[HN Gopher] Meta says it won't sign Europe AI agreement
___________________________________________________________________
Meta says it won't sign Europe AI agreement
Author : rntn
Score : 314 points
Date : 2025-07-18 17:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I admit that I am biased enough to immediately expect the AI
| agreement to be exactly what we need right now if this is how
| Meta reacts to it. Which I know is stupid because I genuinely
| have no idea what is in it.
| mhitza wrote:
| There seem to be 3 chapters of this "AI Code of Practice"
| https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/contents-c...
| and it's drafting history https://digital-
| strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/ai-code-pr...
|
| I did not read it yet, only familiar with the previous AI Act
| https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/ .
|
| If I'd were to guess Meta is going to have a problem with
| chapter 2 of "AI Code of Practice" because it deals with
| copyright law, and probably conflicts with their (and others
| approach) of ripping text out of copyrighted material (is it
| clear yet if it can be called fair use?)
| jahewson wrote:
| > is it clear yet if it can be called fair use?
|
| Yes.
|
| https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-
| topic/digital/copyrig...
|
| Though the EU has its own courts and laws.
| dmbche wrote:
| District judge pretrial ruling on June 25th, I'd be
| surprised this doesn't get challenged soon in higher
| courts.
|
| And acquiring the copyrighted materials is still illegal -
| this is not a blanket protection for all AI training on
| copyrighted materials
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Even if it gets challenged successfully (and tbh I hope
| it does), the damage is already done. Blocking it at this
| stage just pulls up the ladder behind the behemoths.
|
| Unless the courts are willing to put injunctions on any
| model that made use of illegally obtained copyrighted
| material - which would pretty much be all of them.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| But a ruling can determine that the results of the
| violation needs to be destroyed.
| zettabomb wrote:
| Anthropic bought millions of books and scanned them,
| meaning that (at least for those sources) they were
| legally obtained. There has also been rampant piracy used
| to obtain similar material, which I won't defend. But
| it's not an absolute - training can be done on legally
| acquired material.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Why is acquiring copyrighted materials illegal?
|
| You can just buy books in bulk under the first sale
| doctrine and scan them.
| dmbche wrote:
| Which is not what any of the companies did
|
| Anthropic ALSO get copyrighted material legally, but they
| pirated massive amounts first
| rpdillon wrote:
| Apologies, I read your original statement as somehow
| concluding that you couldn't train an AI legally. I just
| wanted to make it extra clear that based on current legal
| precedent in the U.S., you absolutely can. Methodology
| matters, though.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| If France, fair use doesn't even exist!
|
| We have exceptions, which are similar, but the important
| difference is that courts decide what is fair and what is
| not, whereas exceptions are written in law. It is a more
| rigid system that tend to favor copyright owners because if
| what is seen as "fair" doesn't fit one of the listed
| exceptions, copyright still applies. Note that AI training
| probably fits one of the exceptions in French law (but
| again, it is complicated).
|
| I don't know the law in other European countries, but
| AFAIK, EU and international directives don't do much to
| address the exceptions to copyright, so it is up to each
| individual country.
| mikae1 wrote:
| _> If France, fair use doesn 't even exist!_
|
| Same in Sweden. The U.S. has one of the broadest and most
| flexible fair use laws.
|
| In Sweden we have "citatratten" (the right to quote). It
| only applies to text and it is usually said that you
| can't quote more than 20% of the original text.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| Being evil doesn't make them necessarily wrong.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Agreed, that's why I'm calling out the stupidity of my own
| bias.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Interesting because OpenAI committed to signing
|
| https://openai.com/global-affairs/eu-code-of-practice/
| nkmnz wrote:
| OpenAI does direct business with government bodies. Not sure
| about Meta.
| somenameforme wrote:
| About 2 weeks ago OpenAI won a $200 million contract with the
| Defense Department. That's after partnering with Anduril for
| quote "national security missions." And all that is after the
| military enlisted OpenAI's "Chief Product Officer" and sent
| him straight to Lt. Colonel to work in a collaborative role
| directly with the military.
|
| And that's the sort of stuff that's not classified. There's,
| with 100% certainty, plenty that is.
| jahewson wrote:
| Sam has been very pro-regulation for a while now. Remember his
| "please regulate me" world tour?
| nozzlegear wrote:
| The biggest player in the industry welcomes regulation, in
| hopes it'll pull the ladder up behind them that much further. A
| tale as old as red tape.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Yeah well OpenAI also committed to being open.
|
| Why does anybody believe ANYthing OpenAI states?!
| sorokod wrote:
| Presumably it is Meta's growth they have in mind.
|
| Edit: from the linked in post, Meta is concerned about the growth
| of European companies:
|
| "We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-
| reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI
| models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build
| businesses on top of them."
| isodev wrote:
| Of course. Skimming over the AI Code of Practice, there is
| nothing particularly unexpected or qualifying as "overreach".
| Of course, to be compliant, model providers can't be shady
| which perhaps conflicts with Meta's general way of work.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Sure, but Meta saying "We share concerns raised by these
| businesses" translates to: It is in our and only our benefit
| for PR reasons to agree with someone, we don't care who they
| are, we don't give a fuck, but just this second it sounds great
| to use them for our lobbying.
|
| Meta has never done and will never do anything in the general
| public's interest. All they care about is harvesting more data
| to sell more ads.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > has never done and will never do anything in the general
| public's interest
|
| I'm no Meta apologist, but haven't they been at the forefront
| of open-source AI development? That seems to be in the
| "general public's interest".
|
| Obviously they also have a business to run, so their public
| benefit can only go so far before they start running afoul of
| their fiduciary responsibilities.
| jahewson wrote:
| There's a summary of the guidelines here for anyone who is
| wondering:
|
| https://artificialintelligenceact.eu/introduction-to-code-of...
|
| It's certainly onerous. I don't see how it helps anyone except
| for big copyright holders, lawyers and bureaucrats.
| felipeerias wrote:
| These regulations may end up creating a trap for European
| companies.
|
| Essentially, the goal is to establish a series of thresholds
| that result in significantly more complex and onerous
| compliance requirements, for example when a model is trained
| past a certain scale.
|
| Burgeoning EU companies would be reluctant to cross any one of
| those thresholds and have to deal with sharply increased
| regulatory risks.
|
| On the other hand, large corporations in the US or China are
| currently benefiting from a Darwinian ecosystem at home that
| allows them to evolve their frontier models at breakneck speed.
|
| Those non-EU companies will then be able to enter the EU market
| with far more polished AI-based products and far deeper pockets
| to face any regulations.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| And then they'll get fined a few billion anyway to cover the
| gap for no European tech to tax.
| izacus wrote:
| As an European, this sounds like an excellent solution.
|
| US megatech funding our public infrastructure? Amazing.
| Especially after US attacked us with tarrifs.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Just like Russian mega-energy powering your grid?
|
| Bad idea.
|
| Europe is digging a hole of a combination of suffocating
| regulation and dependance on foreign players. It's so
| dumb, but Europeans are so used to it they can't see the
| problem.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| Also EU Users will try to use the better AI products with
| e.g. a VPN to the US.
| aniviacat wrote:
| Most won't. Remember that this is an issue almost noone
| (outside a certain bubble) is aware of.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Haha, huge, HUGE L-take. Go to any library or coffeeshop,
| and you'll see most students on their laptops are on
| ChatGPT. Do you think they won't immediately figure out
| how to use a VPN to move to the "better" models from the
| US or China if the EU regulations cripple the ones
| available in the EU?
|
| EU's preemptive war on AI will be like the RIAA's war on
| music piracy. EU consumers will get their digital stuff
| one way or another, only EU's domestic products will just
| fall behind by not competing to create a equally good
| product that the consumers want.
| aniviacat wrote:
| > Do you think they won't immediately figure out how to
| use a VPN to move to the "better" models
|
| I think they don't even know the term "model" (in AI
| context), let alone which one's the best. They only know
| ChatGPT.
|
| I do think it's possible that stories spread like "the
| new cool ChatGPT update is US-only: Here's how to access
| it in the EU".
|
| However I don't think many will make use of that.
|
| Anecdotally, most people around me (even CS colleagues)
| only use the standard model, ChatGPT 4o, and don't even
| take a look at the other options.
|
| Additionally, AI companies could quickly get in trouble
| if they accept payments from EU credit cards.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> I think they don't even know the term "model" (in AI
| context), let alone which one's the best. They only know
| ChatGPT._
|
| They don't know how torrents work either, but they always
| find a way to pirate movies to avoid Netflix's shitty
| policies. Necessity is the mother of invention.
|
| _> However I don't think many will make use of that._
|
| You underestimate the drive kids/young adults have trying
| to maximize their grades/output while doing the bare
| minimum to have more time for themselves.
|
| _> Additionally, AI companies could quickly get in
| trouble if they accept payments from EU credit cards._
|
| Well, if the EU keep this up, that might not be an issue
| long term in the future, when without top of the line AI
| and choked by regulations and with the costs of caring
| for an ageing demographics sucking up all the economic
| output, the EU economy falls further and further into
| irrelevancy.
| dang wrote:
| Can you please make your substantive points without snark
| or name-calling?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| tim333 wrote:
| Well, if there's not much difference why bother. If there
| are copyright restrictions on things people care about
| Europeans are perfectly capable of bypassing
| restrictions, like watching the ending of Game of Thrones
| etc.
| thrance wrote:
| It's always the same argument, and it is true. The US
| retained an edge over the rest of the world through
| deregulating tech.
|
| My issue with this is that it doesn't look like America's
| laissez-faire stance on this issues helped Americans much.
| Internet companies have gotten absolutely humongous and gave
| rise to a new class of techno-oligarchs that are now funding
| anti-democracy campaigns.
|
| I feel like getting slightly less performant models is a fair
| price to pay for increased scrutiny over these powerful
| private actors.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| The problem is that misaligned AI will eventually affect
| everyone worldwide. Even if us Americans cause the problem,
| it won't stay an American problem.
|
| If Europe wants leverage, the best plan is to tell ASML to
| turn off the supply of chips.
| troupo wrote:
| > It's certainly onerous.
|
| What exactly is onerous about it?
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| It's basically micromanaging an industry that European
| countries have not been able to cultivate themselves. It's
| legislation for legislation's sake. If you had a naive hope
| that Mario Draghi's gloomy report on the EU's competitiveness
| would pave the way for a political breakthrough in the EU - one
| is tempted to say something along the lines of communist
| China's market reforms in the 70s - then you have to conclude
| that the EU is continuing in exactly the same direction. I have
| actually lost faith in the EU.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I'm surprised that most of the comments here are siding with
| Europe blindly?
|
| Am I the only one who assumes by default that European regulation
| will be heavy-handed and ill conceived?
| andrepd wrote:
| So you're surprised that people are siding with Europe blindly,
| but you're "assuming by default" that you should side with Meta
| blindly.
|
| Perhaps it's easier to actually look at the points in
| contention to form your opinion.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I don't remember saying anything about blindly deciding
| things being a good thing.
| 9dev wrote:
| Maybe the others have put in a little more effort to understand
| the regulation before blindly criticising it? Similar to the
| GDPR, a lot of it is just common sense--if you don't think that
| "the market" as represented by global mega-corps will just sort
| it out, that is.
| Alupis wrote:
| Our friends in the EU have a long history of well-intentioned
| but misguided policy and regulations, which has led to
| stunted growth in their tech sector.
|
| Maybe some think that is a good thing - and perhaps it may be
| - but I feel it's more likely any regulation regarding AI at
| this point in time is premature, doomed for failure and
| unintended consequences.
| 9dev wrote:
| Yet at the same time, they also have a long history of very
| successful policy, such as the USB-C issue, but also the
| GDPR, which has raised the issue of our right to privacy
| all over the world.
|
| How long can we let AI go without regulation? Just
| yesterday, there was a report here on Delta using AI to
| squeeze higher ticket prices from customers. Next up is
| insurance companies. How long do you want to watch? Until
| all accountability is gone for good?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I mean, getting USB-C to be usable on everything is like
| a nice-to-have, I wouldn't call it "very successful
| policy".
| 9dev wrote:
| It's just an example. The EU has often, and often
| successfully, pushed for standardisation to the benefit
| of end users.
| Alupis wrote:
| Which... has the consequences of stifling innovation.
| Regulations/policy is two-way street.
|
| Who's to say USB-C is the end-all-be-all connector? We're
| happy with it today, but Apple's Lightning connector had
| merit. What if two new, competing connectors come out in
| a few year's time?
|
| The EU regulation, as-is, simply will not allow a new
| technically superior connector to enter the market. Fast
| forward a decade when USB-C is dead, EU will keep it
| limping along - stifling more innovation along the way.
|
| Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via
| consensus - but via policy/regulation? These are the same
| governing bodies that hardly understand
| technology/internet. Normally standardization is achieved
| via two (or more) competing standards where one
| eventually "wins" via adoption.
|
| Well intentioned, but with negative side-effects.
| sensanaty wrote:
| If the industry comes out with a new, better connector,
| they can use it, as long as they also provide USB-C
| ports. If enough of them collectively decide the new one
| is superior, then they can start using that port in favor
| of USB-C altogether.
|
| The EU says nothing about USB-C being the bestest and
| greatest, they only say that companies have to come to a
| consensus and have to have 1 port that is shared between
| all devices for the sake of consumers.
|
| I personally much prefer USB-C over the horrid
| clusterfuck of proprietary cables that weren't compatible
| with one another, that's for sure.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| "the industry"
|
| If one company does though they're basically screwed as I
| understand it.....
| troupo wrote:
| > The EU regulation, as-is, simply will not allow a new
| technically superior connector to enter the market.
|
| As in: the EU regulation literally addresses this. You'd
| know it if you didn't blindly repeat uneducated talking
| points by others who are as clueless as you are.
|
| > Standardization like this is difficult to achieve via
| consensus - but via policy/regulation?
|
| In the ancient times of 15 or so years ago every
| manufacturer had their own connector incompatible with
| each other. There would often be connectors incompatible
| with each other within a single manufacturer's product
| range.
|
| The EU said: settle on a single connector voluntarily, or
| else. At the time the industry settled on micro-USB and
| started working on USB-C. Hell, even Power Delivery
| wasn't standardized until USB-C.
|
| Consensus doesn't always work. Often you do need
| government intervention.
| pembrook wrote:
| Hard disagree on both GDPR and USBC.
|
| If I had to pick a connector that the world was forced to
| use forever due to some European technocrat, I would not
| have picked usb-c.
|
| Hell, the ports on my MacBook are nearly shot just a few
| years in.
|
| Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and
| consultants than it has for EU citizens.
| kaashif wrote:
| The USB-C charging ports on my phones have always
| collected lint to the point they totally stop working and
| have to be cleaned out vigorously.
|
| I don't know how this problem is so much worse with USB-C
| or the physics behind it, but it's a very common issue.
|
| This port could be improved for sure.
| user5534762135 wrote:
| As someone with both a usb-c and micro-usb phone, I can
| assure you that other connectors are not free of that
| problem. The micro-usb one definitely feels worse. Not
| sure about the old proprietary crap that used to be
| forced down our throats so we buy Apple AND Nokia
| chargers, and a new one for each model, too.
| Renaud wrote:
| > Plus GDPR has created more value for lawyers and
| consultants than it has for EU citizens.
|
| Monetary value, certainly, but that's considering money
| as the only desirable value to measure against.
| pembrook wrote:
| Who said money. Time and human effort are the most
| valuable commodities.
|
| That time and effort wasted on consultants and lawyers
| could have been spent on more important problems or used
| to more efficiently solve the current one.
| ars wrote:
| > GDPR
|
| You mean that thing (or is that another law?) that forces me
| to find that "I really don't care in the slightest" button
| about cookies on every single page?
| junto wrote:
| No, the laws that ensures that private individuals have the
| power to know what is stored about them, change incorrect
| data, and have it deleted unless legally necessary to hold
| it - all in a timely manner and financially penalize
| companies that do not.
| pelorat wrote:
| > and have it deleted unless legally necessary to hold it
|
| Tell that to X which disables your ability to delete your
| account if it gets suspended.
| cenamus wrote:
| That's not the GDPR.
| anonymousab wrote:
| That is malicious compliance with the law, and more or less
| indicative of a failure of enforcement against offenders.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| But the law still caused that, of course regulation is
| going to be adversarial and they should anticipate that.
| sensanaty wrote:
| No, GDPR is the law that allowed me to successfully request
| the deletion of everything companies like Meta have ever
| harvested on me without my consent and for them to
| permanently delete it.
|
| Fun fact, GitHub doesn't have cookie banners. It's almost
| like it's possible to run a huge site without being a
| parasite and harvesting every iota of data of your site's
| visitors!
