> I only see 2 consistent world views
Allow me to suggest a third: these two options are black and white thinking and there is no objective answer to "intellectual property is real". Property is at best a social construct that is possibly supported by instinctual behavior.
Instead we should try to find the most practical solution that has the most benefit - which will probably be more complex than yes/no.
> Property is at best a social construct that is possibly supported by instinctual behavior.
That very much falls within the "IP is not real" category. Taking a utilitarian approach here is exactly what the sam altman / effective altruist crowd is doing (or claiming, at least).
Believe it or not, but there are different philosophies. The US Constitution, for example, is written under the framework that all rights are innate, and the government merely endorses, not grants, those which are described. This framework creates a moral basis to rights, such that things like property are not merely social constructs but moral goods. To violate them is itself an immoral act.
Your wording is pretty revealing:
> This framework creates a moral basis to rights
The Constitution (and the thinkers that it was based off of) creates a moral basis to rights. At the time the Constitution was written, this was a pretty radical idea. The most prevalent moral framework at the time was the divine right of kings, the idea that the king was ordained by God to rule and anyone who questioned that right was speaking heresy.
My wording was actually wrong, as the constitution recognizes a divine source for the rights, it doesn't create the moral basis. Perhaps 'establishes as the formal basis' would have been more appropriate.
You're right that it was a relatively radical idea at the time, but not without precedent. The Dutch, Venice and Genoa were republics, the Swiss Confederation was a union of cantons and territories, for example, not to mention the influence of the Iroquois Confederacy, John Locke, Montesquieu, and the assorted Greek and early Roman city states.
although the US Constitution does make reference to deities, the copyright section does not. its formalization is entirely pragmatic, utilitarian.
All of the powers granted to the government are through the constitution, and copyright is a form of property right... hence the phrase "intellectual property".
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Funny how, when Aaron Swartz did the exact same thing (in a much narrower and more focused way), he was driven to suicide by the US government, but when Sam and Dario do it, people argue about whether (or not) "IP is real".
Note that society is more about justice than it is about philosophy or logic. Whether you believe that IP makes logical sense or not, is not terribly relevant through the lens of justice. To allow the Altmans and Amodeis of the world to escape the kinds of consequences that Swartz could not (despite having purer intentions than either -- despite being a genuine utilitarian, instead of an aspiring oligarch _pretending_ to be one), would be the height of injustice.
It would be a grotesque and cruel insult to all the people who remember Swartz, and share his values and optimism about the internet and computers.
What happened to Swartz was injustice.
Why would I want it to happen to more people? This is, at least to me, an insane point of view.
"Oh my god, the police just shot a black man for no reason. To make this fair they should also shoot more white people for no reason". Do you see how absolutely unhinged that sounds?
The parent comment highlights the double standards, they are not campaigning for pushing people to suicide. This is a strawman.
Yeah, this double standards thing is profoundly unjust.
I disagree.
>To allow the Altmans and Amodeis of the world to escape the kinds of consequences that Swartz could not ... would be the height of injustice.
Simply put, he's demanding two injustices. Let's break this down with a imaginary law.
"If you do not wear your hat you will be beheaded. This includes the poorest man and the king himself".
In OPs definition, this kind of equality is justice. But I do not consider this justice at all, simply equality.
"If you do not wear your hat you will be fined $1. This includes the poorest man and the king himself".
This is something much more close to justice as the punishment fits the crime.
There are two injustices here. The first injustice is the sheer existence of this notion of intellectual property. The second injustice stems from the selective application of the associated laws.
Intellectual property should not exist, but since it does, one can and should expect it to be applied consistently in all cases. Just look at what they did to Kim Dotcom, he basically got destroyed. SWAT rappelled down helicopters and descended upon this guy for the egregious crime of copying bits. That's exactly what should happen to Anthropic, OpenAI, Google and Meta. Anything less than that is an insult to previous enforcement victims.
Inconsistency robs authorities of all credibility. Selective enforcement exposes them for the arbitrary tyrants they are and delegitimizes their decisions.
"For my friends, everything. For everyone else, the law."
And
"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
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> This is something much more close to justice as the punishment fits the crime.
True, but to put a still finer point on it, still fantastically more harmful to that poorest man than the king.
Again I agree, this is why some countries have scaling fines. If a rich person gets a speeding ticket they still don't execute them.
We're on the same page.
The real injustice is that the poor man does not have a hat. Whereas the king most likely has a whole room dedicated to them.
