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lukan 7 hours ago

The world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this, basically pro piracy. And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.

crazygringo 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.

Different activists are different. "Information wants to be free" activists are against different things from "artists trying to make an honest living" activists.

And different big guys are different. A big guy AI company wants different things from a big guy book publisher.

dns_snek 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.

The activists are against it because the big guys are exploiting us small guys, again. Nobody would give a shit if Meta was just torrenting Nintendo's IP and OpenAI was torrenting Netflix IP, except the lawyers working for these companies.

armchairhacker 4 hours ago | parent [-]

People would care if Meta is allowed to torrent from Nintendo and they aren’t, because they’d care if Meta bought licenses from Nintendo and open models couldn’t get those licenses.

gzread 13 minutes ago | parent [-]

Open models would just torrent Nintendo IP and train on it anyway.

plutokras 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I have no issue with anyone pirating. In my country — and soon in Italy as well — all storage media sales include a small levy (Artisjus) intended to compensate copyright holders for losses from piracy. One could argue it's unfair if you're not actually using the media for copying, but having been forced to pay it regardless, I have no moral qualms about pirating content I don't feel like paying for.

By the same token, AI companies are in no position to complain when their models are scraped and distilled.

jagged-chisel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

How does that money get distributed? If I create a film, how they decide if I’m worthy enough to receive some of that money?

progval 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The way it works in France is that money goes to a company that collects it on behalf of all copyright holders. Its website does not offer any documentation as to how copyright holders can claim their share.

Loughla 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Whoever is the director of that company must have laughed for weeks when they got that posting.

imglorp 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That sounds pretty shady. There's also the problem that most media generated globally is not French. Do they pretend to distribute the spoils globally?

gzread 2 hours ago | parent [-]

In reality the system in these countries is pure corruption. The beneficiaries are large corporations who see it as an extra revenue stream and that's it.

nkrisc 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why is it fair that you get to be subsidized by everyone who does pay? Imagine a world where everyone had the same attitude as you and did not pay for any media. Pirates get to pirate only because most people don’t. So why are you so special?

plutokras 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As mentioned, we all pay the fee. Additionally, I pay for plenty of media when it is practical, deserving, or convenient. The rest gets pirated.

satvikpendem an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not everyone is a Kantian.

2OEH8eoCRo0 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've bought more media than you. Why is it fair that you get to be subsidized by me?

gzread 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's not subsidized. You paid a fee on every hard drive to pay for that drive to hold pirated media.

yorwba 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's subsidized by people who paid the fee when they bought a hard drive to hold something other than pirated media.

gzread 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You mean the fee I pay for piracy doesn't cover the cost of the piracy? Maybe they should remove the fee, so they can prosecute me for piracy, without me arguing it's covered by the fee.

anthk 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Spain too; but legally sharing books and media without profit it's allowed.

Still, they should pay me in order to listen all the mediocre music and crappy 'best sellers' they often produce. More than often I'd just buy some indie book from a small publisher which has much better stories than the whole mainstream.

Heck; every time I try to read some Spaniard technotriller it justs sucks because they focus on crappy emotions everytime focusing near nil on scientific facts or tecnological backgrounds. If any, of course. Hello, Gómez Jurado with the Red Queen sagas.

Meanwhile, people writting half-fantasy/half-geopolitics fiction such as Fabián Plaza with its book depicting a paranormal Cold War were the Spanish Francoist regime never ended and the USSR took the whole Germany for itself, you will get more enganing books. The hippies in Woodstock summoned magical Lovecraftian monsters and the CIA/KGB among paranormal agencies try to fight these. The even mention Orgonic fields and tons of American floklore on paranormal experiments from the CIA/USSR. We all know it's actual bullshit but it's documented bullshit. Modulo the magic, the author applied as a diplomat for Spain a few decades ago so he knows how to create a thriller by predicting how the characters will behave psichologically much better than the Gómez Jurado's books creating an Aspie Mary Sue character getting aspull skills.

The mainstream alternative? Some Humanities woman as the maincharacter alleging bullshit 'prime number finding' in order to boost IQ as a goverment experiment against another high IQ psychopath.

The media in Spain sucks because Spain arrived late to a scientifical mindset socially -thanks, Francoist /s- and male/female Humanities people dominate both the press and the literary world. Instead of Gideon Crew like books (which are a bit bullshit, but with a bit of realism too) like sagas, we get drama bound thrillers with no actual research; if any, hidden Apple product placements.

You would say, heck, Dan Brown it's the same and Tom Clancy's novels are a joke against the ones from actually versed people throwing stereotypes away because they did a good research (the US is not just a bigger Texas and Spain is not a big Andalusia), but that's not the issue here.

The matter it's that most of the readers in Spain are women, and somehow they are afraid of reading a thriller with less drama and emotions and more action (action women do exist you know) and resolution and developing actual skills o the spot instead of aspulling them.

Just look at text adventures. Anchorhead it's just a modern Lovecraft retelling but it has a female protagonist and you as the player should drive her solving all the ingame puzzles. If something like that existed in 1998, the Spaniard should be able to write tons of interesting media (books and series) where crimes were not solved with people just happening to be in the right spot at some specific time. That's a cheap writting and an obvious neglection to the reader allowing him to join the proofs together.

elric 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Big companies are stealing to enrich themselves, while small time pirates were pirating for their own entertainment. Some of the latter went to jail. While the former rake in the dough.

jacquesm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Nothing has changed: the money flows in the same direction as before, that's the constant. The courts are just a diode in a rectifier.

willis936 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not like there has been some change in principle and some sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing art.

armchairhacker 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

LLMs make pirated art more accessible, and 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales.

The significant change is that 2025 corpo pirates are big corporations, and 2005 personal pirates are individuals. And I think the larger issue is that the big corpo pirates get away with what 2025 personal pirates wouldn’t.

Anyways, my opinion is that we should get rid of IP, but only with a replacement that ensures creators still get paid. I lean towards piracy being a small sin: immoral, but you can easily be a pirate and still overall moral person.

fao_ 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> LLMs make pirated art more accessible,

[citation needed]

> 2005 pirates allegedly harmed artists by decreasing their sales.

provably false

GrinningFool 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

2005 piracy had little to do to with making art accessible. For the most part it seemed more like getting for free the digital things we couldn't pay or and/or felt entitled to, with many justifications layered on top.

cmiles74 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It wedged distribution away from record companies. IMHO, that was a pretty big concern for them.

gzread 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

that's the same thing?

candlemas 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Back in 2015 Twitter bragged that Periscope had been widely used the night before to pirate a pay-per-view boxing match. I thought that was odd.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/periscope-a-stream...

j-bos 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The activists seem to be so blinded by disdain they can't even consider the value of the precedent if it goes theough.

Ekaros 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Just need to get around to understand that on many subjects big companies are not uniform block... They all have their own goals and ways of profit. Other than exploiting the consumers and state.

gzread 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Activists are against AI training, not bittorrent

swed420 2 hours ago | parent [-]

You're probably both right since activists are not a consistent monolith.

vjk800 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If Meta wins this, does it mean that pirating becomes legal again?

actionfromafar 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Probably only if you are giving "back to Humanity" or something like that? :-D

sumeno 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's almost like things can be good or bad in different contexts

DeathArrow 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I haven't changed. I was pro 20 years ago and I am pro now.

Imustaskforhelp 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The problem is that laws don't apply to these big companies but to the small guys. It isn't as if piracy has suddenly become legal for everybody.

Oh no, its just legal for the big companies. The laws are different for everybody and that's what activists are worried about :)