> enact laws that will change society to reflect your viewpoint
Society already reflects my viewpoint. Culture is based on remixing ideas. Most commonly copyright applies to direct reproduction, although there are obviously degrees. Whether copyright deserves to exist as it currently does is another discussion.
> instead your spouting nonsense just to serve your self interest. Hopefully not though!
What about my position is nonsense, and what do you think my self interest is?
Edit: Look, I'm sorry for rubbing you the wrong way, obviously we both have some strong opinions about AI generators, and maybe tool usage in general. I would like to know more about where you're coming from to have a reaction this visceral. The most glaring point of critique against current AI generators I would understand is the fact that multi-billion dollar startups are printing money using the work of other people for free. Is that it maybe? Would you have a reaction that strong if the models were open source?
My interpretation of the general society's viewpoint on this is for the most part people are ok with the restrictions we place on intellectual property. Most people don't record movies on their phones in theaters, most people don't photocopy books, most people don't trace over artwork and then pass it off as it own. There are people that do all of those things and they are generally shunned by the communities of people involved in creating those works, and the rest of society for the most part goes along with that position, either by not caring, or supporting the laws.
There are points of strife of course, the very extended copyright windows we're seeing, the concerns over sampling in music, (particularly a few decades ago when the technology to sample became widely available, though mostly resolved at this point).
I'm not super familiar with all disciplines, but I know within art/drawing, there is a ton of discourse and training to communicate to new artists what appropriate study/remix/use of reference is, and what crosses the line. While there are different viewpoints, I have confidence that for the most part these discussion are based on good faith arguments in ways that serve the artists and those that consume art. Not saying any of this is perfect or couldn't be improved, but the institutional knowledge is significant and dismissing and overriding is probably going to be a lot of work.
On the flip side, there are those that 'justify' whatever they are doing as... well, as whatever argument suits whatever they are doing. This commonly happens with piracy ("I don't want to support big-co XX", or "DRM is evil" or "This is just for personal use"). Any of these would hold a lot more water if anyone who had this opinion actually did any work to to solve whatever problem they were having, while respecting the creators interest (maybe by say, strengthening IP laws so DRM was unnecessary), but that almost never seems to be the case, because turns out the argument isn't actually an argument to modify the concepts of intellectual property to enhance society, it's just an excuse to justify stealing.
This is what I'm seeing constantly with regard to the current round of AI data scraping, people spouting "it's ok because of XX" but then not really having any interest in propagating XX, instead just having an interest in using other people work without paying them to advance their AI product.
Your original post didn't seem to express which camp your interests lie, so I responded as if it could be in either camp.
>Any of these would hold a lot more water if anyone who had this opinion actually did any work to to solve whatever problem they were having, while respecting the creators interest
I take a different tack here, that sometimes would cause me to disregard the creators' interests.
Morally, piracy is preservation. The vast majority of computer software would not be properly preserved if it wasn't for the contemporary pirates. Companies like Nintendo and Apple are not the greatest stewards of software on their platforms, and there are entire classes of works (prototype/development versions of software) that wouldn't be well-preserved in any case.
Plus, respecting the creators' interests in all cases would also allow creators to demand that a work be lost to time, and quite honestly I don't philosophically or morally think that creators should even have the right to do that in the first place, once they have released a work to the public.
Anything less than unabashed piracy risks letting works die. By "die", I don't mean "at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of popularity", I mean "no longer exist in the world at all". Look at the various episodes of classic Doctor Who that have been recovered thanks to fan recordings or private collectors of film.
I feel like I can interpret what your saying in two ways:
- Archivism is an important goal
- Often cannot be accomplished in a way that meets the creators interests
- Important enough that sometimes it supersedes the interest of the creators
- Therefore, when all these preconditions hold, piracy is justified to accomplish the goal of archivism.
The other way:
- Morally, piracy is preservation
The former is a line of reasoning I think most people could get behind. I think we could work to outline what cases meet the criteria at each stage, handles cases that other goals might have more precedence (for example the right to privacy might trump the right to archive). This is a lot of work. I would expect multiple lifetimes of energy and activism would be necessary meaningfully move the needle on copyright law in a way that benefited society over all.
