According to the article, 'Qontour' AKA 'Prompt Digital' simply took the full text of a modern copyrighted and published book and made an official-looking website out of it with affiliate links to the real book. If you agree with copyright at all, then this is just blatant, intentional infringement for commercial gain.

This story has practically nothing to do with AI. It could have been done 20 years ago, the crappy Midjouney illustrations and generative text interface merely add insult to injury.

▲

scotty79 3 hours ago | parent [-]

They basically liked the idea of the book and used the bulk of its text as lorem ipsum in a demo for their most likely one (three?) person "digital agency" that probably has 3 clients including mom.

The title made me think that he released a paperback that competes with the original.

> If you agree with copyright at all

The only part of copyright I agree with is right to inalienable attribution (which the rest of copyright makes often hard for purely financial reasons). So whoever made this silly little thing gets a pass from me.

▲

marshray 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> He basically liked the idea of the book and used the bulk of its text as lorem ipsum in a demo for their most likely one person "digital agency" that probably has 3 clients including mom.

What is your basis for this belief?

Did you read the part about the obviously intentionally-added affiliate links to the original book?

> The only part of copyright I agree with is right to inalienable attribution [...] So whoever made this silly little thing gets a pass from me.

Did you read the part about the fake site appearing higher in search results for the author's own name?

	▲	scotty79 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> What is your basis for this belief? My experience inflicted stupidity. > Did you read the part about the obviously intentionally-added affiliate links to the original book? I find it nice that they linked to the original book. For every x earned let the original author earn many times more. It's probably a better deal than the author got from their legal publisher. > Did you read the part about the fake site appearing higher in search results for the author's own name? And who's fault is that? Google? Or this little slop maker that I'm (again stupidly) assuming is not a SEO hacker.

▲

12_throw_away 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> liked the idea of the book and used the bulk of its text as lorem ipsum in a demo

I'm sorry, what? What exactly do you think is happening here?

	▲	scotty79 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You tell me: https://webflow.com/@qontour?msockid=0946eab0f6bf6a55192dfcc... If that doesn't look like a marooned freelancer down on their luck I don't what does. I mean, what's your read on this? Is this a person who secretly hates the book and the author and re-published its contents because he knows that people who have the content will never, ever purchase a book, no matter how much they like it? And he provides the links to buy the book only for plausible deniability and makes them affiliates for even more plausible deniability fully knowing nobody will ever now buy this book? Or is he a grifter trying to earn heaps of money with affiliate links to one obscure book providing it with better visibility through SEO tricks Google is powerless against even though they are in this business for nearly three decades? And he also published the full text of the book because of ... how this helps him earn more money exactly? I ran out of ideas. And the most important question. Is this person a worthy target of the internet wrath?