Most people in my social circles are various flavours of anti-AI, and it drives me crazy how many of them, who were once stridently anti-copyright, are now using copyright as one of the great pillars of AI opposition

I'm heavily anti-copyright. I don't think it should exist. However, as long as it exists, I want it to be applied consistently across the board: AI shouldn't get to use Open Source code while ignoring its license, until Open Source developers get to use proprietary code while ignoring its license. Ditto art, movies, books, etc.

Usually when I see this opinion (yours), it leans on an uncharitable coloring of everybody who sees problems with copyright as "anti-copyright", when really those people largely are happy with the concept of protecting an individual's work. I.e. it is the age-old "those people" argument, where "those people" are a made-up conglomerate of opinions that are real, but come from slightly different contexts and from different people, throwing away those variables to create the illusion of a hypocrite.

People hate it when copyright law is used by corporations to crush people.

People hate it when copyright law is ignored by corporations to crush people.

This isn't particularly hard to grasp.

I feel a stark difference if people break the law to watch movies or if a company does it for profit

I take it because copyright was used to hurt independent and smaller harmless creators, they’re dislike of AI is entirely consistent with that given smaller creatives are being harmed in a sense with their work mimicked and work deprived of them.

Personally I think creatives have an edge as I personally don’t think AI is great at exercising discretion in creativity or design. Which you can see in coding agents their discretion in design is often arbitrary and poor. So I think at least for now that’s still where humans tend to out perform AI

I think besides the points already brought up by other responses, it's important to distinguish attribution from copyright. AI training ignores both while people who are against copyright might not want to get rid of attribution requirements.

I suppose both copyright and AI are problematic. And the article is thought provoking.

I'm curious what the circle is, because it doesn't match up with my circle. So, I'm genuinely curious what you mean by "anti-copyright".

It serves to demonstrate that in most cases, "principles" are only a rhetorical device.

Maybe they’re more anti-blatant-unequal-and-unfair-enforcement-of-copyright-law?

Don't worry, they will flip and become staunch supporters of AI too once it starts to benefit them. Then they will immediately forget the copyright issue.

> Most people in my social circles are various flavours of anti-AI, and it drives me crazy how many of them, who were once stridently anti-copyright, are now using copyright as one of the great pillars of AI opposition

As the article has pointed out, it's not the principle that has changed, but the scale. Lots of things that are tolerable at small scale (e.g. lying, stealing) become disruptive to society at larger scale.

Copyright has been used in the past as a way for corporations to rent-seek and limit innovation. Now it may be the only legal means to stop them from doing that.

So people are pitting two foes against one another and that’s supposed to… be bad?

There is a difference between distributing pirated copies of popular media by already rich artists who you know get paid anyway, and the systematic art theft of AI machines who “create” new art based on artists works who may or may not have been paid for it, and definitely didn’t get credited.

Both are copyright infringements, but only the latter is art theft.

Were they really 100% anti-copyright though? By and large, copyright is the reason most of us have a job and get paid. There are things that shouldn't necessarily be copyright-able like APIs, and copyright probably exists for too long in certain cases, but a world without copyright doesn't really work with our current economic model.

Everyone is anti-copyright until they understand what copyright means.

    In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."