Hayao Miyasaki is the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, a Japanese animation studio known worldwide for their stunning, emotional, beautiful stories and movies. At the core of Studio Ghibli’s work is a deep engagement with questions of humanity. About what it means to be a human, about how to care for one another and the world […]
So glad people finally waking up to these things being power plays.
Republicans, Evangelical Christians, and now Techbros are all running on the same script which boils down to “rules for thee, not for me.”
Being a hypocrite is simply showing others you have the power to be a hypocrite and all they can do is get mad and stomp their feet. It’s why the right wing loves to “trigger liberals.” It’s not even about actual politics or religion anymore, it’s just simply “might makes right.”
These are expressions of power, plain and simple. They should always be viewed as such.
I mean, so many companies pirated tons of materials to train their LLMs and they are making way more money than the guys at the Pirate Bay ever did. It’s almost like because the guys at the Pirate Bay were making small potatoes money that they were worth going after. It’s almost like if you crime big enough, the world will just pat you on the back and say “good job” instead.
Meta was literally caught downloading Anna’s Archive and the widely used by nearly every AI company books3 corpus was everything from private torrent tracker Bibliotik. Why do they get different treatment? They are leveraging the same pirated works to make money, which was the whole argument for throwing the Pirate Bay admins behind bars for laws that didn’t actually exist in their home country, that they were profiting from piracy. The LLM companies just are making way more money so it’s let go for some reason.
It’s a power play, to show little people can’t get away with it, but if you’ve got millions in venture capital at your back, you can do whatever the fuck you want and people will praise you for it.
We’re living through the return of the robber barons. This time, however, they can implant their thoughts directly into every single person’s hands at any instant. That’s why your point is the most salient, most important, and most downplayed
But they don’t have to rely on personal connections to rig the price of potatoes: they do it through a third-party data-broker called Potatotrac. Each cartel member sends all their commercially sensitive data – supply costs, pricing, sales figures – to Potatotrac, and then Potatotrac uses that data to give “advice” to the cartel members about “optimal pricing.”
This is the real sick stuff, same with RealPage. They’re just offering a service that could allow the businesses they serve to collude, but because they’re just doing it through a third party service it’s suddenly not collusion.
Doctorow pretty spot on as usual. I’m glad he’s come a long way, because I actually kind of disliked his writing on Boing Boing in the early 2000’s because he often got some simple facts wrong. He’s much more thorough and rigorous now.
This kind of price-fixing was central to the enforcement actions of the Biden administration’s trustbusters at the FTC, and their investigations and actions inspired state AGs and private parties to bring their own antitrust suits.
Saddest part of that article. We had someone trying to end this shit, and you brainwashed fuckers hated him for it.
In our current society, little people can get away with it. I can take whatever style I want and train a model on it. There’s already many ghibli ressources in the open source scene, and a lot of them date from 2 years ago.
This whole situation is rage bait to manipulate the population into cheering for new copyright laws so politicians get little push back when they start writing pro-corporate laws regarding AI.
Mostly youtube, reddit and image search. I guess I could just record a Netflix stream if I needed the whole movie. I guess recording a Netflix stream is pirating? Probably easier with a torrent.
What does it matters? I don’t think pirating is unethical especially when it’s not even redistribution but transformative. Openai has never stopped me from pirating or even asked me to stop. Not sure what you mean with “no one else”.
You ever ask yourself if the memes made from movie scenes used pirated media?
I’m mostly talking about being able to train on copyrighted content. This is on me though, I got mixed up. That’s what I meant in my first comment.
If you think someone can train a model on legally obtained data (Google images, YouTube, internet archive), then that is fair.
Personally, I think using pirated or at least bought content that is ripped (Netflix, DVDs) should be exempt (for everyone obviously, not just OpenAI.) Some data is already behind huge mega corps like record labels, Hollywood, publishing houses, etc. OpenAI can afford the cost but the little guys will be screwed when it comes to SOTA.
It’s also worth noting that most current lawsuits are aimed at how the data is used and not how it’s sourced if I’m not mistaken. The laws coming from these lawsuits won’t be used to bolster anti-piracy laws but copyright laws instead, targeting fair use and transformative clauses imo.
Using existing data on recordings and books we obtain a point estimate of around 15 years for optimal copyright term with a 99% confidence interval extending up to 38 years
Some of us have been waiting for copyright laws to be amended downward for 16 years now.
I’m not promoting that corporations should get a free pass, I just want them to be held to the same standards they held the Pirate Bay to if we’re gonna pretend that current copyright laws are good, since the centerpiece of the court case against the Pirate Bay was that they were making money from what they did. OpenAI is making shitloads of money from what they did.
But I’m all for shortening copyright, but not getting rid of it. Reforms don’t have to be pro-corporate slop.
What pirate bay is doing isn’t exactly transformative. I pirate most of my media and can’t say I’m not for better copyright laws and a better treatment of pirate bay, I just think the situations are different.
I don’t think saying “if pirate bay is illegal, so should training ai without compensations” is exactly fair. (I wish the actual people contributing could be compensated, but how it’s set up, we would be giving a few companies a monopoly while compensating mostly data aggregators.)
Reforms don’t have to be pro-corporate slop.
Sadly, the media and most of the population is practically begging for it. When you couple that with the pressure exerted by record companies, publishing houses, etc, it is clear those are the reforms we get if any.
If you download a movie from a torrent site, you have committed an illegal act in the US. It doesn’t matter if you watch the movie and then write a fanfiction based on the movie. It’s the copying that’s illegal. It seems clear from OpenAI’s statements that they torrented the data they used to build their models.
So glad people finally waking up to these things being power plays.
Republicans, Evangelical Christians, and now Techbros are all running on the same script which boils down to “rules for thee, not for me.”