It sounds unhinged because it's a straw man.
I usually shit post on this website because it’s full of amoral idiots who just want to make a lot of money and don’t care about others, but I want to suggest to you that arguing using extreme analogies is almost never a persuasive rhetorical device. The other person almost always just sees the way it doesn’t accurately apply to the situation.
I didn't want to bring up Aaron Swartz myself first, but now that you did and proved the point I did not want to post first, I nevertheless will:
It's a cruel and sad irony that people invoke Aaron Swartz to argue directly opposite worldviews depending on prevailing fashion, making him into some kind of perpetuum mobile in his grave. Literally the same arguments, using his memory to argue position that's opposite to what was argued two years ago, back before AI fully took off.
I personally doubt Aaron would be against AI companies doing what they did on the grounds of intellectual property. There's plenty of things to hate about how AI is transforming the world, but this is not it.
The funny thing about having a divine source for rights is also recognizing that humans are fallible and thus inevitably going to be unable to live up to that standard. This argument is the basis for people who want government to have limited powers- the less power it has, the less it can abuse it.
There's a flip side to this as well- President Lincoln famously suspended habeus corpus unilaterally in violation of the Constitution, outright ignoring a Supreme Court ruling in the process. It became moot when Congress retroactively approved the suspension and allowed it to continue for the remainder of the civil war. Lincoln remains celebrated, despite what could rightfully be argued as blatantly unconstitutional power grabs.
reality > rights
The use of the term divine at the time was more of an aftereffect of most people having some kind of belief in god and using that as a casus belli to redistribute power. The actual causal reasons seem more technological and more of England spreading themselves too thin. Lincoln went on to further prove there is no divine power enforcing these rights, it's the distribution of power and information that defines the rights you have. The Constitution is simply a piece of paper, not an agent.
We see this happening again in our modern world. Technology has allowed us to concentrate information like never before. If you believe knowledge (hence processing of information) is power then we've created new power structures that must change society.
Now, we can say things like "well, you can't concentrate information" but the other party can simply disagree and say it's my divine right to. You're at an impasse unless you plan on taking up a path to violence (any and every legal action is implied violence).
> Lincoln went on to further prove there is no divine power enforcing these rights,
This is a straw man that nobody is arguing.
> Now, we can say things like "well, you can't concentrate information"
Again, nobody is arguing that "concentrating information" is bad. They're arguing that the expression of ideas in a specific format is a type of property, and that what AI companies are doing is immoral theft. Further, states and the federal government have the means and impetus to prosecute theft according to the powers given them by the Constitution. The only thing that is stopping them from doing so is that the claim that theft has occurred is contested, and the method in question has not been successfully tried in court in the broad.
If people don't want their data stolen, then they should make backups. It's pretty trivial these days to set up.
"A social construct" and "not real" are not the same thing. Money, laws, countries, gender, even civilization itself are all social constructs. More importantly, all forms of ownership are social constructs, and that doesn't provide any information as to whether we should respect them or not.
Perhaps you need to look up what "real" actually means.
Inches aren't real. Laws aren't real. Language isn't even real.
Have you ever tripped over a line of longitude?
People live such abstract lives now that they're losing track of what is concrete.
> Perhaps you need to look up what "real" actually means.
On the contrary; I think. Nearly every definition disagrees with the claims you're making. It's not a mere synonym of "concrete" or antonym of "abstract".
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real
And regardless, the usage here was clearly in the context of GP's (false) dichotomy between "real" or "false concept", so obviously the definition you're trying to prescribe doesn't apply.
You are assuming that social constructs are not real.
Not at all.
Who decides what's a right? By what criteria?
> That very much falls within the "IP is not real" category.
AH. Given that framing, then I suppose anything that varies from "these axioms are perfect there can be no others" must fall into the "not real" category.
But isn't there some debate about the moral axioms themselves? A space that is much more complex than "yes/no"?
EDIT: I always wonder, when I get two downvotes in the same moment, if someone is cheating. It happens so often.
EDIT2: And now! 3 upvotes in the same moment. I daresay someone is confessing.
no, I think people are just annoyed that you're trying to have an irrelevant and kinda cheesy 'is epistemology really real - think about it bro' conversation
I'm also a fan of nuance and non-black&white thinking but that is quite literally not how the rule of law generally works
No - I'm specifically calling out that the total changes abruptly. As if someone were using multiple accounts.
that's cool - I downvoted you because I was annoyed and I am an independent entity. hope that helps :)
Of course! My only suggestion is - if you're using multiple accounts to do it - that would be naughty.
that seems very anti-social and immature, like throwing a tantrum. you get a singular downvote from me for one comment but I do like how reasonable you're being about all of it :)
Social constructs are bought and paid for by the wealthy.
