Apparently, stealing other people’s work to create product for money is now “fair use” as according to OpenAI because they are “innovating” (stealing). Yeah. Move fast and break things, huh?
“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” wrote OpenAI in the House of Lords submission.
OpenAI claimed that the authors in that lawsuit “misconceive[d] the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”
Nah. Copyright is broken, but it’s broken because it lasts too long, and it can be held by constructs. People should still reserve the right to not have the things they’ve made incorporated into projects or products they don’t want to be associated with.
The right to refusal is important. Consent is important. The default permission should not be shifted to “yes” in anybody’s mind.
The fact that a not insignificant number of people seem to think the only issue here is money points to some pretty fucking entitled views among the would-be-billionaires.
My major issue with copyright is how published works can have major cultural significance. How it can shift ideas and shape minds. But your not allowed to have some fun with on a personal level. How can it be the norm that the most important scientific knowledge and other culturally significant material is locked behind such restrictive measures. Essentially ensuring that middle class and especially poor people are locked out.
If you publish something, even if it’s paid, you don’t deserve such restrictive rights. You deserve to be compensated for your work but you don’t deserve to make it into a extortion racket.
My view on your second point is if you have posted it publicly with no paywall, maybe you should still get some percentage revenue but you don’t have a say in what it can be used. To place restrictions on what it can be used for when posting it publicly is academic as it’s basically unenforceable.
We live in a society which revolves around the discovery and sharing of ideas. We are all entitled to a certain amount of the sharing of that information. That’s the whole point. To have some business man who was in the right place at the right time create an extortion racket out of something culturally significant they almost certainly didn’t create is wrong.
Sorry if this is all over the place. I’m writing this while tired.