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Comment by usernametaken29 | Hacker News Reader

If this doesn’t put anyone in prison then we might as well declare copyright dead. They knew they broke the law and then they deliberately covered it up. How much more evidence is required here?

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Funny thing is that on HN "declare copyright dead" was a popular opinion. For some reason that did a 180 a couple years ago.

Sad to see hackers become copyright zealots.

Right? I am starting to think some only saw it as a way to fight "the man", and now that "the man" is on the other side of the issue...

I don't think it's about becoming copyright zealot. What angers me in there is the blatant inequality. People are in jail or got heavy fines for opening torrent or steaming sites. But "Open"AI and others got a free pass because they're big corps.

let's not make everything worse under the guise of equality. perpetuating injustice does not somehow create justice

I do agree, but I still feel angry to see how it's playing out on this specific topic

How did they get a free pass? From the court decisions I have read they were held liable for downloading pirate copies and paid large fines for it. That might have been Meta, not OAI, though, but the point is the same.

I didn't know about the fines and can't find a lot of details online. It seems meta got fined for something else, but it was about 1B, which is less than 1% of their revenue.

I think the smaller companies or individual which did stuff like that got their life ruined. The pirate bay admin got fined multiple millions of dollars.

So if I agree it's not a "free pass", it's still a cheap pass many others didn't get. Makes me realize how, as mentioned by other comments, copyright laws are a tool for the powerful to oppress others rather than an actual universal right.

A fine is a slap on and wrist. Imagine you individually copied and sold libgen. Not only that, you’d say you did it for profit, you knew it was illegal, and conspired with others to cover it up. I don’t understand why no criminal charges are filed? Why isn’t anyone going to prison for a crime committed?

Your claim "Imagine you individually copied and sold libgen" doesn't hold up because there are two parts, copying and selling. Copyright law considers the copying part to be a small civil offense punishable by a fine. It's the selling part that is much more highly illegal and can result in criminal punishment. OpenAI only did the copying part.

That’s not true. I can ask ChatGPT for a verbatim copy of a licensed book. It’s been documented numerous times. I fail to see how, in the real world, a verbatim slightly changed version is different than a copy. But they’re selling ChatGPT, so effectively they’re selling access to libgen. So long as they can’t guarantee your unlicensed copyright won’t be reproduced verbatim, it is essentially reselling copyrighted material.

Honestly I don’t give a damn about copyright. I’m baffled by the double standards. Aaron Swartz was put away for so, so so much less than the massive amount of criminal activity we’re seeing here. They’re conspiring to break the law, openly, even jokingly. They’re hacking people, they’re stealing from people, openly. If no one is going to put a stop to it we might as well declare the legal system failed in its entirety.

Swartz was put away by aggressive over prosecution and it was a complete disservice of justice. We should be upset at the double standard, to the extent that we should be angry the people who prosecuted him haven't been punished for their miscarriage of justice. We should not be annoyed that we're now treating the "crime" of copyright infringement the way it should have been treated then.

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