Fascinated by the “edgy internet” turnaround on copyright law from 2005 to now. Even a decade ago, this kind of transformational use would have been seen as acceptable or even affirmatively good in many circles. futurism.com/the-byte/ope...

There is a different to me between content rights versus IP rights. That said, heck yes we should just be downloading all human knowledge as we please. As well as not able to patent abstract computing systems and maths, which a vast number of patents get away with.

openai is hiding its own intellectual property behind IP law while it demands that it be allowed to break IP law in order to make money. it would be one thing if they were a real nonprofit open sourcing all of their models, but they're a cult with a software arm, akin to scientology.

To be clear, I think in a lot of cases people have changed their minds because they now think that copyleft ideas circa 2012 are flat-out wrong. That’s fine, but that’s a big — and interesting — reversal!

I feel like at least part of the difference here is scale and economic context. An independent musician sampling from massive record labels to make new art is one thing, a massive tech company consuming essentially all copyrighted material in order to profit is another. Reversed power dynamics.

Have you considered the possibility that what they actually have is a principle - namely that they oppose powerful companies abusing and harassing everyday people - and that "supporting copyright" was previously seen as being in opposition to this principle and is now seen as consistent with it?

Well, Everything Was A Remix, wasn’t it. We did the work, we tumblred, we giffed, we vined. We thought it was fun, and a few people monetized our fun and our work. And then we said NO!

"Oh no, your business venture can't seem to make money without breaking the law, so now you want the law to be changed because otherwise your business fails, whatever shall the government do?" IMO the government should be laughing in their fucking face. Maybe next time don't build a theft-machine.

It’s not really a reversal because access to expression by humans who are not conglomerates in a way that supports artists undergirds both the pro fair use and anti “AI” positions

The "edgy internet" about copyright back then was about allowing free expression for artists and free access to science, not about stealing artists' and scientist's work for profit via a bullshit machine owned by billionaires

from my personal perspective I don't think people are thinking super clearly about what expanding copyright to cover transformative use in the general case would mean but on the other hand OpenAI fucking sucks and is affirmatively and openly trying to kneecap artists and writers, seems simple as