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I'm specifically referring to several comments that say they
| have not read the regulation at all, but think it must be
| good if Meta opposes it.
| lovich wrote:
| I'd side with Europe blindly over any corporation.
|
| The European government has at least a passing interest in the
| well being of human beings while that is not valued by the
| incentives that corporations live by
| rockemsockem wrote:
| All corporations that exist everywhere make worse decisions
| than Europe is a weirdly broad statement to make.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| The EU is pushing for a backdoor in all major messaging/email
| providers to "protect the children". No limits and no
| probable cause required. Everyone is a suspect.
|
| Are you still sure you want to side blindly with the EU?
| xandrius wrote:
| If I've got to side blindly with any entity it is definitely
| not going to be Meta. That's all there is.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I mean, ideally no one would side blindly at all :D
| js4ever wrote:
| That's the issue with people's from a certain side of
| politics, they don't vote for something they always side /
| vote against something or someone ... Blindly. It's like
| pure hate going over reason. But it's ok they are the
| 'good' ones so they are always right and don't really need
| to think
| amelius wrote:
| Sometimes people are just too lazy to read an article. If
| you just gave one argument in favor of Meta, then perhaps
| that could have started a useful conversation.
| bdangubic wrote:
| Perhaps... if a sane person could find anything in favor
| of one of the most Evil corporations in the history of
| mankind...
| krapp wrote:
| >if a sane person could find anything in favor of one of
| the most Evil corporations in the history of mankind.
|
| You need some perspective - Meta wouldn't even crack the
| top 100 in terms of evil:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abir_Congo_Company
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_
| in_...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont#Controversies_and_cr
| ime...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiquita
| bdangubic wrote:
| all of the combined pales in comparison to what meta did
| and is doing to society at the scale of which they are
| doing it
| bdangubic wrote:
| this alone is worse than all of what you listed
| _combined_
|
| https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/meta-
| all...
| krapp wrote:
| No... making teenagers feel depressed sometimes is not in
| fact worse than facilitating the Holocaust, using human
| limbs as currency, enslaving half the world and dousing
| the earth with poisons _combined._
| bdangubic wrote:
| it is when you consider number of people affected
| krapp wrote:
| No, it isn't.
|
| I'm not saying Meta isn't evil - they're a corporation,
| and all corporations are evil - but you must live in an
| incredibly narrow-minded and privileged bubble to believe
| that Meta is categorically more evil than all other evils
| in the span of human history combined.
|
| Go take a tour of Dachau and look at the ovens and
| realize what you're claiming. That _that_ pales in
| comparison to targeted ads.
|
| Just... no.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Dachau was enabled by the Metas of that time. It needed
| advertising aka. propaganda to get to this political
| regime and it needed surveillance to keep people in check
| and target the people who get a sponsorship for that
| lifelong vacation.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Depends on the visibility of the weapon used and the time
| scale it starts to show the debilitating effects.
| jabjq wrote:
| I feel the same but about the EU. After all, I have a choice
| whether to use Meta or not. There is no escaping the EU sort
| of leaving my current life.
| maartenscholl wrote:
| Meta famously tracks people extensively even if they don't
| have an account there, through a technique called shadow
| profiles.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| That's fair, but you don't need to blindly side with anyone.
|
| My original post was about all the comments saying they knew
| nothing about the regulation, but that they sided with
| Europe.
|
| I think that gleeful ignorance caught me off guard.
| zeptonix wrote:
| Everything in this thread even remotely anti-EU-regulation is
| being extreme downvoted
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Yeah it's kinda weird.
|
| Feels like I need to go find a tech site full of people who
| actually like tech instead of hating it.
| blibble wrote:
| I like tech
|
| I don't like meta or anything it has done, or stands for
| rockemsockem wrote:
| See that's crazy though.
|
| You don't like open source ML (including or not including
| LLMs, depending on how you feel about them)
|
| You don't like React?
|
| You don't like PyTorch?
|
| Like a lot of really smart and really dedicated people
| work on pretty cool stuff at Meta. You don't have to like
| Facebook, Instagram, etc to see that.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| To be fair, anyone who genuinely likes React is probably
| insane?
|
| Plenty of great projects are developed by people working
| at Meta. Doesn't change the fact that the company as a
| whole should be split in at least 6 parts, and at least
| two thirds of these parts should be regulated to death.
| And when it comes to activities that do not improve
| anyone's life such as advertisement and data collection,
| I do mean literally regulated into bankruptcy.
| OtomotO wrote:
| I like tech, but I despise cults
| asats wrote:
| Don't know if I'm biased but it seems there has been a slow
| but consistent and accelerating redditification of hacker
| news.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| It's the AI hype and the people who think they are
| hackers because they can ask a LLM to write code.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Idk I feel like there are a lot of non-technical people
| who work in tech here now.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Yeah I think that's part of it.
|
| Probably partly because reddit somehow seems to have
| become even worse over the last several years. So there
| are probably more people fleeing
| j_maffe wrote:
| Tech and techies don't like to be monopolized
| trinsic2 wrote:
| No we like tech that works for the people/public, not
| against them. I know its a crazy idea.
| wswope wrote:
| Your opinions aren't the problem, and tech isn't the
| problem. It's entirely your bad-faith strawman arguments
| and trolling.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44609135
|
| That feeling is correct: this site is better without you.
| Please put your money where your mouth is and leave.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I think your command of the English language might be
| your issue
| guelo wrote:
| If you don't hate big tech you haven't paying attention.
| Enshittification became a popular word for a reason.
| troupo wrote:
| As others have pointed out, we like tech.
|
| We don't like what trillion-dollar supranational
| corporations and infinite VC money are doing with tech.
|
| Hating things like "We're saving your precise movements and
| location for 10+ years" and "we're using AI to predict how
| much you can be charged for stuff" is not hating technology
| vicnov wrote:
| It is fascinating. I assume that the tech world is further to
| the left, and that interpretation of "left" is very pro-AI
| regulation.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| The regulations are pretty reasonable though.
| gnulinux996 wrote:
| Are you suggesting something here?
| satellite2 wrote:
| Well Europe haven't enacted policies actually breaking American
| monopolies until now.
|
| Europeans are still essentially on Google, Meta and Amazon for
| most of their browsing experiences. So I'm assuming Europe's
| goal is not to compete or break American moat but to force them
| to be polite and to preserve national sovereignty on important
| national security aspects.
|
| A position which is essentially reasonable if not too polite.
| almatabata wrote:
| > So I'm assuming Europe's goal is not to compete or break
| American moat but to force them to be polite and to preserve
| national sovereignty on important national security aspects.
|
| When push comes to shove the US company will always
| prioritize US interest. If you want to stay under the US
| umbrella by all means. But honestly it looks very short
| sighted to me.
|
| After seeing this news
| https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/the-
| networker..., how can you have any faith that they will play
| nice?
|
| You have only one option. Grow alternatives. Fund your own
| companies. China managed to fund the local market without
| picking winners. If European countries really care, they need
| to do the same for tech.
|
| If they don't they will forever stay under the influence of
| another big brother. It is US today, but it could be China
| tomorrow.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| The EU sucks at venture capital.
| notyourwork wrote:
| What is bad about heavy handed regulation to protect citizens?
| hardlianotion wrote:
| He also said "ill conceived"
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| A good example of how this can end up with negative outcomes
| is the cookie directive, which is how we ended up with cookie
| consent popovers on every website that does absolutely
| nothing to prevent tracking and has only amounted to making
| lives more frustrating in the EU and abroad.
|
| It was a decade too late and written by people who were
| incredibly out of touch with the actual problem. The GDPR is
| a bit better, but it's still a far bigger nuisance for
| regular European citizens than the companies that still
| largely unhindered track and profile the same.
| zizee wrote:
| So because sometimes a regulation misses the mark,
| governments should not try to regulate?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I think OP is criticising blindly trusting the regulation
| hits the mark because Meta is mad about it. Zuckerberg
| can be a bastard and correctly call out a burdensome law.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Well, pragmatically, I'd say no. We must judge
| regulations not by the well wishes and intentions behind
| them but the actual outcomes they have. These regulations
| affect people, jobs and lives.
|
| The odds of the EU actually hitting a useful mark with
| these types of regulations, given their technical
| illiteracy, it's is just astronomically unlikely.
| plopilop wrote:
| Cookie consent popovers were the deliberate decisions of
| company to create the worst possible compliance. A much
| simpler one could have been to stop tracking users
| especially when it is not their primary business.
|
| Newer regulations also mandate that "reject all cookies"
| should be a one click action but surprisingly compliance is
| low. Once again, the enemy of the customer here is the
| company, not the eu regulation.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| I don't believe that every website has colluded to give
| themselves a horrible user experience in some kind of
| mass protest against the GDPR. My guess is that companies
| are acting in their interests, which is exactly what I
| expect them to do and if the EU is not capable of
| figuring out what that will look like then it is a valid
| criticism of their ability to make regulations
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Yet that user interface is against the law and enforcing
| the GDPR would improve it.
| plopilop wrote:
| Websites use ready-to be used cookie banners provider by
| their advertisers. Who have all the incentive to make the
| process as painful as possible unless you click "accept",
| and essentially followed the model that Facebook
| pioneered.
|
| And since most people click on accept, websites don't
| really care either.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| What makes you think the regulators didn't predict the
| outcome?
|
| Of course the business which depend on harvesting data
| will do anything they can to continue harvesting data.
| The regulation just makes that require consent. This is
| good.
|
| If businesses are intent to keep on harvesting data by
| using dark patterns to obtain "consent", these businesses
| should either die or change. This is good.
| eastbound wrote:
| Perfect example of regulation shaping a market. And
| succeeding at only ill results.
| thrance wrote:
| Bad argument, the solution is not to not regulate, it's to
| make a new law mandating companies to make cookies opt-in
| behind a menu that can't be a banner. And if this somehow
| backfires too, we go again. Giving up is not the solution
| to the privacy crisis.
| felipeerias wrote:
| That it is very likely not going to work as advertised, and
| might even backfire.
|
| The EU AI regulation establishes complex rules and
| requirements for models trained above 10^25 FLOPS. Mistral is
| currently the only European company operating at that scale,
| and they are also asking for a pause before these rules go
| into effect.
| sublimefire wrote:
| The sad reality is that nobody ever cares about the
| security/ethics of their product unless they are pressured.
| Model evaluation against some well defined ethics framework
| or something like HarmBench are not without costs, nobody
| wants to do that. It is similar to pentesting. It is good
| that such suggestions are being pushed forward to make sure
| model owners are responsible here. It also protects authors
| and reduces the risk of their works being copied verbatim.
| I think this is what morel owners are afraid of the most.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| TBH I would most prefer that models weren't forbidden to
| answer certain questions.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| it does not protect citizens? the EU shoves down a lot of the
| member state's throats.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| "Even the very wise cannot see all ends." And these people
| aren't what I'd call "very wise."
|
| Meanwhile, nobody in China gives a flying fuck about
| regulators in the EU. You probably don't care about what the
| Chinese are doing now, but believe me, you will if the EU
| hands the next trillion-Euro market over to them without a
| fight.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Everyone working on AI will care, if ASML stops servicing
| TSMC's machines. If Europe is serious about responsible AI,
| I think applying pressure to ASML might be their only real
| option.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _If Europe is serious about responsible AI, I think
| applying pressure to ASML might be their only real
| option._
|
| True, but now they get to butt heads with the US, who
| call the tunes at ASML even though ASML is a European
| company.
|
| We (the US) have given China every possible incentive to
| break that dependency short of dropping bombs on them,
| and it would be foolish to think the TSMC/ASML status quo
| will still hold in 5-10 years. Say what you will about
| China, they aren't a nation of morons. Now that it's
| clear what's at stake, I think they will respond
| rationally and effectively.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Will they resort to turning off the Internet to protect
| citizens?
| justinclift wrote:
| Or maybe just exclude Meta from the EU? :)
| gnulinux996 wrote:
| Is this AI agreement about "turning off the Internet"?
| terminalshort wrote:
| This is the same entity that has literally ruled that you can
| be charged with blasphemy for insulting religious figures, so
| intent to protect citizens is not a motive I ascribe to them.
| computer wrote:
| What entity specifically?
| terminalshort wrote:
| The EU Court of Human Rights upheld a blasphemy
| conviction for calling Muhammad (who married a 9 year
| old) a pedophile
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.S._v._Austria_(2018)
| gretch wrote:
| Dang that's a crazy outcome.
|
| >Even in a lively discussion it was not compatible with
| Article 10 of the Convention to pack incriminating
| statements into the wrapping of an otherwise acceptable
| expression of opinion and claim that this rendered
| passable those statements exceeding the permissible
| limits of freedom of expression.
|
| Although the expression of this opinion is otherwise
| acceptable, it was packed with "incriminating
| statements". But the subject of these incriminating
| statements is 2000 year old mythical figure.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| But it IS protecting citizens from blasphemy.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| You end up with anemic industry and heavy dependability on
| foreign players.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| The EU is pushing for a backdoor in all major messaging/email
| providers to "protect the children". But it's for our own
| good you see? The EU knows best and it wants your data
| without limits and without probable cause. Everyone is a
| suspect.
|
| 1984 wasn't supposed to be a blueprint.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Because it doesn't protect us.
|
| It just creates barriers for internal players, while giving a
| massive head start for evil outside players.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| what's bad about it is when people say "it's to protect
| citizens" when it's really a political move to control
| american companies
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I don't think good intentions alone are enough to do good.
| remram wrote:
| "blindly"? Only if you assume you are right in your opinion can
| you arrive at the conclusion that your detractors didn't learn
| about it.
|
| Since you then admit to "assume by default", are you sure you
| are not what you complain about?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I was specifically referring to several comments that
| specifically stated that they did not know what the
| regulation was, but that they assumed Europe was right and
| Meta was wrong.
|
| I, prior to reading the details of the regulation myself, was
| commenting on my surprise at the default inclinations of
| people.
|
| At no point did I pass judgement on the regulation and even
| after reading a little bit on it I need to read more to
| actually decide whether I think it's good or bad.
|
| Being American it impacts me less, so it's lower on my to do
| list.
| OtomotO wrote:
| Are you aware of the irony in your post?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I don't recall sharing my opinion on this particular
| regulation.
|
| I think perhaps you need to reread my comment or lookup
| "irony"
| campl3r wrote:
| Or you know, some actually read it and agree?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I'm specifically talking about comments that say they haven't
| read it, but that they side with Europe. Look through the
| thread, there's a ton like that
| troupo wrote:
| > Am I the only one who assumes by default
|
| And that's the problem: assuming by default.
|
| How about not assuming by default? How about reading something
| about this? How about forming your own opinion, and not the
| opinion of the trillion- dollar supranational corporations?
| rockemsockem wrote:
| Are you saying that upon reading a sentence like
|
| "Meta disagrees with European regulation"
|
| That you don't have an immediate guess at which party you are
| most likely to agree with?
|
| I do and I think most people do.
|
| I'm not about to go around spreading my uninformed opinion
| though. What my comment said was that I was surprised at
| people's kneejerk reaction that Europe must be right,
| especially on HN. Perhaps I should have also chided those
| people for commenting at all, but that's hindsight for you.
| seydor wrote:
| It's just foreign interests trying to keep Europe down
| rockemsockem wrote:
| I feel like Europe does a plenty good job of that itself
| cultureswitch wrote:
| Let's see, how many times did I get robo-called in the last
| decade? Zero :)
|
| Sometimes the regulations are heavy-handed and ill-conceived.
| Most of the time, they are influenced by one lobby or another.
| For example, car emissions limits scale with _weight_ of all
| things, which completely defeats the point and actually makes
| today's car market worse for the environment than it used to
| be, _because of_ emissions regulations. However, it is
| undeniable that that the average European is better off in
| terms of privacy.
| chvid wrote:
| Why does meta need to sign anything? I thought the EU made laws
| that anyone operating in the EU including meta had to comply to.
| AIPedant wrote:
| It's not a law, it's a voluntary code of conduct given heft by
| EU endorsement.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> it 's a voluntary code of conduct_
|
| So then it's something completely worthless in the globally
| competitive cutthroat business world, that even the companies
| who signed won't follow, they just signed it for virtue
| signaling.
|
| If you want companies to actually follow a rule, you make it
| a law and you send their CEOs to jail when they break it.
|
| "Voluntary codes of conduct" have less value in the business
| world than toilet paper. Zuck was just tired of this
| performative bullshit and said the quiet part out loud.
| AIPedant wrote:
| No, it's a voluntary code of conduct so AI providers can
| start implementing changes before the conduct becomes a
| legal requirement, and so the code itself can be updated in
| the face of reality before legislators have to finalize
| anything. The EU does not have foresight into what
| reasonable laws should look like, they are nervous about
| unintended consequences, and they do not want to drive
| good-faith organizations away, they are trying to do this
| correctly.
|
| This cynical take seems wise and world-weary but it is just
| plain ignorant, please read the link.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's a chance for the business to try out the rules, so
| they can have an informed opinion and make useful feedback
| when the EU turn it into an actual law. And also so they
| don't have to scramble to compile once they suddenly become
| biding.
|
| But well, I wouldn't expect Meta to sign into it either.
| hopelite wrote:
| "Heft of EU endorsement." It's amazing how Europeans have
| simply acquiesced to an illegitimate EU imitation government
| simply saying, "We dictate your life now!".
|
| European aristocrats just decided that you shall now be
| subjects again and Europeans said ok. It's kind of
| astonishing how easy it was, and most Europeans I met almost
| violently reject that notion in spite of the fact that it's
| exactly what happened as they still haven't even really
| gotten an understanding for just how much Brussels is
| stuffing them.
|
| In a legitimate system it would need to be up to each
| sovereign state to decide something like that, but in
| contrast to the US, there is absolutely nothing that limits
| the illegitimate power grab of the EU.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > in contrast to the US, there is absolutely nothing that
| limits the illegitimate power grab of the EU.
|
| I am happy to inform you that the EU actually works
| according to treaties which basically cover every point of
| a constitution and has a full set of courts of law ensuring
| the parliament and the European executive respect said
| treaties and allowing European citizens to defend their
| interests in case of overreach.
|
| > European aristocrats just decided
|
| I am happy to inform you that the European Union has a
| democratically elected parliament voting its laws and that
| the head of commission is appointed by democratically
| elected heads of states and commissioners are confirmed by
| said parliament.
|
| If you still need help with any other basic fact about the
| European Union don't hesitate to ask.
| aosaigh wrote:
| You don't understand the fundamental structure of the EU
| sameermanek wrote:
| Honestly, US is really not in a good shape to support your
| argument.
|
| If aristocratic figures had so much power in EU, they
| wouldnt be fleeing from the union.
|
| In reality, US is plagued with greed, scams, mafias in all
| sectors, human rights violations and a economy thats like a
| house of cards. In contrast, you feel human when you're in
| EU. You have voice, rights and common sense!
|
| It definitely has its flaws, but atleast the presidents
| there are not rug pulling their own citizens and giving
| pardons to crypto scammers.. Right?
| paul7986 wrote:
| The US, China and others are sprinting and thus spiraling towards
| the majority of society's destitution unless we force these
| billionaires hands; figure out how we will eat and sustain our
| economies where one person is now doing a white or blue (Amazon
| warehouse robots) collar job that ten use to do.
| vicnov wrote:
| Is every sprint a spiral towards destruction?
