Technology

So this has been going around in my head for the last couple days. Why are opinions here, on this topic, so decidedly right-wing?

I’ll have to pick this apart.

Copyrights are a form of property. Where such intellectual property is used to make money, it is intangible capital. License payments are capital income. Property is distributed very unequally. Most of it is owned by rich people. Those who demand license payments here are literally demanding that more money should go to rich capitalists.

People who create copyrighted materials for their employers do not own the copyrights thereto. They are just like factory workers who do not own the product either. The people who worked on animations in the pre-CGI era were basically factory workers. When these jobs disappeared due to computers, where was the hand-wringing?

A brush-wielding artist has as much to do with the copyright industry as a pitchfork-wielding farmer with the agro-industry.

This isn’t even normal capitalism but the absolutely worst kind. The copyrighted material was uploaded to the net for many reasons, including making a profit. Some people used this publically available resource to train AIs. The owners contributed no labor. They were affected so little that they mostly seem to have been unaware that anything was going on.

The sole argument for paying seems to be mainly “muh property rights!”. I am not seeing any consideration of the good of society, public benefit, the general welfare, or anything of the sort. Those who say the trained AI models should be released for free, seem to imply that they should not be able to profit, because they looked at someone else’s property.

This is far more capitalistic than even US capitalism.

Consider patents. To get a patent, a new invention has to be registered, which involves publishing how it works in enough detail so that others can copy it. Then the government will enforce a monopoly on that invention for 20 years. During that time, the inventor can demand license fees. But also, other people can learn from it and maybe find other solutions. After those 20 years, the knowledge becomes public domain. This is often framed as a social contract: temporary monopoly in exchange for advancing knowledge. Scientific discoveries don’t get anything at all.

Compared to how copyright is treated by so many here, actual US capitalism looks almost like socialism!

US copyright used to work exactly like patents, with the same duration. Today, copyrights last until 70 years after the death of the creator. It’s just FUBAR. The US Constitution, far-left manifesto that it is, still it limits to the purpose of promoting intellectual output (to put it in modern terms). It is supposed to help society and not to enable capitalist grift.

People like to blame corrupt politicians or lobbyists for what is going wrong in the US but perhaps US politics is delivering exactly what people want. They may not like the necessary and predictable outcome of their choices, but it’s still what they want.

Americans left and right curse those evil corporations. Of course, Americans side with the individuals when some faceless corporation tries to bully money out of them. Well, a union is just such a corporation. Look up the definition of corporation if you don’t believe me.