The problem is that copyright is the law of the land, and it demands our participation.

Because of that reality, every artist who wants to make money must either participate in it, or completely isolate themselves from it.

These models have become an incredible opportunity for giant corporations to circumvent the law. By training a model on a copyrighted work, you can launder that work into your own new work, and make money from it without sharing that money with the original artists. Obviously, this is an incredibly immoral end to copyright as we know it.

So what are we going to do about this situation? Are we really going to keep pretending that copyright can work? It wasn't even working before all the AI hype! Ever heard the words "starving artist"? Of course you have!

We need a better system than copyright. I'm convinced that no system at all (anarchy) would be a superior option at this point. If not now, then when?

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visarga 8 months ago | parent | next [-]

> By training a model on a copyrighted work, you can launder that work into your own new work, and make money from it without sharing that money with the original artists.

Not sure if "you" refers to model developers, hosting company or end users. But let's see each one of them in turn

- model development is a cost center, there is no profit yet

- model deployment brings little profit, they make cents per million tokens

- applying the model to your own needs - that is where the benefit goes.

So my theory is that benefits follow the problem, it is in the application layer. Have a need, you can benefit from AI, don't need it, no benefit. Like Linux. You got to use it for something. And that usage, that problem - is personal. You can't sell your problems, they remain yours. It is hard to quantify how people benefit from AI, it could be for fun, for learning, professional use, or for therapy.

Most gen-AI usage is seen by one person exactly once. Think about that. It's not commercial, it's more like augmented imagination. Who's gonna pay for AI generated stuff when it is so easy to make your own.

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thomastjeffery 8 months ago | parent [-]

My point is that this entire situation has to be framed in the narrative that copyright demands it be framed in. It's "you" the participant of copyright.

When someone creates art, copyright says that there is a countable result we can refer to as their "work". Copyright also says that that artist has a monopoly over the distribution and sale of that work. The implication is that the way for an artist to get paid for their labor is for them to leverage the monopoly they have been granted, and negotiate a distribution scheme that involves paying them.

When an artist chooses to work outside the copyright model, that means they must predetermine part of their distribution negotiation. That might be the libertarian option (gratis distribution with no demands), or it might be the copyleft option, where the price is demanded, but also set to 0. The artist may find payment for their labor by other means, but that's challenging to do in an economy where copyright participants dominate.

	▲	visarga 8 months ago \| parent [-]
		I don't know about copyright, since for most artists the royalty revenues are not enough to live on. It seems like a failed system if the intent was to get royalty revenues.

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discardedrefuse 8 months ago | parent | prev [-]

Benn has a video about that too! His channel is pretty great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJSTFzhs1O4

	▲	thomastjeffery 8 months ago \| parent [-]
		Indeed! I've definitely been a fan of his for a while, and I laud him for trying to make things work in a space where all the cards are stacked against him. I do wish, though, that he would have introduced that perspective of the situation in this particular video. Leaving it out feels like making a video about learning to swim, set in the middle of the ocean.