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| I think it is a legitimate concern in Europe just because
| their economies are getting squeezed from all sides by USA
| and China. It's a lot more in the public consciousness now
| since Trump said all the quiet stuff out loud instead of just
| letting the slow boil continue.
| lvl155 wrote:
| I have a strong aversion to Meta and Zuck but EU is pretty tone-
| deaf. Everything they do reeks of political and anti-American
| tech undertone.
| zeptonix wrote:
| They're career regulators
| zeptonix wrote:
| Good. As Elon says, the only thing the EU does export is
| regulation. Same geniuses that make us click 5 cookie pop-ups
| every webpage
| cenamus wrote:
| They didn't give us that. Mostly non-compliant websites gave us
| that.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| that's deflecting responsibility. it's important to care
| about the actual effects of decisions, not hide behind the
| best case scenario. especially for governments.
|
| in this case, it is clear that the EU policy resulted in
| cookie banners
| dmix wrote:
| The the entire ad industry moved to fingerprinting, mobile ad
| kits, and 3rd party authentication login systems so it made
| zero difference even if they did comply. Google and Meta
| aren't worried about cookies when they have JS on every
| single website but it burdens every website user.
| mpeg wrote:
| This is not correct, the regulation has nothing to do with
| cookies as the storage method, and everything to do with
| what kind of data is being collected and used to track
| people.
|
| Meta is hardly at blame here, it is the site owners that
| choose to add meta tracking code to their site and
| therefore have to disclose it and opt-in the user via
| "cookie banners"
| myaccountonhn wrote:
| This thread is people going "EU made me either choose to tell
| you that I spy on you or stop spying on you, now I need to
| tell everyone I spy on them, fucking EU".
| saubeidl wrote:
| Trump literally started a trade war because the EU exports more
| to the US than vice versa.
| tim333 wrote:
| He also did the war thing on the UK which imports more from
| the US than it exports. He just likes trade wars I think.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Elon is an idiot.
|
| If he disagrees with EU values so much, he should just stay out
| of the EU market. It's a free world, nobody forced him to sell
| cars in the EU.
| McAlpine5892 wrote:
| People complain more about cookie banners than they do the
| actual invasive tracking by those cookies.
|
| Those banners suck and I wouldn't mind if the EU rolled back
| that law and tried another approach. At the same time, it's
| fairly easy to add an extension to your browser that hides
| them.
|
| Legislation won't always work. It's complex and human behavior
| is somewhat unpredictable. We've let tech run rampant up to
| this point - it's going to take some time to figure out how to
| best control them. Throwing up our hands because it's hard to
| protect consumers from power multi-national corporations is a
| pretty silly position imo.
| seydor wrote:
| > than they do the actual invasive tracking by those cookies.
|
| maybe people have rationally compared the harm done by those
| two
| Barrin92 wrote:
| can you expand on what sort of rationality would lead a
| person to consider an _at worst_ annoying pop-up to be more
| dangerous than data exfiltration to companies and
| governments that are already acting in adversarial ways?
| The US government is already using people 's social media
| profiles against them, under the Cloud act any US company
| can be compelled to hand data over to the government, as
| Microsoft just testified in France. That's less dangerous
| than an info pop up?
|
| Of course it has nothing to do with rationality. They're
| mad at the first thing they see, akin to the smoker who
| blames the regulators when he has to look at a picture of a
| rotten lung on a pack of cigarettes
| seydor wrote:
| gdpr doesn't stop governments. governments are already
| spying without permission and they exploit stolen data
| all the time. so yes, the cost of gdpr compliances
| including popups is higher than the imperceptible cost of
| tracked advertising.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| For one that is objectively incorrect. GDPR prevents a
| whole host of data collection outright, shifts the burden
| for corporations to collecting the minimal amount of data
| possible, and gives you the right to explicitly consent
| into what data can be collected.
|
| Being angry at a popup that merely _makes transparent_ ,
| what a company tries to collect from you, and giving you
| the explicit option to say no to that, is just infantile.
| It basically amounts to saying that you don't want to
| think about how companies are exploiting your data, and
| that you're a sort of internet browsing zombie. That is
| certainly a lot of things, but it isn't rational.
| vicnov wrote:
| Just like GDPR, it will tremendously benefit big corporations
| (even if Meta is resistant) and those who are happy NOT to follow
| regulations (which is a lot of Chinese startups).
|
| And consumers will bear the brunt.
| ankit219 wrote:
| Not just Meta, 40 EU companies urged EU to postpone roll out of
| the ai act by two years due to it's unclear nature. This code of
| practice is voluntary and goes beyond what is in the act itself.
| EU published it in a way to say that there would be less scrutiny
| if you voluntarily sign up for this code of practice. Meta would
| anyway face scrutiny on all ends, so does not seem to a plausible
| case to sign something voluntary.
|
| One of the key aspects of the act is how a model provider is
| responsible if the downstream partners misuse it in any way. For
| open source, it's a very hard requirement[1].
|
| > GPAI model providers need to establish reasonable copyright
| measures to mitigate the risk that a downstream system or
| application into which a model is integrated generates copyright-
| infringing outputs, including through avoiding overfitting of
| their GPAI model. Where a GPAI model is provided to another
| entity, providers are encouraged to make the conclusion or
| validity of the contractual provision of the model dependent upon
| a promise of that entity to take appropriate measures to avoid
| the repeated generation of output that is identical or
| recognisably similar to protected works.
|
| [1] https://www.lw.com/en/insights/2024/11/european-
| commission-r...
| dmix wrote:
| Lovely when they try to regulate a burgeoning market before we
| have any idea what the market is going to look like in a couple
| years.
| remram wrote:
| The whole point of regulating it is to shape what it will
| look like in a couple of years.
| dmix wrote:
| Regulators often barely grasp how current markets function
| and they are supposed to be futurists now too? Government
| regulatory interests almost always end up lining up with
| protecting entrenched interests, so it's essentially asking
| for a slow moving group of the same mega companies. Which
| is very much what Europes market looks like today. Stasis
| and shifting to a stagnating middle.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| So the solution is to allow the actual entrenched
| interests to determine the future of things when they
| also barely grasp how the current markets function and
| are currently proclaiming to be futurists?
| betaby wrote:
| Won't somebody please think of the children?
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yes, a common rhetoric, and terrorism and national
| security.
| buggyinout wrote:
| They're demanding collective conversation. You don't have
| to be involved if you prefer to be asocial except to post
| impotent rage online.
|
| Same way the pols aren't futurists and perfect neither is
| anyone else. Everyone should sit at the table and discuss
| this like adults.
|
| You want to go live in the hills alone, go for it, Dick
| Proenneke. Society is people working collectively.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| The best way for "entrenched interests" to stifle
| competition is to buy/encourage regulation that keeps
| everybody else out of their sandbox pre-emptively.
|
| For reference, see every highly-regulated industry
| everywhere.
|
| You think Sam Altman was in testifying to the US Congress
| begging for AI regulation because he's just a super nice
| guy?
| goatlover wrote:
| Regulation exists because of monopolistic practices and
| abuses in the early 20th century.
| dmix wrote:
| That's a bit oversimplified. Humans have been creating
| authority systems trying to control others lives and
| business since formal societies have been a thing, likely
| even before agriculture. History is also full of examples
| of arbitrary and counter productive attempts at control,
| which is a product of basic human nature combined with
| power, and why we must always be skeptical.
| verisimi wrote:
| As a member of 'humanity', do you find yourself creating
| authority systems for AI though? No.
|
| If you are paying for lobbyists to write the legislation
| you want, as corporations do, you get the law you want -
| that excludes competition, funds your errors etc.
|
| The point is you are not dealing with 'humanity', you are
| dealing with those who represent authority for humanity -
| not the same thing at all. Connected politicians/CEOs etc
| are not actually representing 'humanity' - they merely
| say that they are doing so, while representing
| themselves.
| keysdev wrote:
| That can be, however regulation has just changed
| monopolistic practices to even more profitable
| oligarchaistic practices. Just look at Standard Oil.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| OpenAI was not an entrenched interest until 2023. Yahoo
| mattered until 2009. Nokia was the king of mobile phones
| until 2010.
|
| Technology changes very quickly and the future of things
| is hardly decided by entrenched interests.
| stuaxo wrote:
| The EU is founded on the idea of markets and regulation.
| miohtama wrote:
| The EU is founded on the idea of useless bureaucracy.
|
| It's not just IT. Ask any EU farmer.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| Contrary to the constant whining, most of them are
| actually quite wealthy. And thanks to strong right to
| repair laws, they can keep using John Deere equipment
| without paying extortionate licensing fees.
| mavhc wrote:
| They're wealthy because they were paid for not using
| their agricultural land, so they cropped down all the
| trees on parts of their land that they couldn't use, to
| classify it as agricultural, got paid, and as a side
| effect caused downstream flooding
| pyman wrote:
| Just to stay on topic: outside the US there's a general
| rule of thumb: if Meta is against it, the EU is probably
| doing something right.
| rpdillon wrote:
| Well, the topic is really whether or not the EU's
| regulations are effective at producing desired outcomes.
| The comment you're responding to is making a strong
| argument that it isn't. I tend to agree.
|
| There's a certain hubris to applying rules and
| regulations to a system that you fundamentally don't
| understand.
| pyman wrote:
| For those of us outside the US, it's not hard to
| understand how regulations work. The US acts as a
| protectionist country, it sets strict rules and pressures
| other governments to follow them. But at the same time,
| it promotes free markets, globalisation, and neoliberal
| values to everyone else.
|
| The moment the EU shows even a small sign of
| protectionism, the US complains. It's a double standard.
| m4rtink wrote:
| And also to prevent European powers trying to kill each
| other for the third time in a century, setting the whole
| world on fire in the process - for the _third time_ in a
| century.
|
| Arguably that worked. :-)
| messe wrote:
| > Which is very much what Europes market looks like
| today. Stasis and shifting to a stagnating middle.
|
| Preferable to a burgeoning oligarchy.
| adastra22 wrote:
| No, that... that's exactly what we have today. An
| oligarchy persists through captured state regulation. A
| more free market would have a constantly changing top.
| messe wrote:
| Historically, freer markets have lead to monopolies. It's
| why we have antitrust regulations in the first place (now
| if only they were enforced...)
| adastra22 wrote:
| Depends on the time horizon you look at. A completely
| unregulated market usually ends up dominated by
| monopolists... who last a generation or two and then are
| usurped and become declining oligarchs. True all the way
| back to the Medici.
|
| In a rigidly regulated market with preemptive action by
| regulators (like EU, Japan) you end up with a persistent
| oligarchy that is never replaced. An aristocracy of
| sorts.
|
| The middle road is the best. Set up a fair playing field
| and rules of the game, but allow innovation to happen
| unhindered, until the dust has settled. There should be
| regulation, but the rules must be bought with blood. The
| risk of premature regulation is worse.
| messe wrote:
| > There should be regulation, but the rules must be
| bought with blood.
|
| That's an awfully callous approach, and displays a
| disturbing lack of empathy toward other people.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Calculated, not callous. Quite the opposite: precaution
| kills people every day, just not as visibly. This is
| especially true in the area of medicine where innovation
| (new medicines) aren't made available even when no other
| treatment is approved. People die every day by the
| hundreds of thousands of diseases that we could be
| innovating against.
| yawboakye wrote:
| eu resident here. i've observed with sadness what a
| scared and terrified lots the europeans have become. but
| at least their young people can do drugs, party 72 hours
| straight, and graffiti all walls in berlin so hey what's
| not to like?
|
| one day some historian will be able to pinpoint the exact
| point in time that europe chose to be anti-progress and
| fervent traditionalist hell-bent on protecting pizza
| recipes, ruins of ancient civilization, and a so-called
| single market. one day!
| olalonde wrote:
| You're both right, and that's exactly how early regulation
| often ends up stifling innovation. Trying to shape a market
| too soon tends to lock in assumptions that later prove
| wrong.
| mycall wrote:
| Depends what those assumptions are. If by protecting
| humans from AI gross negligence, then the assumptions are
| predetermined to be siding towards human normals (just
| one example). Lets hope logic and understanding of the
| long term situation proceeds the arguments in the
| rulesets.
| dmix wrote:
| You're just guessing as much as anyone. Almost every
| generation in history has had doomers predicting the fall
| of their corner of civilization from some new thing. From
| religion schisms, printing presses, radio, TV,
| advertisements, the internet, etc. You can look at some
| of the earliest writings by English priests in the 1500s
| predicting social decay and destruction of society which
| would sound exactly like social media posts in 2025 about
| AI. We should at a minimum under the problem space before
| restricting it, especially given the nature of policy
| being extremely slow to change (see: copyright).
| esperent wrote:
| I'd urge you to read a book like Black Swan, or study up
| on statistics.
|
| Doomers have been wrong about completely different doom
| scenarios in the past _(+)_ , but it says nothing about
| to this new scenario. If you're doing statistics in your
| head about it, you're wrong. We can't use scenarios from
| the past to make predictions about completely novel
| scenarios like thinking computers.
|
| _(+) although they were very close to being right about
| nuclear doom, and may well be right about climate change
| doom._
| rpdillon wrote:
| I'd like for you to expand your point on understanding
| statistics better. I think I have a very good
| understanding of statistics, but I don't see how it
| relates to your point.
|
| Your point is fundamentally philosophical, which is you
| can't use the past to predict the future. But that's
| actually a fairly reductive point in this context.
|
| GP's point is that simply making an argument about why
| everything will fail is not sufficient to have it be
| true. So we need to see something significantly more
| compelling than a bunch of arguments about why it's going
| to be really bad to really believe it, since we always
| get arguments about why things are really, really bad.
| TFYS wrote:
| Sometimes you can't reverse the damage and societal
| change after the market has already been created and
| shaped. Look at fossil fuels, plastic, social media, etc.
| We're now dependent on things that cause us harm, the
| damage done is irreversible and regulation is no longer
| possible because these innovations are now embedded in
| the foundations of modern society.
|
| Innovation is good, but there's no need to go as fast as
| possible. We can be careful about things and study the
| effects more deeply before unleashing life changing
| technologies into the world. Now we're seeing the
| internet get destroyed by LLMs because a few people
| decided it was ok to do so. The benefits of this are not
| even clear yet, but we're still doing it just because we
| can. It's like driving a car at full speed into a corner
| just to see what's behind it.
| sneak wrote:
| I think it's one of those "everyone knows" things that
| plastic and social media are bad, but I think the world
| without them is way, way worse. People focus on these
| popular narratives but if people thought social media was
| bad, they wouldn't use it.
|
| Personally, I don't think they're bad. Plastic isn't that
| harmful, and neither is social media.
|
| I think people romanticize the past and status quo.
