I find it interesting that many artists seem to think their creativity was formed in a vacuum, as if the overwhelming mass of any human's output isn't based off of earlier input. The thing we're actually rebelling against here is a perception of outperformance, and maybe to some degree obsolescence, of certain skills. This always happens when there is a quantum leap in the development of tools.<p>Somehow we have this notion that we can put an idea (a song, a painting, a text, a meme, you name it) out there and by virtue of copyright people will be obliged to pay for it but will not be able to use it in any way. This is not possible, and advancements in tools such as computers and AI generators make this very obvious. You will NEVER be able to prevent people from mimicking your style, your choices, even your content - you can only prevent them from publishing identical copies and claiming them as their own for a while. I think that's all perfectly fine.<p>If you don't want your idea to become part of the mountain of content that our civilization is built on: don't publish it. Write it down, store it in your cellar, and have your heirs burn it after you die.
It looks like to me that many companies want to use the new generative tools, and many others want it not to impact their stake in the copyright system. I’m pretty sure they will both come to a compromise which will leave most users without any benefits, either from reduced copyrights or from availability of generative tools. It’s what would make both powerful parties satisfied (if not happy), and will impact the status quo the least.<p>Say, for instance, that they instituted a mostly mandatory licensing scheme, so that an individual artist had no choice but to allow use of their art as input when creating generative tools. People using art in this way have to pay a rather high licensing fee, but it is not paid to the artist, but to some sort of central copyright office. Huge copyright holders can also pay an exorbitantly high fee (to the same recipient) to opt out of licensing. Win-win-win; Existing copyright holders keep their existing copyrights, only large-ish actors can create new generative tools, new political positions and institutions are created with lots of money flowing in. Of course, artists then get screwed by being co-opted by generative tools which they can never afford to create themselves, and the general public get robbed both of the opportunity of using and creating new generative tools, and of any less restrictive copyright law.
" Napster was ultimately brought down by copyright law. For aggressive bot providers accused of riding roughshod over intellectual property (ip), Mr Nash has a simple message that sounds, from a music-industry veteran of the Napster era, like a threat. “Don’t deploy in the market and beg for forgiveness."<p>I don't think that is how it went. Napster was brought down by streaming services.<p>Just like computer game piracy was ultimate brought down by Steam.<p>And pirating TV shows and movies was -for a while- stopped by netflix.
Yeah, looks like the copyright industry is going to try and destroy <i>yet another</i> perfectly good technology. My only hope is someone leaks all these models so that we can all run them locally. That way there's nothing they can do about it.