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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 16th, 2023

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  • I think the main difference between derivative/inspired works created by humans and those created by AI is the presence of “creative effort.” This is something that humans can do, but narrow AI cannot.

    Even bland statements humans make about nonfiction facts have some creativity in them, even if the ideas are non-copyrightable (e.g., I cannot copyright the fact that the declaration of independence was signed in 1776. However, the exact way I present this fact can be copyrightable- a timeline, chart, table, passage of text, etc. could all be copyrightable).

    “Creative effort” is a hard thing to pin down, since “effort” alone does not qualify (e.g., I can’t copyright a phone directory even if I spent a lot of effort collecting names/numbers, since simply putting names and numbers alongside each other in alphabetical isn’t particularly creative or original). I don’t think there’s really a bright line test for what constitutes as “creative,” but it doesn’t take a lot. Randomness doesn’t qualify either (e.g., I can’t just pick a random stone out of a stream and declare copyright on it, even if it’s a very unique-looking rock).

    Narrow AI is ultimately just a very complex algorithm created based on training data. This is oversimplifying a lot of steps involved, but there isn’t anything “creative” or “subjective” involved in how an LLM creates passages of text. At most, I think you could say that the developers of the AI have copyright over the initial code used to make that AI. I think that the outputs of some functional AI could be copyrightable by its developers, but I don’t think any machine-learning AI would really qualify if it’s the sole source of the work.

    Personally, I think that the results of what an AI like Midjourney or ChatGPT creates would fall under public domain. Most of the time, it’s removed enough from the source material that it’s not really derivative anymore. However, I think if someone were to prompt one of these AI to create a work that explicitly mimics that of an author or artist, that could be infringement.

    IANAL, this is just one random internet user’s opinion.





  • This is cutting off your nose to spite your face.

    Most of the activity on any given instance or community comes from outside of the instance. If you start cutting off instances because they are sharing their own stuff with Meta, then you will also be negatively impacting your own communities since the amount of active users will go down.

    Most users won’t react to something like this by joining your instance or an instance that you approve of (or, at least, currently approve of). They’ll either find another community on an instance they’re federated with or they’ll switch to another social media platform. The latter becomes more likely depending on how many instances end up on either “side” of the issue. Although most user accounts are relatively new, it’s still a pain to switch over to something else once you’ve gotten used to something.

    The scale of defederation you propose, especially this early in the fediverse, would be enough to turn off a lot of folks from federation. If admins are just going to defederate from each other at the first sign of disagreement, that weakens my faith in the fediverse.

    I absolutely believe that instances should not federate with meta’s stuff. The largest servers had enough issues when we were getting new users in the thousands. Meta will likely bring in users in the millions. However, it makes no difference to me if another instance federates with Meta.




  • I imagine a lot of that is due to issues with liability. If a journalist says “X did Y”, that opens them up to lawsuits. If they say “A alleges that X did Y”, then that allows them to report without fear of a lawsuit.

    The end of the article did talk about who may have sent them out there.

    Two of the survivors said Greek authorities had asked them, through interpreters and lawyers, to give evidence against the nine Egyptians who have been accused of people trafficking.

    But all four survivors said the nine Egyptians were passengers, seated among them on the journey. They say the ship’s crew were masked and spent most of their time in the cabin.

    “The crew jumped in the water when the coastguard approached and some of these nine Egyptians tried to sail the boat,” one of them told us. “It seems to me they are not the ones involved in people smuggling,” he added.

    Relatives of Egyptians who fear their loved ones were on board have told the BBC that they paid $4,500 (£3,500) each for the journey.