zlacker

You've got to love the idea that copyright doesn't apply to input code (from others), but does to their output code.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24117932-apple

>>anothe+(OP)
Yeah I would love it if these companies simply took a principled stance against IP restrictions, but alas. Like they are literally running directly in to the main problem these restrictions create and then thinking “we need a way to say those don’t apply to us while making sure they still apply to everyone else”.

>>anothe+(OP)
That's the way it's always worked. You read books to learn to code, then write code and you get paid for it, but that money doesn't trickle down to the writers of the books that taught you to code.

>>Taylor+g1
Here’s a principled stance: you don’t have the right to a sound, arrangement of pixels, or ideas. IP for nobody. If you disagree, then it should be “IP for everyone” and not “whether or not I support IP depends on who benefits from it”. An answer that differs from piracy to AI training is not a principled answer.

>>vasdae+E2
Those books you read were copyrighted.

>>vasdae+E2
Except, the “books” in this case is the code/content that people might like to get paid for in the first place. Also, AI companies aren’t “buying the books”

>>anothe+(OP)
There are a lot of double standards when it comes to AI generation.

>>imover+r3
you're not buying books when going to a library

>>freeja+d3
Despite the books being copyrighted that doesn't give the authors any rights over the code I have written.

>>French+Z3
There truly is an xkcd for everything: https://xkcd.com/294

>>French+Z3
Well then let Microsoft send their employees with a camera each to the library.

>>vasdae+d4
It does when you produce the code verbatim, as happens frequently.

>>alphan+H2
Currently it looks like ai generated content, as well as model weights can't be copyrighted. Either way, free reign for everyone would be great. But I'm afraid big rights holders will try and lobby against this.

>>alphan+H2
Right. I believe IP restrictions are harmful, don’t actually do what we commonly believe they do, and are a significant net negative to society. I am in favor of either slowly or quickly abolishing IP restrictions. Tho I think it would need to be done slowly to avoid shocks to an economy which has become dependent on these restrictions.

>>French+Z3
The library pays/paid for those books (usually at much greater cost exactly because they're meant to be accessible), most often through taxes.

>>anothe+(OP)
If not for Wilhoit's law, we wouldn't have any laws at all!

>>anothe+R4
Betcha I’ve spontaneously produced code that’s been written before. Who do I owe royalties to?

>>Taylor+g1
> Companies will always amorally argue for whatever makes them more money. I

There are no principles involved when companies advocate for or against things. Companies will always amorally argue for whatever makes them more money. They are entirely capable of arguing two opposing viewpoints if in one context viewpoint A makes them money and in another context opposite-viewpoint B makes them money. Being consistent, either logically, morally, ethically, or in principle, is not necessary.

"Copyright is good and necessary when it makes us money, and copyright is bad and wrong when it doesn't make us money" is a mundane and totally expected opinion coming from a corporation.

>>artnin+Z4
Yeah. I think one can fairly clearly make a strong argument against these restrictions, but the organizations that would directly lose in the short term include basically most of the wealthiest companies in the world, so the lobbying effort would be enormous. The whole reason these companies are so wealthy is that IP restrictions very effectively concentrate wealth. This is to the detriment of everyone else, but they will fight hard to keep things this way.

>>ryandr+w7
Yeah, fair. For my own failings I still find it disappointing when that happens.

>>jnovek+l7
You're not a computer whose sole purpose is to regurgitate code verbatim at massive scale when requested, unlike an LLM designed for exactly that purpose.

>>jnovek+l7
under what system of law?! -- there are at least four major economies in the world, and they all have different rules about these intermingled issues.

>>Taylor+15
Who will pay for Stack Overflow servers and maintenance if OpenAI is just going to scrape their content and stop people from going to Stack Overflow?

>>lelant+I4
you joke but Google did exactly that, i worked on the program for a little while.

>>300bps+7b
Sounds like you support IP then, including stopping piracy.

>>300bps+7b
Generally my view is that if we change the way IP works, the world would adapt just fine. Instead of large centralized services we might see smaller federated services. For example something like stack overflow could be hosted on an activity-pub based federated system. The way the fediverse currently works is that a large number of enthusiasts support their little corner of the fediverse with server expenses probably in the hundreds of dollars per year. So instead of one big site with hundreds of thousands of dollars in server costs per year you would have thousands of federated servers with costs in the hundreds of dollars per year. What’s great is that as the user base grows so can the number of servers and the number of enthusiast server operators interested in running their own server.

We might also see people start to break down barriers to server costs, for example by lobbying for legal rights to serve content from home with no ISP restrictions related to servers on home internet service. A big company like stack overflow can simply spare the cost of a dedicated business line but thousands of home users might really want to serve content from home.

My point is that when you really think it through, you realize that people will find ways to share the information they want. What’s also cool is that for things like the fediverse there generally are no ads. That’s something big central services fail at.

And then there’s sites like Wikipedia. I guess I don’t know their license but they simply ask people for what amounts to over a hundred million dollars a year in donations and they get it. So centralized models can work on pure donations if they are appreciated by a large number of users.

>>300bps+7b
If LLMs can't find the answer then people will go ask it on SO. If SO is liable to shut down because the majority of their business got wiped out then somebody with a vested interest (like say, MSFT/OpenAI) will step in and bail them out (or create a clone, or something functionally equivalent).

>>sensan+d9
Except LLMs aren't exactly optimized for verbatim regurgitation.