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"Artist's Permission" (Art by Smooth Dunk)
(pawb.social)
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this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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Fuck AI
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I don't see how you can separate them. They both protect ideas, copyright protects creative ones and patents protect engineering ones. And with copyright there have been cases where I would say they weren't highly specific or genuinely protecting creators. Look at Katy Perry's 'Dark Horse' vs Flame's 'Joyful Noise' or Robin Thicke's 'Blurred Lines' vs Marvin Gaye's 'Got to Give it Up' or Men At Work's 'Down Under' vs bloody 'Kookaburra' for crying out loud. If any of those cases have any merit then you might as well be able to own entire genres, chords or scales.
Copyright is an absolute cancer on society. Even if you ignore all the transformative works that get lumped in, like fanfiction or memes, you have genuine fair use like comment and critique getting taken down or demonetised because DMCA safe harbour laws mean websites have to be very capricious to protect themselves.
The solution to the AI problem isn't to all of a sudden become pro-copyright again and I can't believe I have to say this out loud.
You made some great points. For me, I think of copyright and protecting specific works, like entire books, articles, etc - not derivatives. But as you pointed out, that is not how it is applied. It is frequently abused to crush and stifle things that are clearly NOT copies.
I suppose I should say I am not opposed to the concept of copyright in very narrow conceptual terms, rather than current real-world applications.
No, it isn't. The original intent of copyrights and patents both have just be subverted over time until they became their current form.
The idea of having someone have a temporary monopoly on a thing for a limited period of time completely makes sense (as long as you're under capitalism). Inventions and creative works take investment to produce, and those making that investment should see a payback on it.
However, over time, corporations have lobbied to make a temporary monopoly into a near permanent one. The public domain (until very recently) just didn't grow at all because of this influence. That's what's wrong here.
As per usual, the real bone to pick is with capitalism and regulatory capture. I think it's reasonable to say that, for instance, the Beatles operating under capitalism ought to have been paid for the works that they created. However, at some point, enough is enough.