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Comment by criley2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't view Big Tech as being against copyright. They simply hold a position that they will not pay for something unless forced to ("make me" - a very common position for the powerful to hold).

In fact, I'd argue that Big Tech is pro copyright, because once they force the copyright holder to negotiate, the cost is irrelevant to them and they build a moat around that access.

For example, Google stole Reddit content for Gemini until Reddit was forced to the table, and now Google has a seemingly exclusive agreement around Reddit data for AI purposes.

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> I don't view Big Tech as being against copyright. They simply hold a position that they will not pay for something unless forced to

Yep, the contradiction between them feeling entitled to use anything they want for training, while simultaneously having license terms which forbid using the output of their models to train other models is pretty glaring. Information wants to flow freely but only in one direction apparently.

> having licenses which forbid using the output of their models to train other models

I haven't been following it closely, but aren't there already court rulings saying that generative AI output by itself is not copyrightable?

There's not much caselaw as to whether those terms are actually enforceable yet, but it at least indicates what they want to happen.

Yup. For Big Tech, the ideal outcome of these cases isn't that copyright is widely or deeply undermined as they rely heavily on it themselves (let alone how their customers and investors benefit from it).

Their ideal outcome is that there's some narrow carveout that gives them permission to ignore copyright where they want to, while extending similar permission to as few/irrelevant others as possible.

> I'd argue that Big Tech is pro copyright

I agree but for a different reason -- cost is actually relevant, in the sense that only the biggest player can afford to pay for the copyrights. If you are a small player, however your tech stack is or how good your model is, if you can't afford it, you can't compete with Google.

In the past we called that tyranny, when a power thought it could act entirely without restraint.

Now I guess it’s defended as good business and good science by so many flunkies.

Knifes edge stuff. Tech people should all be reading the books, not Mark’s steamroller.

There goes the gravy train

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