Intellectual property has always been a made up idea that has been abused for years by big companies far in excess of its societal value. I’m not sad that the force of IP restrictions seems to be weakening, but I am surprised to see so many people in tech that previously were pretty lassez faire on IP to suddenly take it so seriously now that it’s become a useful means to criticize AI companies with.
You can continue to enjoy the books and articles etc
They are just also used to create a new thing
In the picnic example, the picnickers can't use the lawn anymore.
As an aside: as somebody who lives in a dense area, I also would stay off the lawn. There's a utilitarian element where you have to rotate which lawns are used, and avoid using them when wet etc so as to maximize their utility. The picnickers should find a lawn that's open.
Except for the books that Anthropic bought and destroyed?
There's also the cultural displacement element: while yes, some people (including me) would seek out original content, AI slop is drowning it out. This is decreasing my and others' enjoyment.
No you can't, because those people have stopped creating because the creation economy was destroyed by AI. We just keep getting recycled slop based on what existed in 2025.
All of the people who I was reading and listening to and watching before AI are all still creating. Many of them are even creating new things or new types of things
I imagine breaking into the creative industry is "harder" today than it was five years ago and much harder than it was ten years ago etc, but in some ways everything is still so new.
This dismissal of creativity or people's drive to create or anything created after "the ChatGPT moment" is simply wrong and lazy thinking
Yes, musicians for instance will always create music, even if they're dirt poor. That doesn't mean though we should strive to make them as dirt poor as possible to maximally optimize the agreement in our favor. That's a separate issue.
It’s not the same thing as downloading a car or a purse for private individual use.
I don't really care about IP for the exact same reasons you say, but what I hate even more are rich elites thinking they can continue stealing massively from the commoners unabated.
We just spent the last 15 years seeing big tech literally making society worse, and I think people are finally fed up with the results.
It's rules for thee but not for me. On an enormous scale. If it was fair, then we would have a global announcement, that the US are abandonning IP laws and copyright, and no one needs to worry about infringing on any such a thing any longer.
At the same time, more broadly, judge in the Anthropic case found that training LLMs was "exceedingly transformative" and “among the most transformative we will see in our lifetimes”
Copyright doesn't protect ideas or let IP owners lock up knowledge, it protects specific expression.
Artists in their own right and yet fundamentally pirates who opened the browser ecosystem, pioneered open APIs, invented ad blocking, embraced open source, engineered browser based telephony and streaming, gave us modern services like PopcornTime carrying the torch from torrents/piratebay into the modern era.
Give me Photoshop and JavaScript and I care not who makes the laws.
Today we have charlatans, hackademics, and heavily moderated sites like HN. The tech industry is nothing like it used to be - if anything it’s inverted with all the corporate replicas in every role and the creatives kicked out. There is no rebellion even slightly, no originality - they sound like hens, predictable and unprofound in every way.
The real creative hacker type needs a new vertical, this one has been taken over like ants on a sandwich.
If I read a physics textbook and now I know some physics do I perform a theft when I use it practice or teach someone else?