An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip

I just think it’s stealing, and honestly not that cool once you’ve seen it once or twice, and given the ramifications for humanity.

I know of no other type of theft that results in more of something existing in the world. Stealing deprives someone of something; copying data (from training an AI all the way to pedestrian "YoU wOuLdN'T DoWnLoAd a cAr" early-aughts file-sharing) decreases scarcity, it doesn't increase it.

The majority of human creation is like this. All language. Process. Even the US anthem was “stolen”

Identity theft...more of you exist!

Identity theft is the greatest con merchants ever pulled on the public. Turning the responsibility around from "A merchant got scammed because their KYC policy was too thin, because they make more money if they do more business with fewer verifications (until someone comes along and cheats them)" to "when they do get scammed, maybe it can be the fault of the person who was impersonated instead of the scammer" was some brilliant sleight-of-hand.

It isn't your responsibility if a bank you've never set foot in gave a bunch of money to someone who isn't you and said they were you... And it never should have been. The moment companies started trying to put that into credit ratings, they should have been barred for discriminatory practices against the unlucky.

Huge difference is you cannot scale a single human a billion times to industrialize his knowledge.

>> Stealing deprives someone of something

Yes. In this case, it is the artist's sole right to reproduce said images, based on their creative output.

>> decreases scarcity, it doesn't increase it

What does scarcity have to do with stealing? You can steal bread and reduce food scarcity, but that is still theft.

Since you make no argument to justify your unfounded claim, I’ll simply respond by informing you that these (obviously) are not remotely similar. To claim they are indicates some kind of deep disrespect for your fellow human beings. You could not tell the difference between taking a screen shot of the Mona Lisa and spending a lifetime to perfect the art of painting and then putting years of effort into painting it.

Your analogy between copyright infringement and bread theft is interesting, given how "stealing bread" has traditionally been used as a shorthand for systemic inequality.

Copyright is why Disney can ruin someone for doing something with Goofy they don't like. Yes, it protects smaller, less profitable artists too, but make no mistake: it's a tool of mass control and cultural capture.

Perhaps it's time to seriously ask whether copyright is actually doing its job of "promot[ing] the Progress of Science and useful Arts." "...but generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrasment than advantage to society" [Jefferson].

People have also spent lifetimes perfecting the art of painting, putting years of effort in, and then used those talents to... Make sellable copies of the Mona Lisa. Ironically, since copyright has a time limit, that's not even illegal (so long as they do not claim they're original works of da Vinci). Nor is photographing it and selling the photograph. I'm not sure what argument you're making given the observations you've made (other than, perhaps, "There is a big gap between the mechanics of copyright and what it's supposed to accomplish," which I'd agree with).

> then putting years of effort into painting it.

Which efforts do we decide deserve compensation? We collectively create so many useful things. People come up with new words to describe a concept and when it's apt, it's widely adopted. That brilliant idea is the culmination of all the other work they've been putting in. But others get to use the word and benefit from it. Indigenous farmers put hundreds of years of effort into domesticating crops like tomatoes and corn and peppers. But those are just taken and spread. We have millions of teachers going above and beyond expectations. We have mothers and caregivers. We have comedians crafting jokes for comedy and they have no ability to protect those jokes. We have brilliant chefs creating recipes after years of work, experience, and effort and they too don't have protections.

> To claim they are indicates some kind of deep disrespect for your fellow human beings.

Nah. My comment comes from a deep respect for fellow humans. And a respect for all the efforts collectively made by a society for its common good.

> We have millions of teachers going above and beyond expectations. We have mothers and caregivers. We have comedians crafting jokes for comedy and they have no ability to protect those jokes. We have brilliant chefs creating recipes after years of work, experience, and effort and they too don't have protections.

I agree with this, but why is your proposed solution to remove protections from everyone instead of giving everyone else protections? People who put in work should be rewarded.

I’m not talking about compensation. I’m talking about a reason to live at all.

I respect those people quite a lot. A lot more than I respect the parasites and frauds filling out the machine learning department.