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▲ nekusar 2 hours ago

Are public libraries thieves?

Is Anna's Library thieves?

Is Library Genesis thieves?

Is Archive.org thieves?

Is PirateBay thieves?

They all look like public libraries to me. And better access to all human knowledge is a net positive for everyone.

▲ 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]
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▲sheeshkebab 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Someone going to public library, copying every book out of it and then selling them as their own are thieves.

▲RiverCrochet an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Not technically theft unless the public library no longer has the books. Selling something and saying you created it when you didn't is a different five-letter word: fraud.

Putting prompts in an LLM and saying you "created" the image or text thereof is fraud.

▲__MatrixMan__ an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No, they've merely infringed copyright. Theft is a well understood concept and it does not pertain to information.

▲sscaryterry 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't believe anything is being sold here :)

▲sheeshkebab 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Barrels of tokens sold by thieves that copied every book sure looks like selling to me.

▲runarberg 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

AI companies sell access to their models, via subscriptions and ads.

Public libraries don‘t sell anything. Also authors and publishers get payed for having their books in the library (how and how much varies by country). Authors and publishers get nothing for having their books put into AI training data. Hence the former is a public service, and the latter is theft.

▲ 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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▲lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Okay, but that's not what happened as far as I'm aware. Who did they sell their copies of the books to?

▲tokai 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Public library buy the works they distribute. They also pay for the usage of these works. Copying of said works is still illegal. You should read up on how libraries actually work.

▲stanac an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Copying of said works is still illegal.

Yes it is, but at least they are not charging for the access.

▲nekusar 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That's NOT always been the case.

Libraries used to require membership and dues. Those then bought more books on the used or retail market. LOTS of fights were about that system, cause book publishers hated libraries. And well, they still do.

And to be fair, fuck copyright. Its holds all of us back, so someone can go "FUCK YOU, NO". And nobody or company deserves what is it, 70 years+ death copyright length.

And with the recent Anthropic settlement, used to be, for-profit pirates would go to prison. I also remember absurd 2000's settlements over Britney Spears and Metallica for $5000-$7000 for 20 songs.

You are not going to win me over on massive gatekeeping human knowledge over "Itssss ill-eagle!". I know, and I don't care. And if I'm ever in a case over this, I'll tank it.

▲ClumsyPilot 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s fine too, in that case Open Weight models made by China are doing humanity a favour

▲nekusar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I strongly believe that's the case. That's even the case with the recent OpenAI hack of HuggingFace.

The censorship of US models is so bad (read: guardrails), that they had to use GLM 5.2 on their own hardware to do the analysis. That's how locked down, restrictive, and closed source American models are. They're basically for-profit piracy by way of selling tokens.

Whereas the Chinese models are just "here you go, download and run".

I know what I run. Qwen3.5 and 3.6 and GLM5.2 . USA token vendors are incentivised in doing worse to sell more slot machine tokens.