| Change is scary, so when things change and the world is
| bad, it is easy to point at anything that changed and say
| "see, the change is what did it!"
| TFYS wrote:
| People don't use things that they know are bad, but
| someone who has grown up in an environment where everyone
| uses social media for example, can't know that it's bad
| because they can't experience the alternative anymore. We
| don't know the effects all the accumulating plastic has
| on our bodies. The positive effects of these things can
| be bigger than the negative ones, but we can't know that
| because we're not even trying to figure it out. Sometimes
| it might be impossible to find out all the effects before
| large scale adoption, but still we should at least try.
| Currently the only study we do before deciding is the one
| to figure out if it'll make a profit for the owner.
| sneak wrote:
| > _We don 't know the effects all the accumulating
| plastic has on our bodies._
|
| This is handwaving. We can be pretty well sure at this
| point what the effects _aren't_ , given their widespread
| prevalence for generations. We have a 2+ billion sample
| size.
| TFYS wrote:
| No, we can't be sure. There's a lot of diseases that we
| don't know the cause of, for example. Cancers, dementia,
| Alzheimer's, etc. There is a possibility that the rates
| of those diseases are higher because of plastics. Plastic
| pollution also accumulates, there was a lot less plastic
| in the environment a few decades ago. We add more faster
| than it gets removed, and there could be some threshold
| after which it becomes more of an issue. We might see the
| effect a few decades from now. Not only on humans, but
| it's everywhere in the environment now, affecting all
| life on earth.
| rpdillon wrote:
| You're not arguing in a way that strikes me as
| intellectually honest.
|
| You're hypothesizing the existence of large negative
| effects with minimal evidence.
|
| But the positive effects of plastics and social media are
| extremely well understood and documented. Plastics have
| revolutionized practically every industry we have.
|
| With that kind of pattern of evidence, I think it makes
| sense to discount the negatives and be sure to account
| for all the positives before saying that deploying the
| technology was a bad idea.
| TFYS wrote:
| I agree that plastics probably do have more positives
| than negatives, but my point is that many of our
| innovations do have large negative effects, and if we
| take them into use before we understand those negative
| effects it can be impossible to fix the problems later.
| Now that we're starting to understand the extent of
| plastic pollution in our environment, if some future
| study reveals that it's a causal factor in some of our
| diseases it'll be too late to do anything about it. The
| plastic is in the environment and we can't get it out
| with regulation anymore.
|
| Why take such risks when we could take our time doing
| more studies and thinking about all the possible
| scenarios? If we did, we might use plastics where they
| save lives and not use them in single-use containers and
| fabrics. We'd get most of the benefit without any of the
| harm.
| staunton wrote:
| > if people thought social media was bad, they wouldn't
| use it.
|
| Do you think Heroin is good?
| Lionga wrote:
| People who take Heroin think it is good in the situation
| they are taking it.
| sneak wrote:
| Is the implication in your question that social media is
| addictive and should be banned or regulated on that
| basis?
|
| While some people get addicted to it, the vast majority
| of users are not addicts. They choose to use it.
| staunton wrote:
| Addiction is a matter of degree. There's a bunch of polls
| where a large majority of people strongly agree that
| "they spend too much time on social media". Are they
| addicts? Are they "coosing to use it"? Are they saying
| it's too much because that's a trendy thing to say?
| TFYS wrote:
| I'm sure it's very good the first time you take it. If
| you don't consider all the effects before taking it, it
| does make sense. You feel very good, but the even
| stronger negative effects come after. Same can be said
| about a lot of technology.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Look at fossil fuels_
|
| WHAT?! Do you think we as humanity would have gotten to
| all the modern inventions we have today like the
| internet, space travel, atomic energy, if we had skipped
| the fossil fuel era by preemptively regulating it?
|
| How do you imagine that? Unless you invent a time
| machine, go to the past, and give inventors schematics of
| modern tech achievable without fossil fuels.
| TFYS wrote:
| Maybe not as fast as we did, but eventually we would
| have. Maybe more research would have been put into other
| forms of energy if the effects of fossil fuels were
| considered more thoroughly and usage was limited to a
| degree that didn't have a chance cause such fast climate
| change. And so what if the rate of progress would have
| been slower and we'd be 50 years behind current tech? At
| least we wouldn't have to worry about all the damage
| we've caused now, and the costs associated with that. Due
| to that damage our future progress might halt while a
| slower, more careful society would continue advancing far
| into the future.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I think it's an open question whether we can reboot
| society without the use of fossil fuels. I'm personally
| of the opinion that we wouldn't be able to.
|
| Simply taking away some giant precursor for the
| advancements we enjoy today and then assuming it all
| would have worked out somehow is a bit naive.
|
| I would need to see a very detailed pipeline from growing
| wheat in an agrarian society to the development of a
| microprocessor without fossil fuels to understand the
| point you're making. The mining, the transport, the
| manufacture, the packaging, the incredible number of
| supply chains, and the ability to give people time to
| spend on jobs like that rather than trying to grow their
| own food are all major barriers I see to the scenario
| you're suggesting.
|
| The whole other aspect of this discussion that I think is
| not being explored is that technology is fundamentally
| competitive, and so it's very difficult to control the
| rate at which technology advances because we do not have
| a global government (and if we did have a global
| government, we'd have even more problems than we do now).
| As a comment I read yesterday said, technology
| concentrates gains towards those who can deploy it. And
| so there's going to be competition to deploy new
| technologies. Country-level regulation that tries to
| prevent this locally is only going to lead to other
| countries gaining the lead.
| TFYS wrote:
| You might be right, but I'm wasn't saying we should ban
| all use of any technology that has any negative effects,
| but that we should at least try to understand all the
| effects before taking it into use, and try to avoid the
| worst outcomes by regulating how to use the tech. If it
| turns out that fossil fuels are the only way to achieve
| modern technology then we should decide to take the risk
| of the negative effects knowing that there's such a risk.
| We shouldn't just blindly rush into any direction that
| might give us some benefit.
|
| Regarding competition, yes you're right. Effective
| regulation is impossible before we learn global co-
| operation, and that's probably never going to happen.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Very naive take that's not based in reality but would
| only work in fiction.
|
| Historically, all nations that developed and deployed new
| tech, new sources of energy and new weapons, have gained
| economic and military superiority over nations who did
| not, which ended up being conquered/enslaved.
|
| UK would not have managed to be the world power before
| the US, without their coal fueled industrial era.
|
| So as history goes, if you refuse to take part in, or
| cannot keep up in the international tech, energy and
| weapons race, you'll be subjugated by those who win that
| race. That's why the US lifted all brakes on AI, to make
| sure they'll win and not China. What EU is doing, self
| regulating itself to death, is ensuring its future will
| be at the mercy of US and China. I'm not the one saying
| this, history proves it.
| TFYS wrote:
| You're right, in a system based on competition it's not
| possible to prevent these technologies from being used as
| soon as they're invented if there's some advantage to be
| gained. We need to figure out global co-operation before
| such a thing is realistic.
|
| But if such co-operation was possible, it would make
| sense to progress more carefully.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| There is no such thing as "global cooperation" in our
| reality for things beyond platitudes. That's only a
| fantasy for sci-fi novels. Every tribe wants to rule the
| others, because if you don't, the other tribes will rule
| you.
|
| It's been the case since our caveman days. That's why
| tribes that don't focus on conquest end up removed form
| the gene pool. Now extend tribe to nation to make it
| relevant to current day.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| The internet was created in the military at the start of
| the fossil era, there is no reason, why it should be
| affected by the oil era. If we wouldn't travel that much,
| because we don't use cars and planes that much, the
| internet would be even more important.
|
| Space travel does need a lot of oil, so it might be
| affected, but the beginning of it were in the 40s so the
| research idea was already there.
|
| Atomic energy is also from the 40s and might have been
| the alternative to oil, so it would thrive more if we
| haven't used oil that much.
|
| Also all 3 ARE heavily regulated and mostly done by
| nation states.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| How would you have won the world wars without oil?
|
| Your augment only work in a fictional world where oil
| does not exist and you have the hindsight of today.
|
| But when oil does exist and if you would have chosen not
| to use it, you will have long been steamrolled by
| industrialized nations powers who used their superior oil
| fueled economy and military to destroy or enslave your
| nation and you wouldn't be writing this today.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| I thought we are arguing about regulating oil not to not
| use oil at all.
|
| > How would you have won the world wars without oil?
|
| You don't need to win world wars to have technological
| advancement, in fact my country didn't. I think the
| problem with this discussion, is that we all disagree
| what to regulate, that's how we ended up with the current
| situation after all.
|
| I interpreted it to mean that we wouldn't use plastic for
| everything. I think we would be fine having glass bottles
| and paper, carton, wood for grocery wrapping. It wouldn't
| be so individual per company, but this not important for
| the economy and consumers, and also would result in a
| more competitive market.
|
| I also interpreted it to mean that we wouldn't have so
| much cars and don't use planes beside really important
| stuff (i.e. international politics). The cities simply
| expand to the travel speed of the primary means of
| transportation. We would simply have more walkable cities
| and would use more trains. Amazon probably wouldn't be
| possible and we would have more local producers. In fact
| this is what we currently aim for and it is hard, because
| transition means that we have larger cities then we can
| support with the primary means of transportation.
|
| As for your example inventions: we did have computers in
| the 40s and the need for networking would arise. Space
| travel is in danger, but you can use oil for space travel
| without using it for everyday consumer products. As I
| already wrote, we would have more atomic energy, not sure
| if that would be good though.
| felipeerias wrote:
| The experience with other industries like cars (specially
| EV) shows that the ability of EU regulators to shape global
| and home markets is a lot more limited than they like to
| think.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| Not really china make big policy bet a decade early and
| win the battle the put the whole government to buy this
| new tech before everyone else, forcing buses to be
| electric if you want the federal level thumbs up, or the
| lottery system for example.
|
| So I disagree, probably Europe will be even more behind
| in ev if they doesn't push eu manufacturers to invest so
| heavily in the industry.
|
| You can se for example than for legacy manufacturers the
| only ones in the top ten are Europeans being 3 out of 10
| companies, not Japanese or Korean for example, and in
| Europe Volkswagen already overtake Tesla in sales Q1 for
| example and Audi isn't that much away also.
| jabjq wrote:
| What will happen, like every time a market is regulated in
| the EU, is that the market will move on without the EU.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If the regulators were qualified to work in the industry,
| then guess what: they'd be working in the industry.
| energy123 wrote:
| The point is to stop and deter market failure, not
| anticipate hypothetical market failure
| adastra22 wrote:
| That has never worked.
| ekianjo wrote:
| they dont want a marlet. They want total control, as usual
| for control freaks.
| amelius wrote:
| We know what the market will look like. Quasi monopoly and
| basic user rights violated.
| ulfw wrote:
| Regulating it while the cat is out of the bag leads to
| monopolistic conglomerates like Meta and Google. Meta
| shouldn't have been allowed to usurp instagram and whatsapp,
| Google shouldn't have been allowed to bring Youtube into the
| fold. Now it's too late to regulate a way out of this.
| pbh101 wrote:
| It's easy to say this in hindsight, though this is the
| first time I think I've seen someone say that about YouTube
| even though I've seen it about Instagram and WhatsApp a
| lot.
|
| The YouTube deal was a lot earlier than Instagram, 2006.
| Google was way smaller than now. iPhone wasn't announced.
| And it wasn't two social networks merging.
|
| Very hard to see how regulators could have the clairvoyance
| to see into this specific future and its counter-factual.
| user5534762135 wrote:
| >Now it's too late to regulate a way out of this.
|
| Technically untrue, monopoly busting is a kind of
| regulation. I wouldn't bet on it happening on any
| meaningful scale, given how strongly IT benefits from
| economies of scale, but we could be surprised.
| rapatel0 wrote:
| I literally lived this with GDPR. In the beginning every one
| ran around pretending to understand what it meant. There were
| a ton of consultants and lawyers that basically made up stuff
| that barely made sense. They grifted money out of startups by
| taking the most aggressive interpretation and selling policy
| templates.
|
| In the end the regulation was diluted to something that made
| sense(ish) but that process took about 4 years. It also
| slowed down all enterprise deals because no one knew if a
| deal was going to be against GDPR and the lawyers defaulted
| to "no" in those orgs.
|
| Asking regulators to understand and shape market evolution in
| AI is basically asking them to trade stocks by reading
| company reports written in mandarin.
| troupo wrote:
| > In the end the regulation was diluted to something that
| made sense(ish) but that process took about 4 years.
|
| Is the same regulation that was introduced in 2016. The
| only people who pretend not to understand it are those who
| think that selling user data to 2000+ "partners" is privacy
| CalRobert wrote:
| The main thing is the EU basically didn't enforce it. I was
| really excited for data portability but it hasn't really
| come to pass
| verisimi wrote:
| Exactly. No anonymity, no thought crime, lots of filters to
| screen out bad misinformation, etc. Regulate it.
| troupo wrote:
| > before we have any idea what the market is going to look
| like in a couple years.
|
| Oh, we already know large chunks of it, and the regulations
| explicitly address that.
|
| If the chest-beating crowd would be presented with these
| regulations piecemeal, without ever mentioning EU, they'd
| probably be in overwhelming support of each part.
|
| But since they don't care to read anything and have an
| instinctive aversion to all things regulatory and most things
| EU, we get the boos and the jeers
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Sounds like a reasonable guideline to me. Even for open source
| models, you can add a license term that requires users of the
| open source model to take "appropriate measures to avoid the
| repeated generation of output that is identical or recognisably
| similar to protected works"
|
| This is European law, not US. Reasonable means reasonable and
| judges here are expected to weigh each side's interests and
| come to a conclusion. Not just a literal interpretation of the
| law.
| deanc wrote:
| Except that it's seemingly impossible to prevent against
| prompt injection. The cat is out the bag. Much like a lot of
| other legislation (eg cookie law, being responsible for user
| generated content when you have millions of it posted per
| day) it's entirely impractical albeit well-meaning.
| lcnielsen wrote:
| I don't think the cookie law is that impractical? It's easy
| to comply with by just not storing non-essential user
| information. It would have been completely nondisruptive if
| platforms agreed to respect users' defaults via browser
| settings, and then converged on a common config interface.
|
| It was made impractical by ad platforms and others who
| decided to use dark patterns, FUD and malicious compliance
| to deceive users into agreeing to be tracked.
| deanc wrote:
| It is impractical for me as a user. I have to click on a
| notice on every website on the internet before
| interacting with it - often which are very obtuse and
| don't have a "reject all" button but a "manage my
| choices" button which takes to an even more convoluted
| menu.
|
| Instead of exactly as you say: a global browser option.
|
| As someone who has had to implement this crap repeatedly
| - I can't even begin to imagine the amount of global time
| that has been wasted implementing this by everyone,
| fixing mistakes related to it and more importantly by
| users having to interact with it.
| lcnielsen wrote:
| Yeah, but the only reason for this time wasteage is
| because website operators refuse to accept what would
| become the fallback default of "minimal", for which they
| would not need to seek explicit consent. It's a kind of
| arbitrage, like those scammy website that send you into
| redirect loops with enticing headlines.
|
| The law is written to encourage such defaults if
| anything, it just wasn't profitable enough I guess.
| deanc wrote:
| The reality is the data that is gathered is so much more
| valuable and accurate if you gather consent when you are
| running a business. Defaulting to a minimal config is
| just not practical for most businesses either. The
| decisions that are made with proper tracking data have a
| real business impact (I can see it myself - working at a
| client with 7 figure monthly revenue).
|
| Im fully supportive of consent, but the way it is
| implemented is impractical from everyone's POV and I
| stand by that.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Why would I ever want to consent to _you_ abusing _my_
| data?
| user5534762135 wrote:
| That is only true if you agree with ad platforms that
| tracking ads are fundamentally required for businesses,
| which is trivially untrue for most enterprises. Forcing
| businesses to get off privacy violating tracking
| practices is good, and it's not the EU that's at fault
| for forcing companies to be open about ad networks'
| intransigence on that part.
| bfg_9k wrote:
| Are you genuinely trying to defend businesses
| unnecessarily tracking users online? Why can't businesses
| sell their core product(s) and you know... not track
| users? If they did that, then they wouldn't need to
| implement a cookie banner.
| deanc wrote:
| Retargetting etc is massive revenue for online retailers.
| I support their right to do it if users consent to it. I
| don't support their right to do it if users have not
| consented.
|
| The conversation is not about my opinion on tracking,
| anyway. It's about the impracticality of implementing the
| legislation that is hostile and time consuming for both
| website owners and users alike
| owebmaster wrote:
| > Retargetting etc is massive revenue for online
| retailers
|
| Drug trafficking, stealing, scams are massive revenue for
| gangs.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Bro can you send me a link to the RJ community Whats app?