Most people want a clean environment while the current US administration is pulling back environmental regulations to allow for more pollutants. The current US Supreme Court has taken gifts from those that have invested interest in the outcome of their judgements.
Social axioms are mutable while mathematical axioms are immutable.
Human trafficking is bad. How many of the wealthy that partook of Epstein's trafficking have been prosecuted? This shows that human trafficking being bad is mutable based on wealth and power.
> Social constructs are bought and paid for by the wealthy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg
That is a micro level analysis versus macro. By that logic the current wealth gap should not exist between CEO and average worker in the USA.
> Social constructs are bought and paid for by the wealthy.
Well... no. I'd say that most of the social constructs I'm thinking of predate wealth. Most likely shaped by evolutionary pressures.
> mathematical axioms are immutable
I invite you to Google "the axiom of choice" to see a lively debate.
"The Axioms of choice" is talking about a mutable set of sets that contain immutable axioms.
The number 4 in a set is immutable, 4 == 4 under all stances, while it can be taken out or added to the selected set. Objective reasoning.
Example: The OS function that applies IP port assignments. Application may utilize one or more port numbers. When the application is done, they are moved back into the unused set. The port numbers themselves are immutable.
Social axioms are mutable because subjective reasoning is being applied.
Example:
Ask a person if they support domestic abuse. They most likely will so no. Ask them if they ever funded a performer that committed acts of domestic abuse after the facts were revealed. There is a high chance they did and write it off by saying, "don't look at their character, look at how well they perform. That was a good show, movie, book, ..."
Ever hear someone use the phrase, "that is different" when describing two equal scenarios that apply to two different people?
Kanye West still selling out shows highlights that people are willing to reject objective reasoning in a social environment.
Or to rephrase, social axioms are mutable because they can collapse and no longer exist.
My point was - mathematicians still argue about whether the axiom of choice is a good idea or not. They probably always will.
So mathematical axioms are in flux.
Axioms are not in flux, set of axioms are in flux. Axioms are fixed and finite. This is how software works.
Gödel's incompleteness theorems is built around this. By saying axioms change then one could create an universal math theorem. Since axioms are finite in definition and applied in a finite space, functions, there cannot be an universal math.
Example: Fibonacci sequence only works with positive integers and zero. It will work with negative integers wrapped in absolute value. The axioms of Fibonacci did not change while wrapped in absolute value. Rational and irrational numbers can work with Fibonacci too by applying another function bound to absolute value.
> The axioms of Fibonacci...
Hmmm. I'm afraid we're just going to have to agree to disagree.
You have a nice day.
So long as there have been people, there have been those who had more than others, be it material goods or power, which gains more material goods, which begets power. I'm not really sure there it's true that any society predates wealth, ergo no social construct predates wealth.
Right. I'm thinking of social behaviors that predate humans.
Territory and hunting grounds are a form of wealth, in that it is a form of control over shelter and natural resources like food and water.
Money is a social construct for trading value, but is not itself a prerequisite for the accumulation of value (wealth).
I think you missed my point. Let me try again:
> ergo no social construct predates wealth.
What about the social construct of parenting?
Easily argued to be a natural, biological instinct, and not a social construct.
Yes, most social contracts do stem from evolved strategies. That was my original point.
But parenting in humans varies from culture to culture. That's what makes it a social construct.
>ergo no social construct predates wealth.
How wealthy is your dog?
Compared to feral dogs, quite wealthy indeed. They've claimed sleeping and feeding spots that are very valuable for being both safe and climate controlled, and have a number of chew bones and toys that are free of dangerous splintering wood, animal bone, parasites and fleas. These are things that are valuable enough to fight over and will contribute greatly to their lifespan.
If you think the only measure of wealth is money, you have it backwards- money is a polite fiction representing an abstraction of value, and is only good for use as an exchange into another more concrete form of value.
I think you missed his point - that social behaviors exist outside and before human societies.
You've missed the point of my response- wealth, as in the accumulation of value- is not uniquely human. It is born out of the inability to see into the future, gathering resources to survive times of hardship. It is securing the most desirable mates, controlling territory, being the first to get the choicest fruits or bites of prey.
