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US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

(www.theregister.com)
451 points croes | 2 comments | 12 May 25 09:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.417s | source
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brador ◴[12 May 25 13:02 UTC] No.43962450[source]▶
Lifetime for human copyright, 20 years for corporate copyright. That’s the golden zone.
replies(2): >>43962626 #>>43962923 #
Zambyte ◴[12 May 25 13:23 UTC] No.43962626[source]▶
Zero (0) years for corporate copyright, zero (0) years for human copyright is the golden zone in my book.
replies(2): >>43962681 #>>43963025 #
umanwizard ◴[12 May 25 13:31 UTC] No.43962681[source]▶
Why?
replies(2): >>43962773 #>>43962937 #
Zambyte ◴[12 May 25 13:39 UTC] No.43962773[source]▶
It took me a while to be convinced that copyright is strictly a bad idea, but these two articles were very convincing to me.

https://drewdevault.com/2020/08/24/Alice-in-Wonderland.html

https://drewdevault.com/2021/12/23/Sustainable-creativity-po...

replies(2): >>43962953 #>>43963511 #
dmonitor ◴[12 May 25 14:38 UTC] No.43963511[source]▶
You need some mechanism in place to prevent any joe schmoe from spinning up FreeSteam and rehosting the whole thing.
replies(3): >>43964024 #>>43964746 #>>43965314 #
zelphirkalt ◴[12 May 25 17:14 UTC] No.43965314[source]▶
Just to challenge that idea: Why?
replies(1): >>43965700 #
dmonitor ◴[12 May 25 17:48 UTC] No.43965700[source]▶
People would use that service instead of Steam, publishers would add annoying DRM to mitigate lost sales, etc etc.

The current illegality of the piracy website prevents them from offering a service as nice as Steam. It has to be a sketchy torrent hub that changes URLs every few months. If it was as easy as changing the url to freesteampowered.com or installing an extension inside the steam launcher, the whole "piracy is a service issue" argument loses all relevance. The industry would become unsustainable without DRM (which would be technically legal to crack, but also more incentivized to make harder to crack).

replies(1): >>43965946 #
1. Zambyte ◴[12 May 25 18:12 UTC] No.43965946[source]▶
> publishers would add annoying DRM to mitigate lost sales, etc etc.

People would just delete the malware (DRM) out of the source code that is no longer restricted by copyright.

If your argument is that copyright is good because it discourages DRM, I think you have a very evidently weak argument.

replies(1): >>43975280 #
2. dmonitor ◴[13 May 25 17:14 UTC] No.43975280[source]▶
Copyright does discourage DRM. Even the most egregious DRM these days can be bypassed with minimal effort and is mostly just a nuisance. Take away government enforcement of copyright and how profitable your digital product is will be directly tied to how advanced you are in the DRM arms race.

Steam is the classic example of how this is effective. You compete with pirates by offering what they can't: a reliable, convenient service. DRM becomes more of a hindrance than a benefit in this situation.

Allowing pirates to offer reliable convenient pirate websites that are "so easy a normie can do it" would be a disaster for all the creative industries. You would need to radically change the rest of society to prevent a total collapse of people making money off art.