No they haven’t. Copyright protected you against your work being used in ways you did not agree to.

Enforcement is another things but photographers and artists have had ways to push back against illicit use of their work, notably by larger corporations. Licensing is an industry based on this protection alone.

The difference is that now, large corporations with plenty of money are able to just swallow other people’s work and pretend it’s “fair use” and derivative enough that they wash their hand of the fact that their models, that they charge lots of money for, would not be able to output anything they were not trained on. At least you could argue that a large image model would have a hard time creating a picture of a cat if it hadn’t been fed pictures of cats that belonged to other people than the company producing the model.

I don’t know if training on the world’s data without compensation is fair or not. There are valid arguments both ways, but as an individual, it should still be your choice whether you want to allow your work to be used in ways you do not agree with.

I think people at large expect at least recognition, and if possible, compensation, for their creations.

When a consumption system is built around providing neither, I don’t think we should be surprised that people feel slighted.

> People have been able to do anything they want to copies of things uploaded to the internet for ages.

People, yes. The possibility of one person using a copyrighted work that I uploaded to the internet is very different in scope to that of a corporation with billions of dollars in funding using the same work to generate a product that automates the creation of similar such works.

I agree. Back in the day hackers were for the free enablement and usage of all data, code and media included. Now it seems everyone has turned into copyright hawks which ironically only entrench big players via regulatory capture so say goodbye to actual open source AI models, they're too poor to license content while big tech companies can.

How hard is it to understand "I want to share what Ive done, but I dont want predatory companies taking my work, profiting on it, and offering absolutely nothing in return."

For some, feeding the beast is unpleasant

> I cannot understand this mindset. People have been able to do anything they want to copies of things uploaded to the internet for ages.

Right? On the one hand there was the mystery of what might happen with your photos and on the other there is the plain, inescapable knowledge that they will be donated to like four dude’s tech companies to make money off of without acknowledgement or compensation. That’s basically the same thing

You cannot understand the fact that people don’t work their work stolen by corporations to train their very-much-for-profit bullshit generators… I mean, AI models?

Please.