zlacker

My phrasing was absolutely not meant to be read as myself speaking for all, apologies, I certainly don't want to offend.

It has felt on HN and elsewhere that the prevailing attitude to copyright has been these two, somewhat contradictory, things. That's what I was trying to highlight with my phrasing of "we", which was also not meant to include myself but be a nod to the way a vocal group try to steer and dominate the conversion.

Both debates are important to have, I don't know the answers.

>>samwil+(OP)
Thank you! I think the average HN'er is frankly pretty ignorant about how copyright law works, the history around it, and the arguments for and against various reforms. In fairness it's an esoteric topic and most software developers depend in some way on copyrighted work for their income so that's not a huge surprise I guess. But it probably explains the contradiction you observed!

The #1 issue with copyright today in my opinion is that if we keep on extending it forever, it will forever entrench the wealth and power of a small number of companies that hold the largest portfolios of IP. I think this is also a huge issue for AI, maybe the biggest issue, because at the end of the day an AI is really just another copyrighted work. It is not the anthropomorphized thing that countless people are acting like it is, it's a work. Change copyright and you change the nature of future AI works.

>>safety+7j
There is contradiction because, in fact, the HN audience is more than one person and those people have different and conflicting views.

>>samwil+(OP)
Trying to find consistency in the prevalent (or more commonly predominantly expressed) attitudes and opinions of groups is a common fallacy. You can have a group with a large number of members holding opinion A and nother large number of members holding opionion ¬A without any member being in both groups.

Of course in reallity things are usually more complex and wer are talking about two different opinions A and B that aren't even inherently incompatibly but just some motivations for A would lead to ¬B and vice versa.

But un this particular case I think the flaw is in your assumption that the majority wants stricter copyright law for AI rather than wants the same copyright law that humans are beholden to to also apply to AI, wether that law is the current may-as-well-be-perpetual-monopoly or 0 copyright or anything in between.