[HN Gopher] AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone...
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AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone-Here's What to
Do Instead
Author : mooreds
Score : 17 points
Date : 2025-11-04 21:19 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| mwkaufma wrote:
| "Here's What to Do Instead" misleading title, no alternatives
| suggested. Just hand-wavey GenAI agitprop.
| rapjr9 wrote:
| These are their alternatives:
|
| What neither Big Tech nor Big Media will say is that stronger
| antitrust rules and enforcement would be a much better
| solution. What's more, looking beyond copyright future-proofs
| the protections. Stronger environmental protections,
| comprehensive privacy laws, worker protections, and media
| literacy will create an ecosystem where we will have defenses
| against any new technology that might cause harm in those
| areas, not just generative AI.
| bgwalter wrote:
| None of their alternatives will work or solve the problems
| that creatives face or the problem that people cannot think
| for themselves any longer (as seen by the downvoting in this
| submission).
| freejazz wrote:
| How do they get to the conclusion that AI uses are protected
| under the fair use doctrine and anything otherwise would be an
| "expansion" of copyright? Fairly telling IMO
| zrm wrote:
| AI training and the thing search engines do to make a search
| index are essentially the same thing. Hasn't the latter
| generally been regarded as fair use, or else how do search
| engines exist?
| Kye wrote:
| There was a relatively tiny but otherwise identical uproar
| over Google even before they added infoboxes that reduced the
| number of people who clicked through.
| free_bip wrote:
| One of the few times I vehemently disagree with the EFF.
|
| The problem is this article seems to make absolutely no effort to
| differentiate legitimate uses of GenAI (things like scientific
| and medical research) from the completely illegitimate uses of
| GenAI (things like stealing the work of every single artist,
| living and dead, for the sole purpose of making a profit)
|
| One of those is fair use. The other is clearly not.
| Calavar wrote:
| What happens when a researcher makes a generative art model and
| publicly releases the weights? Anyone can download the weights
| and use it to turn a quick profit.
|
| Should the original research use be considered legitimate fair
| use? Does the legitimacy get 'poisoned' along the way when a
| third party uses the same model for profit?
|
| Is there any difference between a mom-and-pop restaurant who
| uses the model to make a design for their menu versus a multi-
| billion dollar corp that's planning on laying off all their in
| house graphic designers? If so, where in between those two
| extremes should the line be drawn?
| bgwalter wrote:
| EFF is bought and paid for. Not once does this piece mention that
| "AI" and humans are different and that a digital combine
| harvester mowing down and ingesting the commons does not need the
| same rights as a human.
|
| It is not fair use when the entire output is made of chopped up
| quotes from all of humanity. It is not fair use when only a
| couple of oligarchs have the money and grifting ability to build
| the required data centers.
|
| This is a another in the long lists of institutions that have
| been subverted. ACLU and OSI are other examples.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| What definition of "sufficiently transformative" doesn't
| include "a book about wizards" by some process being used to
| make "a machine that spits out text"? A magazine publisher has
| a more legitimate claim against the person making a ransom
| letter: at least the fonts are copied verbatim.
|
| There are legitimate arguments to be made about whether or not
| AI training should be allowed, but it should take the form of
| new legislation, not wild reinterpretations of copyright law.
| Copyright law is already overreaching, just imagine how
| goddawful companies could be if they're given more power to
| screw you for ever having interacted with their "creative
| works".
| bgwalter wrote:
| We did have that. In some EU countries, during the cassette
| tape and Sony Walkman era, private individuals were allowed
| to make around 5 copies for friends _from a legitimate
| source_.
|
| Companies were not allowed to make 5 trillion copies.
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