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Legit businesses hate this one trick…

Graphic of a thief clothed in black with a large knapsack slung over their shoulder, sneaking away from a large rectangle with a copyright symbol in the middle of it and the word “copyright” above the symbol, against a teal background
Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

This article from The Verge talks about how disastrous it would be if developers are forced to ask content creators’ permission to use their Intellectual Property – eg. their WORK – to train generative algorithms. https://www.theverge.com/news/674366/nick-clegg-uk-ai-artists-policy-letter

If paying for the right to use legally protected content is a step too far, then surely to goodness simply *asking to use it, in perpetuity, with no recompense, and likely with no attribution*, is a reasonable compromise.

“How would you even do that”, Clegg asks. How indeed, Mr. Clegg. I’d start with, you know, tracking down all the people whose content you have stolen, which is primarily dead white dudes but also some living white dudes. And some white ladies. And a smattering of people of colour. (Insert rant about inherent bias in all Large Language and Large Data Models (LLMs and LDMs) here). Tracking down all of these people shouldn’t be that difficult for the tech industry who mysteriously knows how to send you targeted advertisements based solely on which aisle you were standing in when your phone pinged a tower somewhere. Or who designed a fridge which knows whether or not you need more apples. Or who designed doorbell cameras that can capture the unique structure of human faces from 8m away, then send that data *somewhere* where it’s archived and incorporated into an algorithm which can be used to identify individual sperm in someone riding the subway in Turkmenistan.

Also, it’s your *job* to figure it the fuck out, bud.

Techbros whingeing about how EXPENSIVE it would be and how DIFFICULT it would be to NOT BREAK THE LAW exemplify everything that sucks about techbros. These fuckwads are the dingleberries on the festering anus of capitalism. If legally sourcing privately owned property will decimate your business, or worse, your entire INDUSTRY, that’s called a cartel. You might not think it’s a big deal to use copyright-protected material to train large data, but let me tell you why it is a big deal.

First, the stuff you might not care about:

The ability of content creators to be able to live – you might not care about this because you’ve been trained, very very well, to take everything content creators do for granted. You wake up in the morning, in sheets that are likely soft and pliable and not animal skins or felted wool because someone somewhere learned how to make a loom and weave, and that artist passed on their skills and knowledge to acolytes who then improved on the design, experimented with different textiles and different dyes, who then passed that knowledge and skills on, and so on down the line for tens of thousands of years. You probably showered, using water distributed from some central pump house through pipes which aren’t that much different from those designed by content creators in ancient Rome, thousands of years ago. Whose designs were studied, improved upon, and eventually became part of a whole new industry.

Maybe you had breakfast that included leavened baked products – someone tens of thousands of years ago learned about sprouted grains and taught their students how to do it, and now we have an entire patisserie industry, based on knowledge and skill that came from artisans who had ideas about things. Artists and inventors. Content creators.

You probably got dressed without thinking of the generations of designers and sewists whose art made what you wear. Who were able to make a living and ensure their art would not be lost when they were. Maybe you drove to work, or took public transit, in vehicles which were designed – you guessed it – by inventors and artists. Did you spend your morning in silence or did you listen to music? Are there colours and designs that go above plain form and function in your home, your clothing, your dishes, your vehicle? Chances are good the stuff you do to ‘unwind’ or the stuff you work to get to when you’re done work for the day/weekend all come from content creators who make their living in the arts, culture, and creative industry sectors. We are trained not to think about any of this.

We’re taught that art is something not to be understood, something famous people do. Arts education is not only undervalued, it’s considered ‘fluffy’, when in fact, all of the ‘hard sciences’ we now depend on for R&D, technology, all of that, came from the arts. They all came from ideas. Ideas are free, and must be free, but the expressions of those ideas are products of labour. Art isn’t something you hang on your wall or go to a gallery or museum to not understand. Culture isn’t something you think about once a year when the big international food and dance festival comes to your city. If you participate in any sport, any leisure activity, that’s culture. If you consume any media whatsoever, that’s art. But enough about valuing everything that makes everything worth anything. Let’s talk solely about business.