It is this biological imperative that pushes humans to desire ever more, and only higher order thinking- social behavior, religious discipline, whatever floats your boat- that suppresses those instincts into virtue, altruism or civility.
So, when I replied to the following:
> Well... no. I'd say that most of the social constructs I'm thinking of predate wealth. Most likely shaped by evolutionary pressures.
I'm pointing out that the social constructs were shaped as a reaction to our nature, which includes a intrinsic, if subconscious, understanding of the concept of value and wealth.
It sounds like you're redefining wealth as evolutionary advantage. That's fine - but it's not what most people mean by the word.
I defined it in the first sentence of the comment you replied to.
Yes, I know. But you're using it as I described.
> Allow me to suggest a third: these two options are black and white thinking and there is no objective answer to "intellectual property is real". Property is at best a social construct that is possibly supported by instinctual behavior.
Intellectual property is as real as private property (which is a lot more elaborate and weird than possession and territoriality, which is the most that has any natural basis). It's really foolish to claim one doesn't exist and should be abolished and the other this fundamental sacred thing that should be respected absolutely (as many do).
We made it up. We made all this up. We do it for an outcome.
Intellectual property exists as a concept to foster the creation of more intellectual property. That is not the case for all private property, because I cannot copy your land or your car infinitely. That’s why IP rights expire at some point, or have fair use that doesn’t harm the IP rights holder, something other forms of property don’t have. Saying that they are equivalent is not foolish—I think that’s a bit extreme—but it doesn’t recognize that they have fundamental differences, and the laws around them have different intended outcomes.
I think AI training falls most likely in the fair use category of intellectual property: there is some societal benefit* that requires no actual harm** to the IP holder, therefore it’s a good trade-off for society if we poke a hole in the social construct of property to get that benefit.
*Let’s put aside the question of whether AI is good for society or private ownership of AI models is good for society. Important questions but separate from the theory. IF IT IS GOOD, it follows the above. If it is not good, then of course it does not.
**Also not a fully settled question. Again, an important debate to have and the tradeoffs here matter. If the harms are small enough, the societal benefit could be worth it. Both notes have to be true for this to be worthy of “fair use”.
> Intellectual property exists as a concept to foster the creation of more intellectual property.
The idea of IP as an economic tool to foster creation comes out of the UK and subsequently the US. In mainland Europe, IP comes out of the French Revolution and the idea that copyright is like a "moral right" that you intrinsically deserve for putting in the effort to create something. This viewpoint has de facto won out because as global commerce and global culture has become more and more widespread, everybody has standardized on the longest durations (the standard has long been "life + 50 years" in Europe) so one country doesn't have to worry about freeing up its works for "exploitation" by another country.
> the idea that copyright is like a "moral right" that you intrinsically deserve for putting in the effort to create something
Nope. "[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
The ends is promoting progress. The means for that is prescribed by a limited monopoly as an incentive to those ends.
At least in the US.
Please read the entire sentence you're quoting, then ask yourself whether that sentence is referring to the US, or to somewhere else.
This is going to blow your mind, but people created music, literature, art long before intellectual property laws existed. IP laws are nothing but rent seeking.
Yes, and we lived in a world of guilds, Orders and secrets which kept their knowledge tightly within themselves.
Music and art was created by patronage. Entire periods o where the art that mattered was made by the powers that moved the world.
For my whole life the goal was to move away from that era, not to see it recreated.
Also, this is a debate that English speakers can enjoy on a website for an US based accelerator. Most of humanity doesn’t even have the standing to be heard in this conversation.
> This is going to blow your mind
No. it won't blow anyone's mind. Not a single person.
> but people created music, literature, art long before intellectual property laws existed.
^^^ cherry-picked, incomplete reading of history.
^^^ unsubstantiated claim.
> That is not the case for all private property, because I cannot copy your land or your car infinitely.
All property is fundamentally about exclusion and control to allow for private exploitation. That common bit of rhetoric about copying misses that point. The reason private property exists is not because land (for instance) can't be copied.
> Saying that they are equivalent is not foolish—I think that’s a bit extreme—but it doesn’t recognize that they have fundamental differences, and the laws around them have different intended outcomes.
You should note that you misread me: I didn't say they were identical in every respect, I said their "reality" is the same. They're both made up social constructs. One isn't more fundamental than the other.
