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Comment by elpocko | Hacker News Reader

>I've had many a comment here unironically wanting to end copyright as a concept

I mean, the site's name is Hacker News after all, even though so many of the "hackers" here are confessing their love for Intellectual Property and Copyright law, and everybody chanting the well-known slogan "Information wants to be proprietary!".

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I'm not an LLM promoter by any stretch, but even from my perspective, it is somewhat funny to see the shift regarding copyright the last couple years. Before ChatGPT it was all rent-seeking antiquated legislature that needed to be thrown out, now the hatred for LLMs seems to have superceded the need for "free"-ness.

The problem there, is seeing the underlying theme. People wanted less of the same. They didn't want big groups controlling the vast amount of the art that they were exposed to. Throwing away copyright, might allow more competition in the space.

Allowing LLMs freedom to snap up everything, overwhelming hurts the smaller people who would have led to said competition. It further entrenches all the biggest players.

In other words, people have little interest in actually trying to figure out what kind of legislation and system design can help the best and most diverse art to flourish with good long term incentives.

And a lot more interest in figuring out "Who does this benefit in The Class War in the short term?", and changing their opinion of legislation so they're on the same side of that.

It's socially consistent, logically questionable.

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