|
| kwaigdc7 @ gmail.com
| lcnielsen wrote:
| Plus with any kind of effort put into a standard browser
| setting you could easily have some granularity, like:
| accept anonymous ephemeral data collected to improve
| website, but not stuff shared with third parties, or
| anything collected for the purpose of tailoring content
| or recommendations for you.
| artathred wrote:
| Are you genuinely acting this obtuse? what do you think
| walmart and every single retailer does when you walk into
| a physical store? it's always constant monitoring to be
| able to provide a better customer experience. This
| doesn't change with online, businesses want to improve
| their service and they need the data to do so.
| owebmaster wrote:
| > it's always constant monitoring to be able to provide a
| better customer experience
|
| This part gave me a genuine laugh. Good joke.
| artathred wrote:
| ah yes because walmart wants to harvest your in-store
| video data so they can eventually clone you right?
|
| _adjusts tinfoil hat_
| owebmaster wrote:
| yeah this one wasn't as funny.
| artathred wrote:
| I can see how it hits too close to home for you
| 1718627440 wrote:
| If you're talking about the same jurisdiction of this
| privacy laws, then this is illegal. Your are only allowed
| to retain videos for 24h and only use it for basically
| calling the police.
| artathred wrote:
| walmart has sales associates running around gathering all
| those data points, as well as people standing around
| monitoring. Their "eyes" aren't regulated.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Walmart in the EU?
| artathred wrote:
| replace walmart with tesco or your eu retailer of choice,
| point still holds.
|
| playing with semantics makes you sound smart though!
| 1718627440 wrote:
| The question still stands then: Does it happen in Tesco
| in the EU? Because that is illegal.
|
| The original idea was that it should be legal to track
| people, because it is ok in the analog world. But it
| really isn't and I'm glad it is illegal in the EU. I
| think it should be in the US also, but the EU can't
| change that and I have no right to have political
| influence about foreign countries so that doesn't matter.
| artathred wrote:
| it's illegal for Tesco to have any number of employees
| watching/monitoring/"tracking" in the store with their
| own eyes and using those in-store insights to drive
| better customer experiences?
| discreteevent wrote:
| > just not practical for most businesses
|
| I don't think practical is the right word here. All the
| businesses in the world operated without tracking until
| the mid 90s.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Not even EU institutions themselves are falling back on
| deaults that don't require cookie consent.
|
| I'm constantly clicking away cookie banners on UK
| government or NHS (our public healthcare system)
| websites. The ICO (UK privacy watchdog) requires cookie
| consent. The EU Data Protection Supervisor wants cookie
| consent. Almost everyone does.
|
| And you know why that is? It's not because they are
| scammy ad funded sites or because of government
| surveillance. It's because the "cookie law" requires
| consent even for completely reasonable forms of traffic
| analysis with the sole purpose of improving the site for
| its visitors.
|
| This is impractical, unreasonable, counterproductive and
| unintelligent.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> This is impractical, unreasonable, counterproductive
| and unintelligent.
|
| _
|
| It keeps the political grifters who make these
| regulations employed, that's kind of the main point in
| EU/UKs endless stream of regulations upon regulations.
| troupo wrote:
| > It's because the "cookie law" requires consent even for
| completely reasonable forms of traffic analysis with the
| sole purpose of improving the site for its visitors
|
| Yup. That's what those 2000+ "partners" are all about if
| you believe their "legitimate interest" claims: "improve
| traffic"
| grues-dinner wrote:
| > completely reasonable
|
| This is a personal decision to be made by the data
| "donor".
|
| The NHS website cookie banner (which does have a correct
| implementation in that the "no consent" button is of
| equal prominence to the "mi data es su data" button)
| says:
|
| > We'd also like to use analytics cookies. These collect
| feedback and send information about how our site is used
| to services called Adobe Analytics, Adobe Target,
| Qualtrics Feedback and Google Analytics. We use this
| information to improve our site.
|
| In my opinion, it is not, as described, "completely
| reasonable" to consider such data hand-off to third
| parties as implicitly consented to. I may trust the NHS
| but I may not trust their partners.
|
| If the data collected is strictly _required_ for the
| delivery of the service and is used only for that purpose
| and destroyed when the purpose is fulfilled (say, login
| session management), you don 't need a banner.
|
| The NHS website is in a slightly tricky position, because
| I genuinely think they will be trying to use the data for
| site and service improvement, at least for now, and they
| _hopefully_ have done their homework to make sure Adobe,
| say, are also not misusing the data. Do I think the same
| from, say, the Daily Mail website? Absolutely not, they
| 'll be selling every scrap of data before the TCP
| connection even closes to anyone paying. Now, I may know
| the Daily Mail is a wretched hive of villainy and can
| just not go there, but I do not know about every website
| I visit. Sadly the scumbags are why no-one gets nice
| things.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> This is a personal decision to be made by the data
| "donor"._
|
| My problem is that users cannot make this personal
| decision based on the cookie consent banners because all
| sites have to request this consent even if they do
| exactly what they should be doing in their users'
| interest. There's no useful signal in this noise.
|
| The worst data harvesters look exactly the same as a site
| that does basic traffic analysis for basic usability
| purposes.
|
| The law makes it easy for the worst offenders to hide
| behind everyone else. That's why I'm calling it
| counterproductive.
|
| [Edit] Wrt NHS specifically - this is a case in point.
| They use some tools to analyse traffic in order to
| improve their website. If they honour their own privacy
| policy, they will have configured those tools
| accordingly.
|
| I understand that this can still be criticised from
| various angles. But is this criticism worth destroying
| the effectiveness of the law and burying far more
| important distinctions?
|
| The law makes the NHS and Daily Mail look exactly the
| same to users as far as privacy and data protection is
| concered. This is completely misleading, don't you think?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| > even if they do exactly what they should be doing in
| their users' interest
|
| If they only do this, they don't need to show anything.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| Then we clearly disagree on what they should be doing.
|
| And this is the crux of the problem. The law helps a tiny
| minority of people enforce an extremely (and in my view
| pointlessly) strict version of privacy at the cost of
| misleading everybody else into thinking that using
| analytics for the purpose of making usability
| improvements is basically the same thing as sending
| personal data to 500 data brokers to make money off of
| it.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| If you are talking for example about invasive A/B tests,
| then the solution is to pay for testers, not to test on
| your users.
|
| What exactly do think should be allowed which still
| respect privacy, which isn't now?
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I would draw the line where my personal data is exchanged
| with third parties for the purpose of monetisation. I
| want the websites I visit to be islands that do not
| contribute to anyone's attempt to create a complete
| profile of my online (and indeed offline) life.
|
| I don't care about anything else. They can do whatever
| A/B testing they want as far as I'm concerned. They can
| analyse my user journey across multiple visits. They can
| do segmentation to see how they can best serve different
| groups of users. They can store my previous search terms,
| choices and preferences. If it's a shop, they can rank
| products according to what they think might interest me
| based on previous visits. These things will likely make
| the site better for me or at least not much worse.
|
| Other people will surely disagree. That's fine. What's
| more important than where exactly to draw the line is to
| recognise that there are trade-offs.
|
| The law seems to be making an assumption that the less
| sites can do without asking for consent the better most
| people's privacy will be protected.
|
| But this is a flawed idea, because it creates an
| opportunity for sites to withhold useful features from
| people unless and until they consent to a complete loss
| of privacy.
|
| Other sites that want to provide those features without
| complete loss of privacy cannot distinguish themselves by
| not asking for consent.
|
| Part of the problem is the overly strict interpretation
| of "strictly necessary" by data protection agencies.
| There are some features that could be seen as strictly
| necessary for normal usability (such as remembering
| preferences) but this is not consistently accepted by
| data protection agencies so sites will still ask for
| consent to be on the safe side.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| I don't think it's too misleading, because in the absence
| of any other information, they _are_ the same.
|
| What you could then add to this system is a certification
| scheme to permit implicit consent of all the data
| handling (including who you hand it off to and what they
| are allowed to do with it, as well as whether they have
| demonstrated themselves to be trustworthy) is audited to
| be compliant with some more stringent requirements. It
| could even be self-certification along the lines of CE
| marking. But that requires strict enforcement, and the
| national regulators so far have been a bunch of wet
| blankets.
|
| That actually would encourage organisations to find ways
| to get the information they want without violating the
| privacy of their users and anyone else who strays into
| their digital properties.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> I don't think it's too misleading, because in the
| absence of any other information, they are the same._
|
| But other information not being absent we know that they
| are not the same. Just compare privacy policies for
| instance. The cookie law makes them appear similar in
| spite of the fact that they are very different (as of now
| - who knows what will happen to the NHS).
| grues-dinner wrote:
| I do understand the point, but other then allowing a
| process of auditing to allow a middle ground of consent
| implied for first-party use only and within some strictly
| defined boundaries, what else can you do? It's a market
| for lemons in terms of trustworthy data processors. 90%
| (bum-pull figures, but lines up with the number of
| websites that play silly buggers with hiding the no-
| consent button) of all people who want to use data will
| be up to no good and immediately try to bend and break
| every rule.
|
| I would also be in favour of companies having to report
| all their negative data protection judgements against
| them and everyone they will share your data with in their
| cookie banner before giving you the choice as to whether
| you trust them.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| If any rule is going to be broken and impossible to
| enforce, how can that be a justification for keeping a
| bad rule rather than replacing it with more sensible one?
| tcfhgj wrote:
| Just don't process any personal data by default when not
| I inherently required -> no banner required.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| I don't have to, because there are add-ons to reject
| everything.
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| I recently received an email[0] from a UK entity with an
| enormous wall of text talking about processing of
| personal information, my rights and how there is a
| "Contact Card" of my details on their website.
|
| But with a little bit of reading, one could ultimately
| summarise the enormous wall of text simply as: "We've
| added your email address to a marketing list, click here
| to opt out."
|
| The huge wall of text email was designed to confuse and
| obfuscate as much as possible with them still being able
| to claim they weren't breaking protection of personal
| information laws.
|
| [0]: https://imgur.com/a/aN4wiVp
| tester756 wrote:
| >The huge wall of text email was designed to confuse and
| obfuscate as much as possible with
|
| It is pretty clear
| johnisgood wrote:
| Only if you read it. Most people do not read it, same
| with ToSes.
| octopoc wrote:
| If you ask someone if they killed your dog and they
| respond with a wall of text, then you're immediately
| suspicious. You don't even have to read it all.
|
| The same is true of privacy policies. I've seen some
| companies have very short policies I could read in less
| than 30s, those companies are not suspicious.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| That's true, because of the EU privacy regulation,
| because they make companies write a wall of text before
| doing smth. suspicious.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I do not disagree. It could indeed be made shorter than
| usual, especially if you are not malicious.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Even EU government websites have horrible intrusive
| cookie banners. You can't blame ad companies, there are
| no ads on most sites
| lcnielsen wrote:
| Because they track usage stats for site development
| purposes, and there was no convergence on an agreed upon
| standard interface for browsers since nobody would
| respect it. Their banners are at least simple yes/no ones
| without dark patterns.
|
| But yes, perhaps they should have worked with e.g.
| Mozilla to develop some kind of standard browser
| interface for this.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| This is actually not true. I just read the European
| commission's cookie policy.
|
| The main reason they need the banner is because they show
| you full page popups to ask you to take surveys about
| unrelated topics like climate action. They need consent
| to track whether or not you've taken these surveys
|
| Their banner is just as bad as any other I have seen, it
| covers most of the page and doesn't go away until I click
| yes. If you're trying to opt out of cookies on other
| sites, that's probably why it takes you longer (just
| don't do that).
| cultureswitch wrote:
| You don't need cookie banners if you don't use invasive
| telemetry.
|
| A website that sticks to being a website does not need
| cookie banners.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Then why does the EU commission believe they need one for
| their pages that explain these rules? What invasive
| telemetry are they using?
|
| Are there any websites that don't require these banners?
|
| If you allow users to set font size or language you need
| a banner btw
| gkbrk wrote:
| > Even for open source models, you can add a license term
| that requires users of the open source model to take
| appropriate measures to avoid [...]
|
| You just made the model not open source
| LadyCailin wrote:
| "Source available" then?
| badsectoracula wrote:
| Instead of a license term you can put that in your
| documentation - in fact that is exactly what the code of
| practice mentions (see my other comment) for open source
| models.
| h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
| An open source cocaine production machine is still an
| illegal cocaine production machine. The fact that it's open
| source doesn't matter.
|
| You seem to not have understood that different forms of
| appliances need to comply with different forms of law. And
| you being able to call it open source or not doesn't change
| anything about its legal aspects.
|
| And every law written is a compromise between two opposing
| parties.
| whatevaa wrote:
| There is no way to enforce that license. Free software
| doesn't have funds for such lawsuits.
| sealeck wrote:
| > This is European law, not US. Reasonable means reasonable
| and judges here are expected to weigh each side's interests
| and come to a conclusion. Not just a literal interpretation
| of the law.
|
| I think you've got civil and common law the wrong way round
| :). US judges have _much_ more power to interpret law!
| saubeidl wrote:
| It is _European_ law, as in EU law, not law from a European
| state. In EU matters, the _teleogocial interpretation_ ,
| i.e. intent applies:
|
| > When interpreting EU law, the CJEU pays particular
| attention to the aim and purpose of EU law (teleological
| interpretation), rather than focusing exclusively on the
| wording of the provisions (linguistic interpretation).
|
| > This is explained by numerous factors, in particular the
| open-ended and policy-oriented rules of the EU Treaties, as
| well as by EU legal multilingualism.
|
| > Under the latter principle, all EU law is equally
| authentic in all language versions. Hence, the Court cannot
| rely on the wording of a single version, as a national
| court can, in order to give an interpretation of the legal
| provision under consideration. Therefore, in order to
| decode the meaning of a legal rule, the Court analyses it
| especially in the light of its purpose (teleological
| interpretation) as well as its context (systemic
| interpretation).
|
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/599
| 3...
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > It is European law, as in EU law, not law from a
| European state. In EU matters, the teleogocial
| interpretation, i.e. intent applies
|
| I'm not sure why you and GP are trying to use this point
| to draw a contrast to the US? That very much is a feature
| in US law as well.
| saubeidl wrote:
| I will admit my ignorance of the finer details of US law
| - could you share resources explaining the parallels?
| lowkey_ wrote:
| In the US, for most laws, and most judges, there's actually
| much less power to interpret law. Part of the benefit of
| the common law system is to provide consistency and take
| that interpretation power away from judges of each case.
| sealeck wrote:
| My claim is that at a system-level, judges in the US have
| more power to interpret laws. Your claim is that "in each
| individual case, the median amount of interpretation is
| lower in the US than the EU". But you also concede that
| this is because the judges rely on the interpretations of
| _other_ judges in cases (e.g. if the Supreme Court makes
| a very important decision which clarifies how a law
| should be interpreted, and this is then carried down
| throughout the rest of the justice system, then this
| means that there has been a really large amount of
| interpretation).
| zizee wrote:
| It doesn't seem unreasonable. If you train a model that can
| reliably reproduce thousands/millions of copyrighted works, you
| shouldn't be distributibg it. If it were just regular software
| that had that capability, would it be allowed? Just because
| it's a fancy Ai model it is ok?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| I have a Xerox machine that can reliably reproduce
| copyrighted works. Is that a problem, too?
|
| Blaming tools for the actions of their users is stupid.
| threetonesun wrote:
| If the Xerox machine had all of the copyrighted works in it
| and you just had to ask it nicely to print them I think
| you'd say the tool is in the wrong there, not the user.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| You'd think wrong.
| Aurornis wrote:
| LLMs do not have all copyrighted works in them.
|
| In some cases they can be prompted to guess a number of
| tokens that follow an excerpt from another work.
|
| They do not contain all copyrighted works, though. That's
| an incorrect understanding.
| monetus wrote:
| Are there any LLMs available with a, "give me copyrighted
| material" button? I don't think that is how they work.
|
| Commercial use of someone's image also already has laws
| concerning that as far as I know, don't they?
| zettabomb wrote:
| Xerox already went through that lawsuit and won, which is
| why photocopiers still exist. The tool isn't in the wrong
| for being told to print out the copyrighted works. The
| user still had to make the conscious decision to copy
| that particular work. Hence, still the user's fault.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| You take the copyrighted work to the printer, you don't
| upload data to an LLM first, it is already in the
| machine. If you got LLMs without training data (however
| that works) and the user needs to provide the data, then
| it would be ok.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| You don't "upload" data to an LLM, but that's already
| been explained multiple times, and evidently it didn't
| soak in.
|
| LLMs extract _semantic_ information from their training
| data and store it at extremely low precision in latent
| space. To the extent original works can be recovered from
| them, those works were nothing intrinsically special to
| begin with. At best such works simply milk our existing
| culture by recapitulating ancient archetypes, _a la_
| Harry Potter or Star Wars.
|
| If the copyright cartels choose to fight AI, the
| copyright cartels will and must lose. This isn't Napster
| Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. There is too much at stake
| this time.
