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Comment by i_like_apis | Hacker News Reader

There isn’t law any law yet.

And yes, it is the same thing as learning.

If you have a robot that learns like a human does … you think it should be illegal for that machine to look at GitHub? To watch a Hollywood movie?

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A human that watches a Hollywood movie and then goes on to recreate it frame-by-frame with, idk, everyone has cat ears and go "nah this is all my original creation" is an idiot. A human that watches a Hollywood movie and then goes on to create existing works within the genre, with some homage (say, a specific hat, or a specific framing of a pivotal scene, or a specific lighting choice) to the original movie that inspired them, is learning.

So I think you would agree that the law should address the outputs of learning, rather than the inputs.

It should be illegal to reproduce copyrighted material, but not to “read”, “view”, or “consume” it.

Luckily this is what the law already says.

I think the law should address multiple things, only one of which is the outputs of learning. For example, if both the copycat human and the original director human both watched the movie via stealing it, that's also bad. Especially because copycat human is then going on to create copies of work they never had legal permission to copy! CoPilot effectively cannot tell the difference between an homage and theft.

>If you have a robot that learns like a human does … you think it should be illegal for that machine to look at GitHub? To watch a Hollywood movie?

Yes.

That's absurd, it's like saying you want an army of robot slaves.

Now, wanting to minimize the impact of robotic competition on human wellbeing, understandable. But the means to that end is declining to recognize property rights of those who who try to privatize the commons.

Ideally, I want the "army of robots" prevented from being created at all. But "robot slaves" is close to the second best option.

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