My big fear is that we’ll get laws and terms and conditions that protect the big guys, while the big guys will continue to ravage the little guys in exactly the same way.
“Of course you can’t do that to Photoshop, it’s Adobe’s IP and they’ve told you that you can’t!”
versus
“Of course Adobe can have an LLM use your GPL codebase when improving Photoshop, it’s open source and they’re not copying your code just looking at it so the GPL doesn’t infect!”
There’s still time to fight, but I’m exhausted, and the fact that a huge portion of the FOSS community is embracing the direction of travel – either by claiming my fear won’t come to be, or that it’ll be good when it does – is making it even more demotivating.
What you’re describing here is a general deficiency of our legal systems in general. It’s not specific to intellectual property. What I sketch is a novel problem with the laws themselves.
The practical effect is pretty much the same, though. Laws always protect the big guys. Even if we make good laws, big guys will always be able to game the system.
Besides, AI companies already use the “fair use” excuse. In jurisdictions where that exists, that law you envision already exists.
My big fear is that we’ll get laws and terms and conditions that protect the big guys, while the big guys will continue to ravage the little guys in exactly the same way.
“Of course you can’t do that to Photoshop, it’s Adobe’s IP and they’ve told you that you can’t!”
versus
“Of course Adobe can have an LLM use your GPL codebase when improving Photoshop, it’s open source and they’re not copying your code just looking at it so the GPL doesn’t infect!”
There’s still time to fight, but I’m exhausted, and the fact that a huge portion of the FOSS community is embracing the direction of travel – either by claiming my fear won’t come to be, or that it’ll be good when it does – is making it even more demotivating.
score 1 · canonical
We already have this. This is how copyright works in practice.
Company steals your code, you sue, they bury you in legal fees, you go bankrupt.
You steal company’s code, they sue, you go bankrupt.
(And I stole the above, seen it cross my fedi feed, was good, I borrowed it.)
score 1 · canonical
What you’re describing here is a general deficiency of our legal systems in general. It’s not specific to intellectual property. What I sketch is a novel problem with the laws themselves.
Both are bad. They’re not the same.
score 1 · canonical
The practical effect is pretty much the same, though. Laws always protect the big guys. Even if we make good laws, big guys will always be able to game the system.
Besides, AI companies already use the “fair use” excuse. In jurisdictions where that exists, that law you envision already exists.
score 1 · canonical