alt Hacker NewsThe world has become so strange. In my pirate youth, I would have never imagined the big companies to argue in courts like this, basically pro piracy. And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.
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> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.
The activists are against it because the big guys are exploiting us small guys, again. Nobody would give a shit if Meta was just torrenting Nintendo's IP and OpenAI was torrenting Netflix IP, except the lawyers working for these companies.
I have no issue with anyone pirating. In my country — and soon in Italy as well — all storage media sales include a small levy (Artisjus) intended to compensate copyright holders for losses from piracy. One could argue it's unfair if you're not actually using the media for copying, but having been forced to pay it regardless, I have no moral qualms about pirating content I don't feel like paying for.
By the same token, AI companies are in no position to complain when their models are scraped and distilled.
Big companies are stealing to enrich themselves, while small time pirates were pirating for their own entertainment. Some of the latter went to jail. While the former rake in the dough.
Nothing has changed: the money flows in the same direction as before, that's the constant. The courts are just a diode in a rectifier.
The activists seem to be so blinded by disdain they can't even consider the value of the precedent if it goes theough.
Just need to get around to understand that on many subjects big companies are not uniform block... They all have their own goals and ways of profit. Other than exploiting the consumers and state.
It is not strange. Power serves power. Power lies without consequence. This is consistent.
Back in 2015 Twitter bragged that Periscope had been widely used the night before to pirate a pay-per-view boxing match. I thought that was odd.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/sports/periscope-a-stream...
Billy downloading a copy of Game of Thrones because he's too poor to afford one, is radically different than super billionaires who just don't want to pay for a license.
Meta, Open AI and everyone else playing this game has enough money to pay the best lawyers on earth. They can act with impunity.
I could even imagine them getting a law passed, a license to ignore copywrite law. Of course Billy don't qualify. It'll only be for the billionaires and maybe a handful of millionaires.
It's not like there has been some change in principle and some sort of knife to sharpen. "2005 personal pirate" was about making art accessible. "2025 corpo pirate" is about killing art.
If Meta wins this, does it mean that pirating becomes legal again?
I haven't changed. I was pro 20 years ago and I am pro now.
It's almost like things can be good or bad in different contexts
The problem is that laws don't apply to these big companies but to the small guys. It isn't as if piracy has suddenly become legal for everybody.
Oh no, its just legal for the big companies. The laws are different for everybody and that's what activists are worried about :)
> And the activists are now against it, because the big guys are doing it.
Different activists are different. "Information wants to be free" activists are against different things from "artists trying to make an honest living" activists.
And different big guys are different. A big guy AI company wants different things from a big guy book publisher.