Right. It's the debunked, bad-faith argument that "piracy is theft" because the pirates would have bought a movie were it not for The Pirate Bay, to justify calculating monetary damages that are completely unmoored from reality. We shouldn’t let people revive this nonsense, even in the context of AI.
In case of AI it is closer to actual theft because income (of an artist) is taken away, and someone else (AI capitalists) makes money from it. I don't think the comparison is unreasonable here.
How come it's just an "artist" and not an "artist capitalist"? And isn't this "rent seeking" behavior on the part of the artist?
It would be nice if the world used clinical terms to describe what's actually going on instead of using emotional terms to equate "copying" to "stealing" or "pirating", but people would rather confuse the issue than argue it logically in good faith.
OK in clinical terms, A wants to use X which is something that B produces, and by taking X, that will reduce B's opportunities to make an income, while at the same time increasing A's opportunities to make an income. Since A does not even ask for permission, in normal language we call that theft.
You’re suggesting that every time I build a set of shelves, I’m stealing from the shelving manufacturer because I deprived them of the opportunity to sell me THEIR shelves. Every time I borrow a friends car I’ve stolen from the rental company or Uber? What about if I make a song that kinda sounds like Daft Punk after listening to one of their songs, I “stole” their music? If I watch a movie at a friends house, according to you, didn’t I steal from the movie company and the actors? What if I see a game at the store and don’t buy it but plan to make one similar for myself, should I be arrested on the way out of the store for “stealing it”?
Because that’s what you’re saying and it’s certainly…a point of view.
> You’re suggesting that every time I build a set of shelves, I’m stealing from the shelving manufacturer because I deprived them of the opportunity to sell me THEIR shelves.
No, because you did not use any of their intellectual property in doing so.
You are conveniently ignoring the fact that A is taking something for which B did actual work.
So you pick the one and only example out of 5 that wouldn’t include intellectual property as a counter-point? Certainly makes it seem like your position is tenuous.
A song is IP. A car is not technically IP but merchandise is involved so I’d say that counts. A movie is IP. A game is most certainly IP.
By your opinion, observing that game before making my own “infringes” their IP. And same for the song. And by that test, watching a movie at a friend’s is piracy, and borrowing a friends car is robbing the car manufacturer of profits.
It really seems to fall apart if you simply place a black box over the “who” of creating something completely different, seemingly based solely on our biological memory not being digital.
IP theft involves deprivation of the holder of ownership claim. Observing a game before making your own game, listening to music before releasing your own track, viewing photos before making a go at the same composition, do not do that. Claiming them as your own, however, does do that. Using them to train a (commercial) system that allows anybody to recreate them and claim as your own does do that.
It is, actually, more of a problem than theft of physical items. The latter you can just buy again while the former robs you of intangible values that among other things may grant you the ability to just buy physical property. The latter doesn’t scale and is generally more difficult because it’s more visible, while the former can be (and is being, in fact) done at population scale without people realizing it until it’s too late. Also, expectation of ownership claim is a meta level of why people want to make more original things, including new and cool physical items.
Right. It's the debunked, bad-faith argument that "piracy is theft" because the pirates would have bought a movie were it not for The Pirate Bay, to justify calculating monetary damages that are completely unmoored from reality. We shouldn’t let people revive this nonsense, even in the context of AI.