It's just sad that this is the top comment on Hacker News. Why are we giving free pass to these tech companies? Why are we trusting these CEOs when they have repeatedly broken laws? Remember Aaron Swartz and the fate he suffered? Why is big tech getting away with so much more?

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TeMPOraL 39 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

> Remember Aaron Swartz and the fate he suffered? Why is big tech getting away with so much more?

Why are you turning him into perpetuum mobile in his grave?

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

No, it's the tech community that did a sudden about-face, and is now all "friendship ended with free access to information and technologies enabling people; now RIAA is my best friend", and this move is as dumb as that meme (https://imgflip.com/memegenerator/137501417/Friendship-ended).

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applfanboysbgon 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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?

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simianwords 5 minutes ago | parent [-]

Sure it’s not free for anyone and both companies and individuals are treated similarly. It’s not like you will be jailed for pirating movies. And neither should OpenAI. What part of this is hard to understand

	▲	applfanboysbgon 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> It’s not like you will be jailed for pirating movies. We're literally talking in a thread about someone who committed suicide because the US government was hellbent on ruining his life with a felony conviction for piracy.

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quaintdev 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> 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?

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simianwords 7 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Aaron was sued for distributing and not for pirating. They are different offences

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MattGaiser 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

We tend to accept lawbreaking if it is for a product we want.

There are several multi billion dollar companies where the founding thesis was “what if we just ignore the law?”

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Skyy93 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Then you misunderstood my point. I think copyright law should be significantly changed and the current system hurts us all.

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ares623 42 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	ben_w 14 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		They did. They were found guilty. The case I looked at* was a civil case so this was settled out of court before the court imposed a settlement. The law they broke was pirating the materials, not training per se, even though training is what so many people object to: the judge ruled that actually training a model, when the materials you used were ones you otherwise had lawful access to, was not a breach of law. IMO, the laws need to change to reflect what tech can now do. This wouldn't be the first time, copyright law has had to shift several times before as new means of reproduction are created. * the Anthropic one
	▲	Skyy93 38 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive legal right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The more interesting question is IMO if AI training actually falls into one of these cases. You can read a book and also copy it, but you do not do because of the law. However, you have the ability to do so. Is having the ability to do something already forbidden?

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jrflowers 8 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> 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

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cisc 16 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> the current system hurts us all

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