| rpdillon wrote:
| One of the reasons the New York Times didn't supply the
| prompts in their lawsuit is because it takes an enormous
| amount of effort to get LLMs to produce copyrighted
| works. In particular, you have to actually hand LLMs
| copyrighted works in the prompt to get them to continue
| it.
|
| It's not like users are accidentally producing copies of
| Harry Potter.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Helpfully the law already disagrees. That Xerox machine
| tampers with the printed result, leaving a faint signature
| that is meant to help detect forgeries. You know, for when
| users copy things that are actually illegal to copy. Xerox
| machine (and every other printer sold today) literally
| leaves a paper trail to trace it back to them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| i believe only color printers are known to have this
| functionality, and it's typically used for detecting
| counterfeit, not for enforcing copyright
| zeta0134 wrote:
| You're quite right. Still, it's a decent example of
| blaming the tool for the actions of its users. The law
| clearly exerted enough pressure to convince the tool
| maker to modify that tool against the user's wishes.
| justinclift wrote:
| > Still, it's a decent example of blaming the tool for
| the actions of its users.
|
| They're not really "blaming" the tool though. They're
| using a supply chain attack against the subset of users
| they're interested in.
| fodkodrasz wrote:
| According to the law in some jurisdictions it is. (notably
| most EU Member States, and several others worldwide).
|
| In those places actually fees are included ("reprographic
| levy") in the appliance, and the needed supply prices, or
| public operators may need to pay additionally based on
| usage. That money goes towards funds created to compensate
| copyright holders for loss of profit due to copyright
| infringement carries out through the use of photocopiers.
|
| Xerox is in no way singled out and discriminated against.
| (Yes, I know this is an Americanism)
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| And that's a stupid, corrupt law. Trying to apply it to
| AI will not work out quite as well as it did with
| photocopiers.
| saghm wrote:
| If I've copied someone else's copyrighted work on my Xerox
| machine, then give it to you, you can't reproduce the work
| I copied. If I leave a copy of it in the scanner when I
| give it to you, that's another story. The issue here isn't
| the ability of an LLM to produce it when I provide it with
| the copyrighted work as an input, it's whether or not
| there's an input baked-in at the time of distribution that
| gives it the ability to continue producing it even if the
| person who receives it doesn't have access to the work to
| provide it in the first place.
|
| To be clear, I don't have any particular insight on whether
| this is possible right now with LLMs, and I'm not taking a
| stance on copyright law in general with this comment. I
| don't think your argument makes sense though because
| there's a clear technical difference that seems like it
| would be pretty significant as a matter of law. There are
| plenty of reasonable arguments against things like the
| agreement mentioned in the article, but in my opinion, your
| objection isn't one of the.
| visarga wrote:
| You can train a LLM on completely clean data, creative
| commons and legally licensed text, and at inference time
| someone will just put a whole article or chapter in the
| model and has full access to regenerate it however they
| like.
| saghm wrote:
| Re-quoting the section the parent comment included from
| this agreement:
|
| > > GPAI model providers need to establish reasonable
| copyright measures to mitigate the risk that a downstream
| system or application into which a model is integrated
| generates copyright-infringing outputs, including through
| avoiding overfitting of their GPAI model. Where a GPAI
| model is provided to another entity, providers are
| encouraged to make the conclusion or validity of the
| contractual provision of the model dependent upon a
| promise of that entity to take appropriate measures to
| avoid the repeated generation of output that is identical
| or recognisably similar to protected works.
|
| It sounds to me like an LLM you describe would be covered
| if they people distributing it put in a clause in the
| license saying that people can't do that.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > that can reliably reproduce thousands/millions of
| copyrighted works, you shouldn't be distributibg it. If it
| were just regular software that had that capability, would it
| be allowed?
|
| LLMs are hardly reliable ways to reproduce copyrighted works.
| The closest examples usually involve prompting the LLM with a
| significant portion of the copyrighted work and then seeing
| it can predict a number of tokens that follow. It's a big
| stretch to say that they're reliably reproducing copyrighted
| works any more than, say, a Google search producing a short
| excerpt of a document in the search results or a blog writer
| quoting a section of a book.
|
| It's also interesting to see the sudden anti-LLM takes that
| twist themselves into arguing against tools or platforms that
| _might_ reproduce some copyrighted content. By this argument,
| should BitTorrent also be banned? If someone posts a section
| of copyrighted content to Hacker News as a comment, should
| YCombinator be held responsible?
| Jensson wrote:
| > LLMs are hardly reliable ways to reproduce copyrighted
| works
|
| Only because the companies are intentionally making it so.
| If they weren't trained to not reproduce copyrighted works
| they would be able to.
| terminalshort wrote:
| LLMs even fail on tasks like "repeat back to me exactly
| the following text: ..." To say they can exactly and
| reliably reproduce copyrighted work is quite a claim.
| tomschwiha wrote:
| You can also ask people to repeat a text and some will
| fail. What I want to say is that even if some LLMs
| (probably only older ones) will fail doesn't mean future
| ones will fail (in the majority). Especially if
| benchmarks indicate they are becoming smarter over time.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| it's like these people never tried asking for song lyrics
| ben_w wrote:
| They're probably training them to refuse, but
| fundamentally the models are obviously too small to
| _usually_ memorise content, and can only do it when there
| 's many copies in the training set. Quotation is a waste
| of parameters better used for generalisation.
|
| The other thing is that approximately all of the training
| set is copyrighted, because that's the default even for
| e.g. comments on forums like this comment you're reading
| now.
|
| The other other thing is that at least two of the big
| model makers went and pirated book archives on top of
| crawling the web.
| zizee wrote:
| Then they should easily fall within the regulation section
| posted earlier.
|
| If you cannot see the difference between BitTorrent and Ai
| models, then it's probably not worth engaging with you.
|
| But Ai model have been shown to reproduce the training data
|
| https://gizmodo.com/ai-art-generators-ai-copyright-stable-
| di...
|
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188
| cultureswitch wrote:
| It is entirely unreasonable to prevent a general purpose
| model to be distributed for the largely frivolous reason that
| maybe some copyrighted works could be approximated using it.
| We don't make metallurgy illegal because it's possible to
| make guns with metal.
|
| When a model that has this capability is being distributed,
| copyright infringement is not happening. It is happening when
| a person _uses_ the model to reproduce a copyrighted work
| without the appropriate license. This is not meaningfully
| different to the distinction between my ISP selling me
| internet access and me using said internet access to download
| copyrighted material. If the copyright holders want to pursue
| people who are actually doing copyright infringement, they
| should have to sue the people who are actually doing
| copyright infringement and they shouldn't have broad power to
| shut down anything and everything that could be construed as
| maybe being capable of helping copyright infringement.
|
| Copyright protections aren't valuable enough to society to
| destroy everything else in society just to make enforcing
| copyright easier. In fact, considering how it is actually
| enforced today, it's not hard to argue that the impact of
| copyright on modern society is a net negative.
| m3sta wrote:
| The quoted text makes sense when you understand that the EU
| provides a carveout for training on copyright protected works
| without a license. It's quite an elegant balance they've
| suggested despite the challenges it fails to avoid.
| Oras wrote:
| Is that true? How can they decide to wipe out the
| intellectual property for an individual or entity? It's not
| theirs to give it away.
| elsjaako wrote:
| Copyright is not a god given right. It's an economic
| incentive created by government to make desired behavior
| (writing an publishing books) profitable.
| kriops wrote:
| Yes it is. In every sense of the phrase, except the
| literal.
| Zafira wrote:
| A lot of cultures have not historically considered
| artists' rights to be a thing and have had it essentially
| imposed on them as a requirement to participate in global
| trade.
| kolinko wrote:
| Even in Europe copyright was protected only for the last
| 250 years, and over the last 100 years it's been
| constantly updated to take into consideration new
| technologies.
| pyman wrote:
| The only real mistake the EU made was not regulating
| Facebook when it mattered. That site caused pain and
| damage to entire generations. Now it's too late. All they
| can do is try to stop Meta and the rest of the lunatics
| from stealing every book, song and photo ever created,
| just to train models that could leave half the population
| without a job.
|
| Meta, OpenAI, Nvidia, Microsoft and Google don't care
| about people. They care about control: controlling
| influence, knowledge and universal income. That's the
| endgame.
|
| Just like in the US, the EU has brilliant people working
| on regulations. The difference is, they're not always
| working for the same interests.
|
| The world is asking for US big tech companies to be
| regulated more now than ever.
| wavemode wrote:
| To be fair, "copy"right has only been needed for as long
| as it's been possible to copy things. In the grand scheme
| of human history, that technology is relatively new.
| vidarh wrote:
| Copying was a thing for a very long time before the
| Statue of Anne. Just not mechanically. It coincided with
| the rise of _mechanical_ copying.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Copyright predates mechanical copying. However, people
| used to have to petition a King or similar to be granted
| a monopoly on a work, and the monopoly was specific to
| that work.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Yes, 100%. And that's why throwing copyright selectively
| in the bin _now_ when there's an ongoing massive transfer
| of wealth from creators to mega corps, is so surprising.
| It's almost as if governments were only protecting
| economic interests of creators when the creators were
| powerful (eg movie studios), going after individuals for
| piracy and DRM circumvention. Now that the mega corps are
| the ones pirating at a scale they get a free pass through
| a loophole designed for individuals (fair use).
|
| Anyway, the show must go on so were unlikely to see any
| reversal of this. It's a big experiment and not
| necessarily anything that will benefit even the model
| providers themselves in the medium term. It's clear that
| the "free for all" policy on grabbing whatever data you
| can get is already having chilling effects. From artists
| and authors not publishing their works publicly, to
| locking down of open web with anti-scraping. Were
| basically entering an era of adversarial data management,
| with incentives to exploit others for data while
| protecting the data you have from others accessing it.
| ramses0 wrote:
| You've put into words what I've been internally
| struggling to voice. Information (on the web) is a gas,
| it expands once it escapes.
|
| In limited, closed systems, it may not escape, but all it
| takes is one bad (or hacked) actor and the privacy of it
| is gone.
|
| In a way, we used to be "protected" because it was "too
| big" to process, store, or access "everything".
|
| Now, especially with an economic incentive to vacuum
| literally all digital information, and many works being
| "digital first" (even a word processor vs a typewriter,
| or a PDF that is sent to a printer instead of lithograph
| metal plates)... is this the information Armageddon?
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Governments always protect the interests of their
| powerful friends and donors over the people they
| allegedly represent.
|
| They've just mastered the art of lying to gullible idiots
| or complicit psycophants.
|
| It's not new to anyone who pays and kind of attention.
| vidarh wrote:
| Why? Copyright is 1) presented as being there to _protect
| the interests of the general public_ , not creators, 2)
| Statute of Anne, the birth of modern copyright law,
| protected _printers_ - that is "big businesss" over
| creators anyway, so even that has largely always been a
| fiction.
|
| But it is also increasingly dubious that the public gets
| a good deal out of copyright law anyway.
|
| > From artists and authors not publishing their works
| publicly
|
| The vast majority of creators have never been able to get
| remotely close to make a living from their creative work,
| and instead often when factoring in time lose money hand
| over fist trying to get their works noticed.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I generally let it slide because these copyright
| discussions tend to be about America, and as such it can
| be assumed American law and what it inherits from British
| law is what pertains.
|
| >Copyright is 1) presented as being there to protect the
| interests of the general public, not creators,
|
| yes, in the U.S in the EU creators have moral rights to
| their works and the law is to protect their interests.
|
| There are actually moral rights and rights of
| exploitation, in EU you can transfer the latter but not
| the former.
|
| >But it is also increasingly dubious that the public gets
| a good deal out of copyright law anyway.
|
| In the EU's view of copyright the public doesn't need to
| get a good deal, the creators of copyrighted works do.
| vidarh wrote:
| > There are actually moral rights and rights of
| exploitation, in EU you can transfer the latter but not
| the former.
|
| And when we talk about copyright we generally talk about
| the rights of exploitation, where the rationale used
| today is about the advancement of arts and sciences - a
| public benefit. There's a reason the name is English is
| _copy_ -right, where the other Germanic languages focuses
| more on the work - in the Anglosphere the notion of moral
| rights as separate from rights of exploitation is well
| outside the mainstream.
|
| > In the EU's view of copyright the public doesn't need
| to get a good deal, the creators of copyrighted works do.
|
| Most individual nations copyright law still does uphold
| the pretence of being for the public good, however.
| Without that pretence, there is no moral basis for
| restricting the rights of the public the way copyright
| law does.
|
| But it has nevertheless been abundantly clear all the way
| back to the Statute of Anne that any talk of _either_
| public goods or rights of exploitation for the creator
| are excuses, and that these laws if anything mostly exist
| for the protection of business interests.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Most individual nations copyright law still does uphold
| the pretence of being for the public good, however.
| Without that pretence, there is no moral basis for
| restricting the rights of the public the way copyright
| law does.
|
| I of course do not know all the individual EU country's
| rules, but my understanding was that the EU's view was
| what it was because derived at least from the previous
| understanding of its member nations. So the earlier
| French laws before ratification and implementation of the
| EU directive on author's rights in Law # 92-597 (1 July
| 1992) were also focused on the understanding of creators
| having creator's rights and that protecting these was the
| purpose of Copyright law, and that this pattern generally
| held throughout EU lands (at least any lands currently in
| the EU, I suppose pre-Brexit this was not the case)
|
| You probably have some other examples but in my
| experience the European laws have for a long time held
| that copyright exists to protect the rights of creators
| and not of the public.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > Why? Copyright is 1) presented as being there to
| protect the interests of the general public, not creators
|
| Doesn't matter, both the "public interest" and "creator
| rights" arguments have the same impact: you're either
| hurting creators directly, or you're hurting the public
| benefit when you remove or reduce the economic
| incentives. The transfer of wealth and irreversible
| damage is there, whether you care about Lars Ulrichs gold
| toilet or our future kids who can't enjoy culture and
| libraries to protect from adversarial and cynical tech
| moguls.
|
| > 2) Statute of Anne, the birth of modern copyright law,
| protected printers - that is "big businesss" over
| creators anyway, so even that has largely always been a
| fiction.
|
| > The vast majority of creators have never been able to
| get remotely close to make a living from their creative
| work
|
| Nobody is saying copyright is perfect. We're saying it's
| the system we have and it should apply equally.
|
| Two wrongs don't make a right. Defending the AI corps on
| basis of copyright being broken is like saying the tax
| system is broken, so therefore it's morally right for the
| ultra-rich to relocate assets to the Caymans. Or saying
| that democracy is broken, so it's morally sound to
| circumvent it (like Thiel says).
| daedrdev wrote:
| copyright is the backbone of modern media empires. It
| both allows small creators and massive corporations to
| seek rent on works, but since the works are under
| copyright for a century its quite nice to corporations
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| actually in much of the EU if not all of it Copyright is
| an intrinsic right of the creator.
| vidarh wrote:
| It is a "right" created by law, is the point. This is not
| a right that is universally recognised, nor one that has
| existed since time immemorial, but a modern construction
| of governments that governments can choose to change or
| abolish.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| what is a right that has existed since time immemorial?
| Generally rights that have existed "forever" are codified
| rights and, in the codification, described as being
| eternal. Hence Jefferson's reference to inalienable
| rights, which probably came as some surprise to King
| George III.
|
| on edit: If we had a soundtrack the Clash Know Your
| Rights would be playing in this comment.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| at any rate rights that are described as being eternal or
| some other version of that such as inalienable, or in the
| case of copyright moral and intrinsic, are rights that if
| the government, that has heretofore described that as
| inviolate, where to casually violate them then the
| government would be declaring its own nullification to
| exist further by its previously stated rules.
|
| Not to say this doesn't happen, I believe we can see it
| happening in some places in the world right now, but
| these are classes of laws that cannot "just" be changed
| at the government's whim, and in the EU copyright law is
| evidently one of those classes of law, strange as it
| seems.
| cjs_ac wrote:
| Copyright originates in the Statute of Anne[0]; its
| creation was therefore within living memory when the
| United States declared their independence.
|
| No rights have existed 'forever', and both the rights and
| the social problems they intend to resolve are often
| quite recent (assuming you're not the sort of person
| who's impressed by a building that's 100 years old).
|
| George III was certainly not surprised by Jefferson's
| claim to rights, given that the rights he claimed were
| copied (largely verbatim) from the Bill of Rights
| 1689[1]. The poor treatment of the Thirteen Colonies was
| due to Lord North's poor governance, the rights and
| liberties that the Founding Fathers demanded were long-
| established in Britain, and their complaints against
| absolute monarchy were complaints against a system of
| government that had been abolished a century before.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >No rights have existed 'forever'
|
| you should probably reread the text I responded to and
| then what I wrote, because you seem to think I believe
| there are rights that are not codified by humans in some
| way and are on a mission to correct my mistake.
