Mahlzeit @ Mahlzeit @feddit.de

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2 yr. ago

The tech angle are the AI provisions? Can someone provide some context for that? Doesn't sound like much of a win for the little guy.

So this has been going around in my head for the last couple days. Why are opinions here, on this topic, so decidedly right-wing?

I’ll have to pick this apart.

Copyrights are a form of property. Where such intellectual property is used to make money, it is intangible capital. License payments are capital income. Property is distributed very unequally. Most of it is owned by rich people. Those who demand license payments here are literally demanding that more money should go to rich capitalists.

People who create copyrighted materials for their employers do not own the copyrights thereto. They are just like factory workers who do not own the product either. The people who worked on animations in the pre-CGI era were basically factory workers. When these jobs disappeared due to computers, where was the hand-wringing?

A brush-wielding artist has as much to do with the copyright industry as a pitchfork-wielding farmer with the agro-industry.

This isn’t even normal capitalism but the absolutely worst kind. The copyrighted material was uploaded to the net for many reasons, including making a profit. Some people used this publically available resource to train AIs. The owners contributed no labor. They were affected so little that they mostly seem to have been unaware that anything was going on.

The sole argument for paying seems to be mainly “muh property rights!”. I am not seeing any consideration of the good of society, public benefit, the general welfare, or anything of the sort. Those who say the trained AI models should be released for free, seem to imply that they should not be able to profit, because they looked at someone else’s property.

This is far more capitalistic than even US capitalism.

Consider patents. To get a patent, a new invention has to be registered, which involves publishing how it works in enough detail so that others can copy it. Then the government will enforce a monopoly on that invention for 20 years. During that time, the inventor can demand license fees. But also, other people can learn from it and maybe find other solutions. After those 20 years, the knowledge becomes public domain. This is often framed as a social contract: temporary monopoly in exchange for advancing knowledge. Scientific discoveries don’t get anything at all.

Compared to how copyright is treated by so many here, actual US capitalism looks almost like socialism!

US copyright used to work exactly like patents, with the same duration. Today, copyrights last until 70 years after the death of the creator. It’s just FUBAR. The US Constitution, far-left manifesto that it is, still it limits to the purpose of promoting intellectual output (to put it in modern terms). It is supposed to help society and not to enable capitalist grift.

People like to blame corrupt politicians or lobbyists for what is going wrong in the US but perhaps US politics is delivering exactly what people want. They may not like the necessary and predictable outcome of their choices, but it’s still what they want.

Americans left and right curse those evil corporations. Of course, Americans side with the individuals when some faceless corporation tries to bully money out of them. Well, a union is just such a corporation. Look up the definition of corporation if you don’t believe me.

In his book Zero to One, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Peter Thiel argues that modern scientific innovation is no longer groundbreaking.

I wasted a click.

That's the thing. I don't see how there is sacrifice involved in this. I would guess that the average user here has personally more to lose than to gain from expanded copyrights.

This thread is interesting reading. Normally, people here complain about capitalism left and right. But when an actual policy choice comes up, the opinions become firmly pro-capitalist. I wonder how that works.

It’s about respecting creators

Is it, though? Copyright holders and creators are completely different things.

Before you can pay those copyright holders their capital income, you have to know who they are. Which means you can't just download random pictures of the internet. You need pictures with a known provenance. Well, it turns out that there are corporations dedicated to providing just such pictures. How lucky for them if society would choose to "respect creators" in this way. The payment to even a prolific stock photographer may be tiny, but they'd get a cut from each one.

It may not be about money for you, but the people who pay to push that talking point may have a different attitude.

That's a rather odd reply. I don't think the ideology you express is very common. If you were to tell me more, I would read it.

I did not give any views on celebrities. I simply asked what the public benefit was. Do I infer correctly that, to you, the public benefit is beside that point, but that your view on this is determined by your views of celebrities?

Please note that fraud is criminal, which makes it hard to see what exactly you would want to be done about "shady scam artists".

Note also that "massive corporations" can only benefit here if there is a kind of property right, similar to a trademark or a copyright. EG The Disney corporation still owns the rights to "Mickey Mouse", created in 1928. That's the same year in which Fleming discovered Penicillin, which is owned by no one. So if you have a problem with "massive corporations" extracting wealth, here, you very much need to rethink your position.

Depends on your definition of "capitalism".

This is not supposed to happen in a market economy, as you have in developed countries. Many people define "capitalism" as being, more or less, that system.

A narrower definition of "capitalism" is private control of the means of production. In that sense, "capitalism" is at odds with a market economy, which is one reason why that private control is limited in many ways in developed countries.

Imitating celebrities is usually done for satire and very much protected free speech.

Why should it be illegal in this case? I can see that the rich and famous would be able to profit from licensing and endorsement deals, but what's the public benefit?

ETA: So many downvotes. Where did all the eat-the-rich-people go, all of a sudden?

Bit of a long story...

Some forms of intellectual property require registration. For example patents. Patents are supposed to encourage technological development by allowing inventors to monetize their work. There's a lot of justified criticism of that system but, on the whole, it seems to have worked.

Originally, US copyrights worked in exactly the same way, for the same purpose. The requirement to register for copyright was dropped in 1978. However, registration still plays a role in US law for some legal purposes.

So what happened to copyright?

Europe developed a different copyright tradition, in the 19th century, while it was stilled largely ruled by oppressive autocracies. The monarchs of the 19th century were not the overpaid figureheads that still exist in some countries.

Copyrights today last (usually) until 70 years after the author's death, while patents which underpin tech progress last (usually) only 20 years in total. You can see that this is very different. That copyright revolves around the death of a person shows how it is a personal privilege, as were normal in aristocracies. The purpose is to enable people to extract money without any consideration for the interests of society as a whole. It's about rent-seeking.

Nowadays, US content production (Hollywood, etc.) dwarfs that of Europe. The better copyright laws of the US may have something to do with that. Although the US has gradually shifted over to the rent-seeking European model, there are still some advantages left.

As the content producers in the US grew, the US gradually switched over to the rent-seeking model. I think this is largely because the content producers also gained more lobbying powers.