Hacker News Reader

AI overall is the ultimate piracy crime.

I wonder what a token cost would be if AI companies were to pay royalties to every author who made their business even possible.

View on HN

Sadly, they're just following in the footsteps of every large media/publishing/music conglomerate that already screwed over the vast majority of artists/musicians/writers. For every Taylor Swift striking it rich, there's 999,999 who can't even pay their bills with what their copyright gets them.

I don't always agree with Doctorow, but he's written a lot of good stuff on how stronger copyright won't help broke artists. Even just today, it turns out: https://pluralistic.net/2026/08/18/enron-corpus/#sign-here

It is not just about artists. It is about every kind of intellectual work: scientific research, essay, fiction, painting, software, etc - the list goes on..

Then let's make humans pay royalties to every author from whom they ever learned something, even if it was offered freely to them, only fair?

Indeed. If I take somebody's work, transform it somewhat and sell it, I should pay royalties (unless the author explicitly allowed me to do so). That is exactly the case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com