> It's really foolish to claim one doesn't exist and should be abolished
Hear me out. Property rights exist to assign stewardship and use rights over rivalrous goods. goods where the use of the good precludes the use of that good for its purpose by another party. If you take my bike, I cannot ride it to work. This concept exists to prevent violent conflict over non-shareables and to prevent the tragedy of the commons (see the highly successful fisheries rights, NOx and SOx emissions markets as propertization schemes)
"Intellectual property" (except for trademark if you want to get pedantic), is not rivalrous, and its primary purpose is to be shared, not hoarded. Therefore intellectual property isn't a thing, creating it as a legal construct was a mistake that has hamstrung society for a long time.
Copies are not rivalrous, but the underlying creativity absolutely is. If I pay someone to draw a picture, that's labor, and they've got a finite number of hours to sell. Except it's also very inconvenient to pay for creative works this way: drawings and artists are not fungible with one another. More importantly, quality and desirability of the work is incredibly variable. The buyer of the art is bearing the risk of the art being bad.
What copyright lets you do[1] is offload that risk onto a publisher[0]. Instead of having to pay to commission every piece of art, a publisher can do that, and then sell the now-monopolized copies of whatever art turns out to actually be valuable.
A lot of hay was made during the Piracy Wars over filesharing tools breaking this bargain. A bunch of data hoarders with an interest in sharing media made it possible to just get the shit for free. This created a social dynamic where artists were annoyed about it, but publishers were Fucking Pissed. You could even measure how publisher-brained an artist got by how angry they were over Napster[2].
AI generated art also breaks this bargain, by making creative labor nearly non-rivalrous. The only cost is electricity and GPUs. This has created nearly the opposite reaction: artists are pissed while publishers don't care, because AI is to publishers like tort reform is to insurance companies. A publisher that gets art for free doesn't care if everyone else has it, because they have the payola dividend: they can push whatever slop they want onto the market and the market will eat it because they're big and powerful.
> This concept exists to prevent violent conflict over non-shareables and to prevent the tragedy of the commons
The copyright maximalists would argue that free reuse of creative works is a tragedy of the commons. I certainly remember hearing that phrase bandied about a lot during the Piracy Wars.
It's also important to note that "tragedy of the commons" is not a natural law, but a specific framing that is used to justify antisocial ends. The communal ownership so decried worked perfectly well in England for hundreds of years until the ruling classes found it inconvenient and abolished it. The kind of ecological collapse the tragedy attempts to invoke did not happen because there were already communal means of preventing overuse of the land. In fact, an emissions market is probably closer to communal management than enclosure.
Also none of this changes the underlying logic that AI companies are trying to enclose the intellectual commons, and that their business model relies on being able to replace human brains with machine intelligence they can rent out by the megatoken.
[0] Individuals who self-publish included.
[1] To be clear, copyright was created as a censorship regime, it just happens to be useful for other things.
[2] In Lars Ulrich's defense, they weren't just angry that Metallica songs were on Napster, they were specifically angry that Napster had their latest album before it was in stores.
You're confusing a primary use from a secondary (the right to make money/exchange for labor). In the case of "drawing a picture", being able to "make money from a picture" is not primary
Yes, that's why I said property (not just IP) is a social construct.
Yes, I'm agreeing with you.
OH. Cool.
Property is a social construct in the sense that anything is a social construct. Like, sure, the fact that I "own" this spoon is societally constructed, but it's so foundational that almost every other aspect of human society is more abstract. Even animals have some sense of "property" - whether that's territory they defend or their stash of food. The social construct part is that we respect each other's property rights (mostly) without resorting violence, where animals resort to individual violence or threat displays.
> anything is a social construct
Well, no, the physical laws aren't social. An apple falls whether there is a social group to see it or not.
And yes! Animals are a perfect example. Mother Nature came up with a nice strategy for maximal benefit in a social group, and she encoded it in our instincts and intuitions.
But that doesn't mean it's perfect. I have an instinctual fear of fire - but it's still better to cook my own food.
Sovereignty is the ultimate form of property ownership in a funny way.
while you mentioned how tribal property management looks like in some places (that things are dynamically moving between who needs them at the time), it does not help to solve issue at hand, that is how to call what ai companies did:
- amassed then destroyed/denied largest knowledge corpora seen so far
- poisoned knowledge for decades to come, deliberately or not, which would stop new developments by independent teams
- now they are crying that they are being robbed of their precious models, which - at this point in time - are neither truly good not economical
(not to mention actual environmental and social harm they cause)
this is truly first of a kind situation, that was never seen nor heard before