License Laundering Machine, or, llm

if everything that happened with genai doesn’t already show it, copyright is not here to protect the working class, it’s only here to protect corporations

we definitely should abolish copyright, but also ban these regurgitation machines. and of course put software freedom into law

@lumi I’m not sure about abolishing copyright entirely. At least as long as the economic system is similar to the current one, I think a good approach would be to restrict it firmly to commercial activity (so e.g. torrent seeding or running a tracker would be legal as long as you’re not paid for it, but selling bootleg DVDs would not). That way copyleft licenses and similar can still be enforced against companies, artists can go after LLM companies, but companies couldn’t bother private individuals. (And of course companies could sue each other. Let them. )

And also restrict copyright terms to a reasonable time. “70 years past death” is clearly not about rewarding & encouraging artists. 15-20 years would still be plenty to allow a publisher to recoup their investment, if they didn’t expect to make the money back in that time they wouldn’t spend it.

@airtower yeah, actual praxis here can vary a lot. just need to keep in mind that the law will always be unequally enforced

@airtower @lumi Yes please. Copyright reform has been needed for long, long time. Unfortunately AFAICT international agreements make it hard :-(. What was original US copyright, 14+14 years? Something like that would be way better than current situation.

@lumi Certainly. Though the restriction to commercial activity would remove the worst inequality from the table (big company going after private individual) while keeping companies from copying what others made/published without compensation (or at least allowing the victim to sue if it happens). Imagine a small studio making a movie or game, and big stores/streaming services/app stores/… can sell it without paying the studio. That would not improve things.

In a world where people could make art or software without worrying how to cover expenses for it and pay their bills in the meantime the balance might be different.

@airtower