If the inputs your business requires in order to *survive* (never mind thrive) do not belong to you – in other words, if the inputs your business needs to survive are stolen – your business is not legitimate.

IDEAS are free. The expressions of those ideas, Percy Schmeiser, are not. And they are not free for a reason.

Intellectual Property laws like Copyright do not exist to prevent ideas from spreading – quite the opposite – they exist to ensure ideas will keep spreading. How? By ensuring the people who have expressed those ideas have the ability to make a living through the expression of their ideas. Not for HAVING ideas (don’t let the tech industry spit out their silly rhetoric that copyright laws hinder progress), but for the ways in which those ideas are expressed and applied. After all, nobody will ever use the hover pants you don’t make.

So here we have an entire industry based entirely on, essentially, colonialist capitalism. If you cannot make a profit without exploiting the people least able to defend themselves against your theft of their livelihood, it’s not just unethical, it’s unsustainable. Eventually you’ll run out of people and you’ll have to start paying your friends to have ideas, and then they’ll get pissed off when you don’t pay them either, and then everything’s in the shitter.

So, Mr. Clegg, if the “AI industry” (again, not actual intelligence, just algorithms) cannot survive without using stolen inputs, GOOD. It’s not supposed to. It’s actually your fucking job to figure out how to acquire proper permissions to use someone else’s property. It’s not our job to figure out how to help you steal from us, you knob.

This doesn’t just affect writers. Here’s a brief, and non-exhaustive list of the kinds of content creators Mr. Nick Clegg would like to see impoverished and unable to continue to work:

writers, editors, coders, scientists, musicians, designers, architects, filmmakers, actors, compositors, animators, game designers, clothing manufacturers, sculptors, doctors, inventors, lawyers, dancers, illustrators, photographers, drafters, builders, literally everybody working in R&D, policy analysts & makers, insurance underwriters, PR firms, advertisers, advertising agencies, news franchises, media franchises, television, radio, politicians, teachers, nurses…like…it’s just fucking everything. I have NEVER understood folks from the arts sector who get super excited about the idea that a computer algorithm can very easily make them obsolete.

What Mr. Clegg doesn’t seem to understand is that there are many, many, ma-hany ways for the “AI and creative sectors” to prosper. MANY. And they’re all predicated on things like respecting and following the law, and working out mutually beneficial agreements which ensure the sustainability of these industries. Telling the people who literally make the stuff that makes the stuff you do even possible that they don’t matter and should stop bitching about having their income stolen is not the way.

If asking permission to use private property will destroy your industry, your industry is a cartel.

 

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Comments

6 responses to “Legit businesses hate this one trick…”

  1. annabeltownsend Avatar
    annabeltownsend

    Hi Jill,
    This is a brilliant post, completely agree. Also made worse somehow because Nick Clegg was my local MP when I was at uni, we all had such high hopes for him back in…2009ish.

    At Pete’s Press, we’re putting together an essay collection about AI, titled Slop. Would you be interested in publishing this with us?!

    Reply
    1. cenobyte Avatar
      cenobyte

      Sure!
      I mean. I can rant a LOT about “AI” (not intelligence) and the reasons it’s not only unethical but also just shitty.

      Reply
      1. annabeltownsend Avatar
        annabeltownsend

        Woohoo! I’d be interested in a rant on how it affects real creatives. I was trying to write that myself but my piece turned more into an introduction than a full essay. I also have one about the concept of art in general and why AI is not it, one on fascism, one in AI use in schools and universities and I’m hoping for one on the environmental costs. But talking about it from the point of view of writing and publishing specifically would be great!

        Reply
    2. cenobyte Avatar
      cenobyte

      Also, I’m now sitting here thinking “There goes Member of Parliament Nicholas Clegg, with a leg for an arm, and an arm for a leg!”

      Thanks, The Simpsons.

      Reply
      1. annabeltownsend Avatar
        annabeltownsend

        Naturally…

        Reply
  2. DerKaptin Avatar
    DerKaptin

    Rave on, Joan Dunn, Rave on, Rave on.
    You are, perhaps, familiar with the term “pissing into the wind”?

    Reply

i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.

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