|
| >George III was certainly not surprised by Jefferson's
| claim to rights, given that the rights he claimed were
| copied (largely verbatim) from the Bill of Rights 1689
|
| to repeat: Hence Jefferson's reference to inalienable
| rights, which probably came as some surprise to King
| George III.
|
| inalienable modifies rights here, if George is surprised
| by any rights it is inalienable ones.
|
| >Copyright originates in the Statute of Anne[0]; its
| creation was therefore within living memory when the
| United States declared their independence.
|
| title of post is "Meta says it won't sign Europe AI
| agreement", I was under the impression that it had
| something to do with how the EU sees copyright and not
| how the U.S and British common law sees it.
|
| Hence multiple comments referencing EU but I see I must
| give up and the U.S must have its way, evidently the
| Europe AI agreement is all about how copyright works in
| the U.S, prime arbiter of all law around the globe.
| arccy wrote:
| "intellectual property" only exists because society
| collectively allows it to. it's not some inviolable law of
| nature. society (or the government that represents them)
| can revoke it or give it away.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| Yes, but that's also true of all other things that
| society enforces-- basically the ownership of anything
| you can't carry with you.
| CaptainFever wrote:
| Yes, that is why (most?) anarchists consider property
| that one is not occupying and using to be fiction, held
| up by the state. I believe this includes intellectual
| property as well.
| figassis wrote:
| You're alive because society collective allows you to.
| lioeters wrote:
| A person being alive is not at all similar to the concept
| of intellectual property existing. The former is a
| natural phenomenon, the latter is a social construct.
| layer8 wrote:
| The same is true for human rights.
|
| In the EU, an author's moral rights are similar in
| character to human rights:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors'_rights
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| Copyright is literally granted by the gov.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > One of the key aspects of the act is how a model provider is
| responsible if the downstream partners misuse it in any way
|
| AFAICT the actual text of the act[0] does not mention anything
| like that. The closest to what you describe is part of the
| chapter on copyright of the Code of Practice[1], however the
| code does not add any new requirements to the act (it is not
| even part of the act itself). What it does is to present a
| _way_ (which does not mean it is the only one) to comply with
| the act 's requirements (as a relevant example, the act
| requires to respect machine-readable opt-out mechanisms when
| training but doesn't specify which ones, but the code of
| practice explicitly mentions respecting robots.txt during web
| scraping).
|
| The part about copyright outputs in the code is actually
| (measure 1.4):
|
| > (1) In order to mitigate the risk that a downstream AI
| system, into which a general-purpose AI model is integrated,
| generates output that may infringe rights in works or other
| subject matter protected by Union law on copyright or related
| rights, Signatories commit:
|
| > a) to implement appropriate and proportionate technical
| safeguards to prevent their models from generating outputs that
| reproduce training content protected by Union law on copyright
| and related rights in an infringing manner, and
|
| > b) to prohibit copyright-infringing uses of a model in their
| acceptable use policy, terms and conditions, or other
| equivalent documents, or in case of general-purpose AI models
| released under free and open source licenses to alert users to
| the prohibition of copyright infringing uses of the model in
| the documentation accompanying the model without prejudice to
| the free and open source nature of the license.
|
| > (2) This Measure applies irrespective of whether a Signatory
| vertically integrates the model into its own AI system(s) or
| whether the model is provided to another entity based on
| contractual relations.
|
| Keep in mind that "Signatories" here is whoever signed the Code
| of Practice: obviously if i make my own AI model and _do not_
| sign that code of practice myself (but i still follow the act
| requirements), someone picking up my AI model and signing the
| Code of Practice themselves doesn 't obligate me to follow it
| too. That'd be like someone releasing a plugin for Photoshop
| under the GPL and then demanding Adobe release Photoshop's
| source code.
|
| As for open source models, the "(1b)" above is quite clear (for
| open source models that want to use this code of practice -
| which they do not have to!) that all they have to do is to
| mention in their documentation that their users should not
| generate copyright infringing content with them.
|
| In fact the act has a lot of exceptions for open-source models.
| AFAIK Meta's beef with the act is that the EU AI office (or
| whatever it is called, i do not remember) does not recognize
| Meta's AI as open source, so they do not get to benefit from
| those exceptions, though i'm not sure about the details here.
|
| [0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
| content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=OJ:...
|
| [1]
| https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/redirection/document/11811...
| rchaud wrote:
| Kaplan's LinkedIn post says absolutely nothing about what is
| objectionable about the policy. I'm inclined to think "growth-
| stunting" could mean anything as tame as mandating user opt-in
| for new features as opposed to the "opt-out" that's popular among
| US companies.
| j_maffe wrote:
| It's always the go to excuse against any regulation.
| bilekas wrote:
| > It aims to improve transparency and safety surrounding the
| technology
|
| Really it does, especially with some technology run by so few
| which is changing things so fast..
|
| > Meta says it won't sign Europe AI agreement, calling it an
| overreach that will stunt growth
|
| God forbid critical things and impactful tech like this be
| created with a measured head, instead of this nonsense mantra of
| "Move fast and break things"
|
| Id really prefer NOT to break at least what semblance of society
| social media hasn't already broken.
| justlikereddit wrote:
| The more I read of the existing rule sets within the eurozone the
| less surprised I am that they make additional shit tier acts like
| this.
|
| What do surprise me is anything at all working with the existing
| rulesets, Effectively no one have technical competence and the
| main purpose of legislation seems to add mostly meaningless but
| parentally formulated complexities in order to justify hiring
| more bureaucrats.
|
| >How to live in Europe >1. Have a job that does not need state
| approval or licensing. >2. Ignore all laws, they are too verbose
| and too technically complex to enforce properly anyway.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| I think you can only happily live in Europe if you are employed
| by the state and like all the regulations.
| brainzap wrote:
| the Meta that uses advertising tooling for propaganda and elected
| trump?
| jleyank wrote:
| I hope this isn't coming down to an argument of "AI can't advance
| if there are rules". Things like copyright, protection of the
| sources of information, etc.
| throwpoaster wrote:
| EU is going to add popups to all the LLMs like they did all the
| websites. :(
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| No popup is required, just every lobotomized idiot copies what
| the big players do....
|
| Oh ma dey have popups. We need dem too! Haha, we happy!
| zdragnar wrote:
| Actually, it's because marketing departments rely heavily on
| tracking cookies and pixels to be their job, as their job is
| measured on things like conversations and understanding how
| effective their ad spend is.
|
| The regulations came along, but nobody told marketing how to
| do their job without the cookies, so every business site
| keeps doing the same thing they were doing, but with a cookie
| banner that is hopefully obtrusive enough that users just
| click through it.
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| No it's because I'll get fined by some bureaucrat who has
| never run a business in his life if I don't put a pointless
| popup on my stupid-simple shopify store.
| jungturk wrote:
| Is it an option for your simple store to not collect data
| about subjects without their consent? Seems like an easy
| win.
|
| Your choice to use frameworks subsidized by surveillance
| capitalism doesn't need to preclude my ability to agree
| to participate does it?
|
| Maybe a handy notification when I visit your store asking
| if I agree to participate would be a happy compromise?
| tjwebbnorfolk wrote:
| You know it's possible to make good reasoned points
| without cramming in "<psuedo-marxist buzzword>
| capitalism" into a sentence for absolutely no reason.
|
| All I want is to not be forced to irritate my customers
| about something that nobody cares about. It doesn't have
| to be complicated. It is how the internet was for all of
| its existence until a few years ago.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| No need for a cookie banner if you don't collect data
| without consent. Every modern browser supports APIs that
| answer that question without pestering the user with a
| cookie banner.
| conradludgate wrote:
| It's important to point out that it's actually not at all
| about cookies. It's tracking by using information stored on
| the user's device in general that needs to have consent.
|
| You could use localStorage for the purposes of tracking and
| it still needs to have a popup/banner.
|
| An authentication cookie does not need a cookie banner, but
| if you issue lots of network requests for tracking and
| monitor server logs, that does now need a cookie banner.
|
| If you don't store anything, but use fingerprinting, that
| is not covered by the law but could be covered by GDPR
| afaiu
| gond wrote:
| No, the EU did not do that.
|
| Companies did that and thoughtless website owners, small and
| large, who decided that it is better to collect arbitrary data,
| even if they have no capacity to convert it into information.
|
| The solution to get rid of cookie banners, as it was intended,
| is super simple: only use cookies if absolutely necessary.
|
| It was and is a blatant misuse. The website owners all have a
| choice: shift the responsibility from themselves to the users
| and bugger them with endless pop ups, collect the data and
| don't give a shit about user experience. Or, just don't use
| cookies for a change.
|
| And look which decision they all made.
|
| A few notable examples do exist: https://fabiensanglard.net/ No
| popups, no banner, nothing. He just don't collect anything,
| thus, no need for a cookie banner.
|
| The mistake the EU made was to not foresee the madness used to
| make these decisions.
|
| I'll give you that it was an ugly, ugly outcome. :(
| wskinner wrote:
| > The mistake the EU made was to not foresee the madness used
| to make these decisions.
|
| It's not madness, it's a totally predictable response, and
| all web users pay the price for the EC's lack of foresight
| every day. That they didn't foresee it should cause us to
| question their ability to foresee the downstream effects of
| all their other planned regulations.
| gond wrote:
| Interesting framing. If you continue this line of thought,
| it will end up in a philosophical argument about what kind
| of image of humanity one has. So your solution would be to
| always expect everybody to be the worst version of
| themselves? In that case, that will make for some quite
| restrictive laws, I guess.
| wskinner wrote:
| People are generally responsive to incentives. In this
| case, the GDPR required:
|
| 1. Consent to be freely given, specific, informed and
| unambiguous and as easy to withdraw as to give 2. High
| penalties for failure to comply (EUR20 million or 4 % of
| worldwide annual turnover, whichever is higher)
|
| Compliance is tricky and mistakes are costly. A pop-up
| banner is the easiest off-the-shelf solution, and most
| site operators care about focusing on their actual
| business rather than compliance, so it's not surprising
| that they took this easy path.
|
| If your model of the world or "image of humanity" can't
| predict an outcome like this, then maybe it's wrong.
| gond wrote:
| > and most site operators care about focusing on their
| actual business rather than compliance,
|
| And that is exactly the point. Thank you. What is encoded
| as compliance in your example is actually the user
| experience. They off-loaded responsibility completely to
| the users. Compliance is identical to UX at this point,
| and they all know it. To modify your sentence: "and most
| site operators care about focusing on their actual
| business rather than user experience."
|
| The other thing is a lack of differentiation. The high
| penalities you are talking about are for all but of the
| top traffic website. I agree, it would be insane to play
| the gamble of removing the banners in that league. But
| tell me: why has ever single-site- website of a
| restaurant, fishing club and retro gamer blog a cookie
| banner? For what reason? They won't making a turnover you
| dream about in your example even if they would win the
| lottery, twice.
| troupo wrote:
| > Compliance is tricky
|
| How is "not selling user data to 2000+ 'partners'"
| tricky?
|
| > most site operators care about focusing on their actual
| business
|
| How is their business "send user's precise geolocation
| data to a third party that will keep that data for 10
| years"?
|
| Compliance with GDPR is _trivial_ in 99% of cases
| lurking_swe wrote:
| Well, you and I could have easily anticipated this outcome.
| So could regulators. For that reason alone...it's stupid
| policy on their part imo.
|
| Writing policy is not supposed to be an exercise where you
| "will" a utopia into existence. Policy should consider
| current reality. if your policy just ends up inconveniencing
| 99% of users, what are we even doing lol?
|
| I don't have all the answers. Maybe a carrot-and-stick
| approach could have helped? For example giving a one time tax
| break to any org that fully complies with the regulation? To
| limit abuse, you could restrict the tax break to companies
| with at least X number of EU customers.
|
| I'm sure there are other creative solutions as well. Or just
| implementing larger fines.
| shagie wrote:
| > The solution to get rid of cookie banners, as it was
| intended, is super simple: only use cookies if absolutely
| necessary.
|
| You are absolutely right... Here is the site on europa.eu
| (the EU version of .gov) that goes into how the GDPR works.
| https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-topic/data-
| protection/r...
|
| Right there... "This site uses cookies." Yes, it's a footer
| rather than a banner. There is no option to reject all
| cookies (you can accept all cookies or only "necessary"
| cookies).
|
| Do you have a suggestion for how the GDPR site could
| implement this differently so that they wouldn't need a
| cookie footer?
| pelorat wrote:
| > Do you have a suggestion for how the GDPR site could
| implement this differently so that they wouldn't need a
| cookie footer?
|
| Well, it's a information-only website, it has no ads or
| even a login, so they don't need to use any cookies at all.
| In fact if you look at the page response in the browser dev
| tools, there's in fact no cookies on the website, so to be
| honest they should just delete the cookie banner.
| shagie wrote:
| At https://commission.europa.eu/cookies-
| policy_en#thirdpartycoo... you can see the list of 3rd
| party cookies they use (and are required to notify about
| it). You Tube Internet
| Archive Google Maps Twitter
| TV1 Vimeo Microsoft Facebook
| Google LinkedIn Livestream
| SoundCloud European Parliament
|
| In theory, they _could_ rewrite their site to not require
| any of those services.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| "If you have a dumb incentive system, you get dumb outcomes"
| - Charlie Munger
| varenc wrote:
| If the law incentivized practically every website to
| implement the law in the "wrong" way, then the law seems
| wrong and its implications weren't fully thought out.
| constantcrying wrote:
| But this is a failure on the part of the EU law makers. They
| did not understand how their laws would look in practice.
|
| Obviously some websites need to collect certain data and the
| EU provided a pathway for them to do that, user consent. It
| was essentially obvious that every site which _wanted_ to
| collect data for some reason also could just ask for consent.
| If this wasn 't intended by the EU it was obviously
| foreseeable.
|
| >The mistake the EU made was to not foresee the madness used
| to make these decisions.
|
| Exactly. Because the EU law makers are incompetent and they
| lack technical understanding and the ability to write laws
| which clearly define what is and what isn't okay.
|
| What makes all these EU laws so insufferable isn't that they
| make certain things illegal, it is that they force everyone
| to adopt specific compliance processes, which often do
| exactly nothing to achieve the intended goal.
|
| User consent was the compliance path to be able to gather
| more user data. Not foreseeing that sites would just ask that
| consent was a failure of stupid bureaucrats.
|
| Of course they did not intend that sites would just show pop
| ups, but the law they created made this the most
| straightforward path for compliance.
| gond wrote:
| That possibly cannot be the common notion to frame this.
|
| I agree with some parts it but also see two significant
| issues:
|
| 1. It is even statistically implausible that everyone
| working at the EU is tech-illiterate and stupid and
| everybody at HN is a body of enlightenment on two legs.
| This is a tech-heavy forum, but I would guess most here are
| bloody amateurs regarding theory and science of law and you
| need at least two disciplines at work here, probably more.
|
| This is drifting too quickly into a territory of critique
| by platitudes for the sake of criticism.
|
| 2. The EU made an error of commission, not omission, and I
| think that that is a good thing. They need to make errors
| in order to learn from them and get better. Critique by
| using platitudes is not going to help the case. It is
| actually working against it. The next person initiating a
| EU procedure to correct the current error with the popups
| will have the burden of doing everything perfectly right,
| all at once, thought through front to back, or face the
| wrath of the all-knowing internet. So, how should that work
| out? Exactly like this: we will be stuck for half an
| eternity and no one will correct anything because if you
| don't do anything you can't do any wrong! We as a society
| mostly record the things that someone did wrong but almost
| never record something somebody should have done but
| didn't. That's an error of omission, and is usually
| magnitudes more significant than an error of commission.
| What is needed is an alternative way of handling and
| judging errors. Otherwise, the path of learning by error
| will be blocked by populism.
|
| ----- In my mind, the main issue is not that the EU made a
| mistake. The main issue is that it is not getting corrected
| in time and we will probably have to suffer another ten
| years or so until the error gets removed. The EU as a
| system needs to be accelerated by a margin so that it gets
| to an iterative approach if an error was made. I would
| argue with a cybernetic feedback loop approach here, but as
| we are on HN, this would translate to: move fast and break
| things.
| constantcrying wrote:
| On point 1. Tech illiteracy is something that affects an
| organization, it is independent of whether some
| individuals in that organization understand the issues
| involved. I am not arguing that nobody at the EU
| understands technology, but that key people pushing
| forward certain pieces of legislation have a severe lack
| of technical background.
|
| On point 2. My argument is that the EU is fundamentally
| legislating wrong. The laws they create are extremely
| complex and very hard to decipher, even by large
| corporate law teams. The EU does not create laws which
| clearly outlaw certain behaviors, they create corridors
| of compliance, which legislate how corporations have to
| set up processes to allow for certain ends. This makes
| adhering to these laws extremely difficult, as you can
| not figure out if something you are trying to do is
| illegal. Instead you have to work backwards, start by
| what you want to do, then follow the law backwards and
| decipher the way bureaucrats want you to accomplish that
| thing.