Being a hypocrite is simply showing others you have the power to be a hypocrite and all they can do is get mad and stomp their feet. It’s why the right wing loves to “trigger liberals.” It’s not even about actual politics or religion anymore, it’s just simply “might makes right.”
These are expressions of power, plain and simple. They should always be viewed as such.
I mean, so many companies pirated tons of materials to train their LLMs and they are making way more money than the guys at the Pirate Bay ever did. It’s almost like because the guys at the Pirate Bay were making small potatoes money that they were worth going after. It’s almost like if you crime big enough, the world will just pat you on the back and say “good job” instead.
Meta was literally caught downloading Anna’s Archive and the widely used by nearly every AI company books3 corpus was everything from private torrent tracker Bibliotik. Why do they get different treatment? They are leveraging the same pirated works to make money, which was the whole argument for throwing the Pirate Bay admins behind bars for laws that didn’t actually exist in their home country, that they were profiting from piracy. The LLM companies just are making way more money so it’s let go for some reason.
It’s a power play, to show little people can’t get away with it, but if you’ve got millions in venture capital at your back, you can do whatever the fuck you want and people will praise you for it.
We’re living through the return of the robber barons. This time, however, they can implant their thoughts directly into every single person’s hands at any instant. That’s why your point is the most salient, most important, and most downplayed
Steal $5 and they shoot you down in the street.
Steal $5,000 they throw you in jail.
Steal $500,000 and they give you a fine.
Steal $50,000,000 and they name a building after you.
Steal $50,000,000,000 and they make you king.
I agree on the double standard. I also think there’s an element of Cory Doctorow’s point that “it’s not a crime of we do it with an app.”
Running an unlicensed taxi service or hotel business? No no we’re not criminals, we’re disrupting stagnant markets!
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/
It’s basically a blanket pass for tech bros to bend and break laws
This is the real sick stuff, same with RealPage. They’re just offering a service that could allow the businesses they serve to collude, but because they’re just doing it through a third party service it’s suddenly not collusion.
Doctorow pretty spot on as usual. I’m glad he’s come a long way, because I actually kind of disliked his writing on Boing Boing in the early 2000’s because he often got some simple facts wrong. He’s much more thorough and rigorous now.
Saddest part of that article. We had someone trying to end this shit, and you brainwashed fuckers hated him for it.
White collar crime is always ignored as long as it doesn’t rock the boat too much or isn’t stealing money from the wealthy.
In our current society, little people can get away with it. I can take whatever style I want and train a model on it. There’s already many ghibli ressources in the open source scene, and a lot of them date from 2 years ago.
This whole situation is rage bait to manipulate the population into cheering for new copyright laws so politicians get little push back when they start writing pro-corporate laws regarding AI.
Did you buy the Ghibli movies you trained on or did you pirate them? Because OpenAI has argued that they are allowed to pirate and no one else.
Mostly youtube, reddit and image search. I guess I could just record a Netflix stream if I needed the whole movie. I guess recording a Netflix stream is pirating? Probably easier with a torrent.
What does it matters? I don’t think pirating is unethical especially when it’s not even redistribution but transformative. Openai has never stopped me from pirating or even asked me to stop. Not sure what you mean with “no one else”.
You ever ask yourself if the memes made from movie scenes used pirated media?
Yes recording at Netflix stream is pirating. That you got away with it doesn’t mean you couldn’t be sued for tens of thousands of someone found out.
You don’t think it’s unethical but it is illegal in the US and people have been sued for thousands of dollars. This is still going on today: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/isp-sued-by-record-labels-agrees-to-identify-100-users-accused-of-piracy/
OpenAI has said they need to violate copyright. But they didn’t say that the law should be changed. They want an exemption for themselves.
I’m mostly talking about being able to train on copyrighted content. This is on me though, I got mixed up. That’s what I meant in my first comment.
If you think someone can train a model on legally obtained data (Google images, YouTube, internet archive), then that is fair.
Personally, I think using pirated or at least bought content that is ripped (Netflix, DVDs) should be exempt (for everyone obviously, not just OpenAI.) Some data is already behind huge mega corps like record labels, Hollywood, publishing houses, etc. OpenAI can afford the cost but the little guys will be screwed when it comes to SOTA.
It’s also worth noting that most current lawsuits are aimed at how the data is used and not how it’s sourced if I’m not mistaken. The laws coming from these lawsuits won’t be used to bolster anti-piracy laws but copyright laws instead, targeting fair use and transformative clauses imo.
https://rufuspollock.com/papers/optimal_copyright_term.pdf
Some of us have been waiting for copyright laws to be amended downward for 16 years now.
I’m not promoting that corporations should get a free pass, I just want them to be held to the same standards they held the Pirate Bay to if we’re gonna pretend that current copyright laws are good, since the centerpiece of the court case against the Pirate Bay was that they were making money from what they did. OpenAI is making shitloads of money from what they did.
But I’m all for shortening copyright, but not getting rid of it. Reforms don’t have to be pro-corporate slop.
What pirate bay is doing isn’t exactly transformative. I pirate most of my media and can’t say I’m not for better copyright laws and a better treatment of pirate bay, I just think the situations are different.
I don’t think saying “if pirate bay is illegal, so should training ai without compensations” is exactly fair. (I wish the actual people contributing could be compensated, but how it’s set up, we would be giving a few companies a monopoly while compensating mostly data aggregators.)
Sadly, the media and most of the population is practically begging for it. When you couple that with the pressure exerted by record companies, publishing houses, etc, it is clear those are the reforms we get if any.
If you download a movie from a torrent site, you have committed an illegal act in the US. It doesn’t matter if you watch the movie and then write a fanfiction based on the movie. It’s the copying that’s illegal. It seems clear from OpenAI’s statements that they torrented the data they used to build their models.