Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Things will get worse before they're get better, but ultimately the publishers will pay dearly for this.

First, the IA should move to a more favorable copyright jurisdiction to preserve the collection.

Second, there's no point fighting the copyright lobby, especially so in the US. We need to build an alternative access to knowledge that bypasses the copyright/ownership of knowledge paradigm.



I'm starting to think this is the case, but the US is a country that enforces its version of copyright with gunboats. Not an easy task to simply find another jurisdiction.


"US …copyright with gunboats."

Right, that's why it will get worse. Unfortunately, we're still only in skirmish territory. And it's a battle we have to win.


I think about time for a third opium war. China is manipulating currency through trade restrictions, and the West wants to sell them poison, maybe it's time to sail a carrier group up the Pearl River!


The battle that needs to be won is with greedy publishers who don't respect either creators or content consumers.

The copyright/patents issue with China is only part of a much bigger political issue. Gunboat diplomacy isn't the solution, history has shown it's made things worse—China hasn't forgotten the Opium Wars.


> the IA should move to a more favorable copyright jurisdiction

Ask the team at The Pirate Bay or Kim Dotcom how that worked out for them.

The US WILL pursue it's copyright laws to any country on earth.


It's hardly been successful with China (but I'm not advocating it as a solution).


That's because Chinese copyright infringement is mostly internal. You don't see sites protected by China distributing copyrighted content to the rest of the world.


Smart move, that's necessary lip service to IP treaties. One can extrapolate however, just about every device or widget I buy these days is made in China. What's noticeable is that many, many of them are identical to items that were once produced in the US, UK or Europe (I'm old enough to remember many of those original Western-made products).

Presumably, these items can now flood Western and other markets because they're out of patent and or the original manufacturer has gone bust, not so copyright/IP due to its long expiry date.


It will to the extent that it is able.

Like for instance, Australia's project Gutenberg tends to get things a few years before the US version because of local legal differences.


That difference is due to the grandfathering of the old 50-year rule for existing works when the Howard Government brought in the 70-year rule.


How about we feed an "AI" with it, like MS does with licensed code? Then we can host that AI and let people use that, without having it output where some text is from, just like MS does for code.


Right. Just let OpenAI do it. Then it’s allowed. And internally, let the “model” be a 7zip compression algo. Just call it an “LLM”. Courts won’t know the difference. Haha


"Courts won’t know the difference."

Whether or not I'd suggest that if AI makes reverse-engineering easy (and I see no reason why it won't) then users will use it on an individual basis. Detecting the myriads of breaches would be a nightmare for any law/courts system. Ultimately, the paradigm will have to change.


We could also abolish copyrights for software in general and for everyone, including the tech giants.


We could, but is that the best alternative?

Despite everything I've said here until now I'm not against creators receiving fair recompense for their efforts. What I'm against is the enormous inequity in copyright law which seriously disadvantages consumers. I believe it is not in the best economic or strategic interests of the nation for such inequity to exist—in fact, I reckon it's very damaging.

Solving the copyright problem won't be easy because it has its roots in a much bigger issue—that of social inequity and inequality.


> We could, but is that the best alternative?

Yes, absolutely. Insiting on business models that depend on scarcity when that scarcity doesn't actually exist is absurd and the costs to society are astronomical.

> Despite everything I've said here until now I'm not against creators receiving fair recompense for their efforts.

No copyright doesn't mean no copensation, it just means that compensation cannot be enforced on a per-copy basis. Creative works, including for-profit creations, have existed long before copyright.

But let's also not pretend that creators receive fair compensation today.


Right. Then there's the issue of compiled code which is the elephant in the room, as ultimately AI will be able to decompile code with ease. If it cannot, say through encryption, then AI will be able to emulate it.

If I can think this then I'd reckon I'm not alone, the thought must be high on the agenda for MS and like.

The implications are enormous.


It's time to move from tokenisation to training on full range of byte as input then


>We need to build an alternative access to knowledge that bypasses the copyright/ownership of knowledge paradigm.

That's what shadow libraries are doing, as are many other older & less prominent models of information distribution. These projects should be proliferated & promoted to challenge the dominant propaganda that people can only do things the U.S. government says they can.


> First, the IA should move to a more favorable copyright jurisdiction to preserve the collection.

Which jurisdiction do you have in mind? Russia? China? There are few others that don't have similar copyright laws to the US or won't bend quickly to US demands.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: