Suppose you have three propositions:

A: "Information is free"

B: "Information is not free"

C: "Information is free only for the rich and not free for everyone else, giving the rich a material advantage over everyone else that not only entrenches but accelerates wealth inequality and impedes class mobility"

You, or Swartz, are an advocate for A. Why, exactly, do you think that obliges you/Swartz to prefer C over B while A is not true?

> Do you really believe Aaron would be arguing against AI companies and for publishing / recording guilds on the grounds of intellectual property claims?

That's not the point. All the rules and laws are enforced when its you and me but when it's big tech the laws are treated by these companies as mere instructions.

> friendship ended with free access to information and technologies enabling people; now RIAA is my best friend

Big tech will enable access to free information and will help people reach new heights. Do you see how wrong that sounds?

Sure. But the fact is they broke current existing laws, with known punishments with precedents. Same as a new law doesn't retroactively punish someone, then a new law shouldn't absolve someone before it's passed.

> Then you misunderstood my point.

No, they were responding to the post defending OpenAI that you wrote. If you meant to communicate something other than “criticism of OpenAI in this context is unwarranted” then it looks like you forgot to do that and wrote something else instead

> the current system hurts us all

How? The current system enables the GPL. The GPL protects many open source projects.

No only reading, because the content, style, selection of topics, and more is encoded, written, in the LLM weights, and they obtain profit from them. Noone can compete which copying and pasting (in encoding from) from copyright protected material.

That's not been legally established, the litigation is ongoing. And if mere downloading and reading of copyrighted material were legal, how come torrent users have been fined for it in the thousands?

The law is the law, there can't be different law for corporations with billions in backing. I don't agree with current copyright laws btw and think they should be changed. However, they probably should have lobbied for that before illegally downloading all this material.

The comment you're replying to is citing almost verbatim [1] Microsoft’s director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht, who called OpenAI's data collection practices "the largest theft of labor in human history" in an internal memo.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-exec-called-ai-s...

> frame it in a dumb, manipulative way like that > In fact, you're doing exactly that right here.

You're dead fucking right they are doing exactly that. They are saying that what is wrong is wrong.

Instead you seem to be making out that AI companies are some kind of victim that has to "worry" about "manipulation". Meanwhile authors are out of a job right now and not by accident. What's up with that?

> They were just worried that the commentariat on HN will frame it in a dumb, manipulative way like that.

You’re chastising others for a tone you are yourself employing, and are making monumental assumptions based on a few choice quotes. From the quotes alone you can’t tell if OpenAI thought libgen was sketchy or not.

Also, contrary to what you’re claiming, they were wrong. HN in general seems to approve on libgen when used for its purpose of downloading some books on an individual level. The complaint you’re replying to is about what OpenAI did with the data, it has nothing to do with the website they got it from.

> They use one line and think they've made a great point because one employee called LibGen sketchy.

No, you are using one line from the post to discredit them. The release has more than that and it’s not the only communication they made on this matter nor is there any indication it will be the last, it’s just the current one.