reps that will respond appropriately.

[carljungslabtek]

I’m not sure if “theft” is the right word or not but selling copied dvds on the street is completely different from “sharing is caring” piracy. These companies took the entirety of human knowledge for free and now want to sell it back to you, and even openly tout that it will put most of us out of our jobs.

It’s not the same thing as downloading a car or a purse for private individual use.

[zelphirkalt]

Well, the problem is, they are not held accountable, but heaven forbid you as a simple citizen engage in that much IP infringement, holy moly are they gonna be at your doorstep quickly.

It's rules for thee but not for me. On an enormous scale. If it was fair, then we would have a global announcement, that the US are abandonning IP laws and copyright, and no one needs to worry about infringing on any such a thing any longer.

[overgard]

Didn't Anthropic pay like $3 billion dollars or something for their IP theft? And yes, I'm going to keep calling it theft. Comparing a kid stealing a song off limewire to a company stealing the entire internet is not the same thing.

[msabalau]

Yes, they paid for actually using pirated books for their training. They were like the kid, except that it was worth suing them.

At the same time, more broadly, judge in the Anthropic case found that training LLMs was "exceedingly transformative" and “among the most transformative we will see in our lifetimes”

Copyright doesn't protect ideas or let IP owners lock up knowledge, it protects specific expression.

[overgard]

Yes, I understand how copyright law works. Disagree with the judge -- googling a book summary worked just as well in the past. "It can write a book report" is not that amazing.

[shimman]

Because the AI companies also stole from things society values extremely high: artists, workers, children, and humans.

I don't really care about IP for the exact same reasons you say, but what I hate even more are rich elites thinking they can continue stealing massively from the commoners unabated.

We just spent the last 15 years seeing big tech literally making society worse, and I think people are finally fed up with the results.

[Tarq0n]

Ignoring patent law has done great things for 16th century continental Europe and more recently China. Rent-seekers and ladder kickers shouldn't always be respected, they'll slow down societal advancement to a crawl if you let them. The question is whether the gains these AI companies are making from their transgressions are overly privatized.

[b3kart]

I think significantly fewer people would have an issue with this if the profit was socialized. The fact that a company took all of humanity’s data and is profiting from _is_ the issue.

[sealeck]

And we can also ignore model law; we should require OpenAI/Anthropic to provide unrestricted access (at standard API rates) to their competitors so they can use this to train new models.

[ag709]

unrelated, but I love the writing style of this comment

[Lucasoato]

Written by gpt-5.6-sol

[jtfrench]

Nah, I was just listening to some Thievery Corporation and had some thoughts. You ever listen to the group? Brought me back to college days.

[derwiki]

You have better taste in music than 5.6 sol

[justinhj]

Unlike Uber and Airbnb that did break local laws and got away with it because people wanted their service (and also deep pockets for handling litigation and encouraging politicians to see your way), training an ai is generally not theft.

If I read a physics textbook and now I know some physics do I perform a theft when I use it practice or teach someone else?