|
| I do not particularly care about cookie banners. They are
| just an annoying thing. But they clearly demonstrate how
| the EU is thinking about legislation, not as strict
| rules, but as creating corridors. In the case of cookie
| banners the EU bureaucrats themselves did not understand
| that the corridor they created allowed basically anyone
| to still collect user data, if they got the user to click
| "accept".
|
| The EU creates corridors of compliance. These corridors
| often map very poorly onto the actual processes and often
| do little to solve the actual issues. The EU needs to
| stop seeing themselves as innovators, who create broad
| highly detailed regulations. They need to radically
| reform themselves and need to provide, clear and concise
| laws which guarantee basic adherence to the desired
| standards. Only then will their laws find social
| acceptance and will not be viewed as bureaucratic
| overreach.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > Exactly. Because the EU law makers are incompetent and
| they lack technical understanding and the ability to
| write laws which clearly define what is and what isn't
| okay.
|
| I am sorry but I too agree with OP's statement. The EU is
| full of technocrats who have no idea about tech and they
| get easily swayed by lobbies selling them on a dream that
| is completely untethered to the reality we live in.
|
| > The next person initiating a EU procedure to correct
| the current error with the popups will have the burden of
| doing everything perfectly right, all at once, thought
| through front to back, or face the wrath of the all-
| knowing internet.
|
| You are talking as if someone is actually looking at the
| problem. is that so? Because if there was such a feedback
| loop that you seem to think exists in order to correct
| this issue, then where is it?
|
| > In my mind, the main issue is not that the EU made a
| mistake. The main issue is that it is not getting
| corrected in time and we will probably have to suffer
| another ten years or so until the error gets removed.
|
| So we should not hold people accountable when they make
| mistakes and waste everyone's time then?
|
| There is plenty of evidence to show that the EU as a
| whole is incompetent when it comes to tech.
|
| Case and point the Chat control law that is being pushed
| despite every single expert warning of the dire
| consequences in terms of privacy, and setting a dangerous
| precedent. Yet, they keep pushing it because it is seen
| as a political win.
|
| If the EU knew something about tech they would know that
| placing back-doors in all communication applications is
| non starter.
| gond wrote:
| > You are talking as if someone is actually looking at
| the problem. is that so? Because if there was such a
| feedback loop that you seem to think exists in order to
| correct this issue, then where is it?
|
| Yes, the problem is known and actually worked on. There
| are several approaches, some being initiated on country
| level (probably because EU is too slow) some within the
| institution, as this one:
|
| https://www.edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-
| work/subjects...
|
| No, I don't think that institutionalised feedback loops
| exist there, but I do not know. I can only infer from
| observation that they are probably not in place, as this
| would, I would think, show up as "move fast and break
| things".
|
| > So we should not hold people accountable when they make
| mistakes and waste everyone's time then?
|
| I have not made any direct remark to accountability, but
| I'll play along: what happens by handling mistakes that
| way is accountability through fear. What is, in my
| opinion, needed is calculated risk taking and
| responsibility on a base of trust and not punishment.
| Otherwise, eventually, you will be left with no one
| taking over the job or people taking over the job who
| will conserve the status quo. This is the opposite of
| pushing things through at high speed. There needs to be
| an environment in place which can absorb this variety
| before you can do that(see also: Peter Senge's "Learning
| Organisation").
|
| On a final note, I agree that the whole lobbying got out
| of hand. I also agree on the back-door issue and I would
| probably agree on a dozen other things. I am not in the
| seat of generally approving what the European
| Administration is doing. One of my initial points,
| however, was that the EU is not "the evil, dumb-as-brick-
| creator" of the cookie-popup-mess. Instead, this is
| probably one of the biggest cases of malicious compliance
| in history. And still, the EU gets the full, 100% blame,
| almost unanimously (and no comment as to what the initial
| goal was). That is quite a shift in accountability you
| just were interested in not to loose.
| baby wrote:
| I hate these popups so much, the fact that they havent
| corrected any of this bs shows how slow these people are to
| move
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Who are 'they', and 'these people'? Nb I haven't had a pop up
| for years. Perhaps it could be you that is slow. Do you ad-
| blocking?
|
| https://www.joindns4.eu/for-public
| tim333 wrote:
| The "I still don't care about cookies" extension works quite
| well. Auto-clicks accept and closes the window in approx half
| a second.
| user5534762135 wrote:
| The internet is riddled with popups and attention grabbing dark
| patterns, but the only one that's a problem is the one that
| actually lets you opt out of being tracked to death?
| ryukoposting wrote:
| ...yes? There are countless ways it could have been
| implemented that would have been more effective, and less
| irritating for _billions_ of people. Force companies to
| respect the DNT header. Ta-daa, done. But that wouldn 't have
| been profitable, so instead let's cook up a cottage industry
| of increasingly obnoxious consent banners.
| sandspar wrote:
| Meta on the warpath, Europe falls further behind. Unless you're
| ready for a fight, don't get in the way of a barbarian when he's
| got his battle paint on.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > Unless you're ready for a fight, don't get in the way of a
| barbarian when he's got his battle paint on.
|
| You talking about Zuckerberg?
| sandspar wrote:
| Yeah. He just settled the Cambridge Analytica suit a couple
| days ago, he basically won the Canadian online news thing,
| he's blown billions of dollars on his AI angle. He's jacked
| up and wants to fight someone.
| isodev wrote:
| As a citizen I'm perfectly happy with the AI Act. As a "person in
| tech", the kind of growth being "stunt" here shouldn't be
| happening in the first place. It's not overreach to put some
| guardrails and protect humans from the overreaching ideas of the
| techbro elite.
| Aeolun wrote:
| As a techbro elite. I find it incredibly annoying when people
| regulate shit that 'could' be used for something bad (and many
| good things), instead of regulating someone actually using it
| for something bad.
| isodev wrote:
| You're too focused on the "regulate" part. It's a lot easier
| to see it as a framework. It spells out what you need to
| anticipate the spirit of the law and what's considerate good
| or bad practice.
|
| If you actually read it, you will also realise it's entirely
| comprised of "common sense". Like, you wouldn't want to do
| the stuff it says are not to be done anyway. Remember, corps
| can't be trusted because they have a business to run. So
| that's why when humans can be exposed to risky AI
| applications, the EU says the model provider needs to be
| transparent and demonstrate they're capable of operating a
| model safely.
| apwell23 wrote:
| main thing humans can't be excused is poverty.
|
| Which is the path EU is choosing. EU has been enjoying
| colonial loot for so long that they have lost any sense of
| reality.
| isodev wrote:
| I feel a lot of emotions in your comment but no
| connection with reality. The AI Act is really not that
| big of a deal. If Meta is unhappy with it, it means it's
| working.
| tim333 wrote:
| A problem with the EU over regulating from its citizens point
| of view is the AI companies will set up elsewhere and the EU
| will become a backwater.
| 0xDEAFBEAD wrote:
| Yep, that's why they need to regulate ASML. Tell ASML they
| can only service 'compliant' foundries, where 'compliant'
| foundry means 'only sells to compliant datacenters/AI firms'.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Thats how you get every government to throw money at any
| competitor to ASML and try to steal their IP.
| isodev wrote:
| FOMO is not a valid reason to abandon the safety and
| wellbeing of the people who will inevitably have to endure
| all this "AI innovation". It's just like building a bridge -
| there are rules and checks and triple checks
| tim333 wrote:
| At the moment they are more like chatbots and I'm not sure
| they need the same sort of rules and triple checks as
| bridges.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Nit: (possibly cnbc's fault) there should be a hyphen to clarify
| meta opposes overreach, not growth. "growth-stunting overreach"
| vs "growth (stunting overreach)"
| cakealert wrote:
| EU regulations are sometimes able to bully the world into
| compliance (eg. cookies).
|
| Usually minorities are able to impose "wins" on a majority when
| the price of compliance is lower than the price of defiance.
|
| This is not the case with AI. The stakes are enormous. AI is full
| steam ahead and no one is getting in the way short of nuclear
| war.
| oaiey wrote:
| But AI also carries tremendous risks, from something simple as
| automating warfare to something like a evil AGI.
|
| In Germany we have still traumas from automatic machine guns
| setup on the wall between East and West Germany. The Ukraine is
| fighting a drone war in the trenches with a psychological
| effect on soldiers comparable to WWI.
|
| Stake are enormous. Not only toward the good. There is enough
| science fiction written about it. Regulation and laws are
| necessary!
| zettabomb wrote:
| I don't disagree that we need regulation, but I also think
| citing literal fiction isn't a good argument. We're also
| very, very far away from anything approaching AGI, so the
| idea of it becoming evil seems a bit far fetched.
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| Autonomous sentry turrets have already been a thing since
| the 2000s. If we assume that military technology is always
| at least some 5-10 years ahead of civilian, it is likely
| that some if not all of the "defense" contractors have far
| more terrifying autonomous weapons.
| ben_w wrote:
| I agree fiction is a bad argument.
|
| On the other hand, firstly every single person disagrees
| what the phrase AGI means, varying from "we've had it for
| years already" to "the ability to do provably impossible
| things like solve the halting problem"; and secondly we
| have a very bad track record for knowing how long it will
| take to invent anything in the field of AI with both
| positive and negative failures, for example constantly
| thinking that self driving cars are just around the corner
| vs. people saying an AI that could play Go well was
| "decades" away a mere few months before it beat the world
| champion.
| tim333 wrote:
| Did you catch the news about Grok wanting to kill the jews
| last week? All you need for AI or AGI to be evil is a
| prompt saying be evil.
| ken47 wrote:
| We don't need AGI in order for AI to destroy humanity.
| chii wrote:
| regulation does not stop weapons from being created that
| utilizes AI. It only slows down honest states that try to
| abide by it, and gives the dishonest ones a head start.
|
| Guess what happens to the race then?
| tim333 wrote:
| I think your machine gun example illustrates people are quite
| capable of masacreing each other without AI or even high tech
| - in past periods sometimes over 30% of males died in
| warfare. While AI could get involved it's kind of a separate
| thing.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Yeah, his automated gun phobia argument is dumb. Should we
| ban all future tech development because some people are a
| scared of some things that can be dangerous but useful? NO.
|
| Plus, ironically, Germany's Rheinmetall is a leader in
| automated anti-air guns so the people's phobia of automated
| guns is pointless and, at least in this case, common sense
| won, but in many others like nuclear energy, it lost.
|
| It seems like Germans area easy to manipulate to get them
| to go against their best interests, if you manage to
| trigger some phobias in them via propaganda. _" Ohoohoh
| look out, it's the nuclear boogieman, now switch your
| economy to Russian gas instead, it's safer"_
| 1718627440 wrote:
| The switching to russian gas is bad for know, but was
| rational back then. The idea was to give russia leverage
| on europe besides war, so that they don't need war.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> but was rational back then._
|
| Only if you're a corrupt German politician getting bribed
| by Russia to sell out long term national security for
| short term corporate profits.
|
| It was also considered a stupid idea back then by NATO
| powers asking Germany WTF are you doing, tying your
| economy to the nation we're preparing to go to war with.
|
| _> The idea was to give russia leverage on europe
| besides war, so that they don 't need war._
|
| The present day proves it was a stupid idea.
|
| _" You were given the choice between war and dishonor.
| You chose dishonor, and you will have war."_ - Churchill
| 1718627440 wrote:
| It worked quite well between France and Germany 50 years
| earlier.
|
| Yes it was naive, given the philosophy of the leaders of
| the UdSSR/Russia, but I don't think it was that much
| problematic. We do need some years to adapt, but it
| doesn't meaningfully impact the ability to send weapons
| to the ukraine and impose sanctions (in the long term).
| Meanwhile we got cheap gas for some decades and Russia
| got some other trade partners beside China. Would we
| better of if we didn't use the oil in the first place?
| Then Russia would have bounded earlier only to China and
| Nordkorea, etc. . It also did have less environmental
| impact then shipping the oil from the US.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> It worked quite well between France and Germany 50
| years earlier. _
|
| France and Germany were democracies under the umbrella of
| the US rule acting as arbiter. It's disingenuous and even
| stupid, to argue an economic relationship with USSR and
| Putin's Russia as being the same thing.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Yes I agree it was naive. It is something people come up
| with, if they think everyone cares for their own
| population's best and "western" values. Yet that is an
| assumption we used to base a lot on and still do.
|
| Did the US force France into it? I thought that it was an
| idea of the french government (Charles de Gaulle), while
| the population had much resentment, which only vanished
| after having successful business together. Germany hadn't
| much choice though. I don't think it would had lasting
| impact if it were decreed and not coming from the local
| population.
|
| You could hope making Russia richer, could in them rather
| be rich then large, which is basically the deal we have
| with China, which is still an alien dictatorship.
| blub wrote:
| Here's a nice history of the decades old relationship:
| https://www.dw.com/en/russian-gas-in-germany-a-
| complicated-5...
|
| It was a major success, contributing to the thawing of
| relationships with the Soviet Union and probably
| contributed to the _peaceful_ end of the Soviet Union. It
| supported several EU countries through their economic
| development and kept the EU afloat through the financial
| crisis.
|
| It was a very important source of energy and there is no
| replacement. This can be seen by the flight of capital,
| deindustrialisation and poor economic prospects in
| Germany and the EU.
|
| But as far as I know, many countries still import energy
| from Russia, either directly or laundered through third
| parties.
| whyever wrote:
| I think the argument was about automated killing, not
| automated weapons.
|
| There are already drones from Germany capable of
| automatic target acquisition, but they still require a
| human in the loop to pull the trigger. Not because they
| technically couldn't, but because they are required to.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| you can choose to live in fear, the rest of us are embracing
| growth
| encom wrote:
| The only thing the cookie law has accomplished for users, is
| pestering everyone with endless popups (full of dark patterns).
| WWW is pretty much unbearable to use without uBlock filtering
| that nonsense away. User tracking and fingerprinting has moved
| server side. Zero user privacy has been gained, because there's
| too much money to be made and the industry routed around this
| brain dead legislation.
| red_trumpet wrote:
| > User tracking and fingerprinting has moved server side.
|
| This smells like a misconception of the GDPR. The GDPR is not
| about cookies, it is about tracking. You are not allowed to
| track your users without consent, even if you do not use any
| cookies.
| whatevaa wrote:
| Login is tracking, even when login is functional, not for
| tracking.
|
| Laws are analyzed by lawyers and they will err on side of
| caution, so you end up with these notices.
| sublimefire wrote:
| Cookies and crossdomain tracking is slightly different to
| a login. Login would occur on one platform and would not
| track you when you go on to amazon or some porn site or
| read infowars. But crossdomain cookies do not need auth
| and they are everywhere because webmasters get paid for
| adding them, they track you everywhere.
| sublimefire wrote:
| Well in my case I just do not use those websites with an
| enormous amount of "partners" anymore. Cookie legislation was
| great because it now shows you how many businesses are ad
| based, it added a lot of transparency. It is annoying only
| because you want the shit for free and it carries a lot of
| cookies usually. All of the businesses that do not track
| beyond the necessary do not have that issue with the cookie
| banners IMO. GDPR is great for users and not too difficult to
| implement. All of the stuff related to it where you can ask
| the company what data they hold about you is also awesome.
| mediumsmart wrote:
| Meta knows all there is about overreach and of course they don't
| want that stunted.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| Not a big fan of this company or its founder but this is the
| right move.
|
| The EU is getting to be a bigger nuisance than they are worth.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The problem with the EU regulation is the same as always, first
| and foremost they do not understand the topic and can not
| articulate a clear statement of law.
|
| They create mountains of regulations, which are totally unclear
| and which require armies of lawyers to interpret. Adherence to
| these regulations becomes a major risk factor for all involved
| companies, which then try to avoid interacting with that
| regulation at all.
|
| Getting involved with the GDPR is a total nightmare, even if you
| _want_ to respect your users privacy.
|
| Regulating AI like this is especially idiotic, since currently
| every year shows a major shift in how AI is utilized. It is
| totally out in the open how hard training an AI "from scratch"
| will be in 5 years. The EU is incapable of actually writing laws
| which make it clear what isn't allowed, instead they are creating
| vague corridors how companies should arrive at certain outcomes.
|
| The bureaucrats see _themselves_ as the innovators here. They
| aren 't trying to make laws which prevent abuses, they are
| creating corridors for processes for companies to follow. In the
| case of AI these corridors will seem ridiculous in five years.
| thrance wrote:
| EU-wide ban of Meta incoming? I'd celebrate personally, Meta and
| their products are a net negative on society, and only serve to
| pump money to the other side of the Atlantic, to a nation that
| has shown outright hostility to European values as of late.
| apwell23 wrote:
| I am enjoying EU self destructing out of pure jealously.
| throwaway4220 wrote:
| The world seems to be literally splitting apart, and Meta was a
| huge part of sowing discontent and stoking violence. I hope to
| move to Europe one day and I can use an open source LLM at that
| point
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-19 23:02 UTC)