The later is a dogmatic statement that steamrolls over any other interests. While there are clearly exceptional cases where the current system fails (that you point out), it's not clear that clinging to this position above all others will result in a net benefit.
It's hard to imagine an expert in Archivism doesn't have some understanding of the moral boundaries of their field. As such, I would expect most experts to take the former approach.
So when the second approach is _exactly what you say_, it's hard to take the "Piracy is preservation" as a meaningful stance to advance Archivism, and instead leads me to interpret it as talking point to justify piracy.
And this isn't to say an individual _couldn't_ start from a dogmatic position, do a ton of work and make the world a better place. Stallman for example has taken a pretty extreme position with free software, done a ton of work, contributed to ton of valuable institutions. All this swimming upstream into much of the rest of societies existing policies. But it seems the exception. And I think in most of these cases the burden of 'demonstrating net societal value' correctly falls on the activist, for example in areas other than free software, Stallmans dogmatic positions haven't been well received and I think appropriately so. (And to be fair, I think most great activists have some of this approach, at least in the storied version of their work, but as Ziwe would say, "How else do you compare yourself to Martin Luther King?")
So yeah, if Archivism is your life's work, good luck. I hope you can find ways to increase the net value of society.
But really I think most people just want free stuff and will say whatever to justify it.
My point of saying "piracy is preservation" is that even those who pirate because they want free stuff are helping to preserve works, even if that isn't their primary goal. Look at the entirety of the C64 cracking scene, and look at all the programs that would have had much less of a chance to exist today, in 2023, if they hadn't been cracked.
Yes, sometimes piracy requires cracking, and that is not exactly 1:1 preservation. However, that's merely analogous to the difference between the original Doctor Who videotapes that were wiped, and the off-air U-Matic NTSC recordings that were found. While the latter were not at all the same quality as the original, they were nonetheless useful for preservation, as the color signal was able to be used in many cases with the black-and-white telerecording. If one is unable to preserve a work 1:1, it's nonetheless preferable to preserve it in a slightly modified form, than not preserve it at all.
If a program only exists in cracked form, that's a travesty for sure, but it's better than the program not existing at all. In that case, it's also more likely that the original might be found, if there is awareness of the program's existence from the cracked copy.
I fear this will only get worse with advances in cryptography. The ones spending big bucks to develop these protection systems simply do not care about preservation outside of their vaults. They would much rather see the old works go away, so they don't have to compete with them.
I believe retrogaming to be an anomaly that would not exist today without the piracy of the past. The emulation and piracy scenes of the late 90s and early 2000s were seminal in solidifying retrogaming as a subculture in and of itself.
For sure, people who pirate are helping archivism. Similarly, people who murder are helping stem climate change.
That being said, I agree with most of your statements and concerns. I probably don't weigh them quite as highly compared to creators interests as you do, but I appreciate that you are invested in the issue.
I think it'd be very reasonable to have an institution responsible for archiving you could submit works to (maybe must in some cases?) I know in the us to register a copyright you have to submit the work already, though I would guess it could be the work with drm included. Seems like something in that direction could satisfy archivism without needing to resort to piracy.
Society already reflects my viewpoint. Culture is based on remixing ideas. Most commonly copyright applies to direct reproduction, although there are obviously degrees. Whether copyright deserves to exist as it currently does is another discussion.
> instead your spouting nonsense just to serve your self interest. Hopefully not though!
What about my position is nonsense, and what do you think my self interest is?
Edit: Look, I'm sorry for rubbing you the wrong way, obviously we both have some strong opinions about AI generators, and maybe tool usage in general. I would like to know more about where you're coming from to have a reaction this visceral. The most glaring point of critique against current AI generators I would understand is the fact that multi-billion dollar startups are printing money using the work of other people for free. Is that it maybe? Would you have a reaction that strong if the models were open source?