EarlKing

For the same reason businesses always seek declaratory judgements: So business partners can feel confident that claims made against them are indeed frivolous as far as the court is concerned.

4chan and Kiwi Farms have obtained common counsel and are suing the UK's Ofcom over their attempts to enforce the Online Safety Act against them, two American companies without minimum ties necessary to establish general personal jurisdiction in the United Kingdom.

The censors who want everyone to show ID to be on social media, or anywhere on the Internet, will get their way however they can. If they can't get the states to pass laws to do it, they'll use other countries to do it. If you believe in a free internet, whatever you may think of 4chan or Kiwi Farms, this is something you should support.

Remember: Today it's someone you don't care about. How long until it's your turn? Who will defend you when you won't defend others?

Copy of their complaint: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/26076733-govuscourts...

Courtlistener page for those who want to follow along: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71209929/4chan-communit...

Media coverage from 404 Media: https://www.404media.co/4chan-and-kiwi-farms-sue-the-uk-over...

And everyone must present ID to post, of course... to "protect the children".

Then they should go buy a boomerphone that can make calls and text and nothing else and stop screwing things up for the rest of us.

If that is so then that is a problem to be solved by the local equivalent of child protective services by removing them to a safe environment, not by imposing tyranny on everyone else. See how easy it is to dismantle statist arguments if you just stand your ground?

If "false information" is common there... don't go there. No, I don't think they, or indeed anyone, needs to be held to a "higher standard". No one is obligated to tell you "the truth" as you see it. If you're uncomfortable being on a forum where you opinions may be challenged then the American side of the Internet simply isn't for you. In fact, if it really bothers you that much, may I suggest that your country recommend de-peering from the global Internet? That would certainly solve the problem.

....and you've never been on /b/ and don't get the reference.

You forgot the last bit: "Bon appetite!"

Definitely the politest way anyone has ever been told to eat shit in human history.

We'd like to, but Pool's Closed.

The funny thing about "false information" being "spread" by "8chan admins" (or 4chan for that matter) is.... you can avoid it by simply not going there. Stop going there if you don't like it.

You're thinking of Jim Watkins who provided the hosting for 8chan, not 4chan. Two completely different image boards.

And do as much as a sternly worded letter to the editor.

Already underway in several states. Bills in Texas and Utah have already been approved, with several other states entertaining such proposals, although none have moved out of committee as yet.

It's all so tiresome.

If this were really about protecting the children they could've solved the matter with the equivalent of a mandate on device manufacturers and website operators to respect a DO-NOT-SERVICE-I-AM-A-CHILD (or whatever) header in HTTP. Hell, if it were really about protecting children, parents would get access to dumbed down versions of the kind of tools corporate IT has for managing business phones ... so they can lock them down, limit how they're used, right down to what apps can be installed.... but that would deprive advertisers of a golden ticket for knowing what views are legit, put parents back in control, and actually work... so can't have that. :D

This is what you get for skimming. :D

Just to be sure that I wasn't misremembering, I went through part 2 of the report and back to the original memorandum[1] that was sent out before the full report issued. I've included a few choice quotes to illustrate my point:

"These are no longer hypothetical questions, as the Office is already receiving and examining applications for registration that claim copyright in AI-generated material. For example, in 2018 the Office received an application for a visual work that the applicant described as “autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine.” 7 The application was denied because, based on the applicant’s representations in the application, the examiner found that the work contained no human authorship. After a series of administrative appeals, the Office’s Review Board issued a final determination affirming that the work could not be registered because it was made “without any creative contribution from a human actor.”"

"More recently, the Office reviewed a registration for a work containing human-authored elements combined with AI-generated images. In February 2023, the Office concluded that a graphic novel comprised of human-authored text combined with images generated by the AI service Midjourney constituted a copyrightable work, but that the individual images themselves could not be protected by copyright. "

"In the Office’s view, it is well-established that copyright can protect only material that is the product of human creativity. Most fundamentally, the term “author,” which is used in both the Constitution and the Copyright Act, excludes non-humans."

"In the case of works containing AI-generated material, the Office will consider whether the AI contributions are the result of “mechanical reproduction” or instead of an author’s “own original mental conception, to which [the author] gave visible form.” The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work. This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry."

"If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it."[1], pgs 2-4

---

On the odd chance that somehow the Copyright Office had reversed itself I then went back to part 2 of the report:

"As the Office affirmed in the Guidance, copyright protection in the United States requires human authorship. This foundational principle is based on the Copyright Clause in the Constitution and the language of the Copyright Act as interpreted by the courts. The Copyright Clause grants Congress the authority to “secur[e] for limited times to authors . . . the exclusive right to their . . . writings.” As the Supreme Court has explained, “the author [of a copyrighted work] is . . . the person who translates an idea into a fixed, tangible expression entitled to copyright protection.”

"No court has recognized copyright in material created by non-humans, and those that have spoken on this issue have rejected the possibility. "

"In most cases, however, humans will be involved in the creation process, and the work will be copyrightable to the extent that their contributions qualify as authorship." -- [2], pgs 15-16

---

TL;DR If you make something with the assistance of AI, you still have to be personally involved and contribute more than just a prompt in order to receive copyright, and then you will receive protection only over such elements of originality and authorship that you are responsible for, not those elements which the AI is responsible for.

--- [1] https://copyright.gov/ai/ai_policy_guidance.pdf [2] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

Original expression, yes, however you should've kept reading:

"In the Office’s view, it is well-established that copyright can protect only material that is the product of human creativity. Most fundamentally, the term “author,” which is used in both the Constitution and the Copyright Act, excludes non-humans." "In the case of works containing AI-generated material, the Office will consider whether the AI contributions are the result of “mechanical reproduction” or instead of an author’s “own original mental conception, to which [the author] gave visible form.” 24 The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work.25 This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry." "If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it."

The office has been quite consistent that works containing both human-made and AI-made elements will be registerable only to the extent that they contain human-made elements.

It's not just about how you got there. At least in the United States according to the Copyright Office... materials produced by artificial intelligence are not eligible for copyright. So, yeah, some people want to know for licensing purposes. I don't think that's the case here, but it is yet another reason to require that kind of disclosure... since if you fail to mention that something was made by AI as part of a compound work you could end up losing copyright over the whole thing. For more details, see [2] (which is part of the larger report on Copyright and AI at [1]).

--

[1] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/

[2] https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

I have a much shorter AGENTS.md:

"No."

People don't vote for this. Politicians do. People need to be made aware of what their politicians are up to in their name and encouraged to punish politicians for their acts of treachery at the polls, including the credible threat of a recall election. That, however, would require organizations that aren't a clownshow. I've been singularly unimpressed by the actions of NetChoice (who recently got slammed for handing in "expert testimony" that clearly was written by ChatGPT) and Free Speech Coalition (who clearly are the porn lobby and invariably approach every problem with an approach guaranteed to lose in court). The EFF seems content to wag their finger while doing nothing substantial. The FSF is utterly silent in the face of app store regulations that, if you read them carefully, would ensnare them and anyone else distributing software online, to say nothing of making it impossible to manufacture a PC or operating system that doesn't implement these child-detection controls.

TL;DR We appear to be seriously lacking in leadership and organization.

What amazes me is that this article fails to mention that the slippery slope is already underway. Multiple states have some variation on the "App Store Accountability Act" that requires you present ID just to download apps, including Texas (SB 2420) and Louisiana (HB 570), with several more underway. Then there's the various acts that try to regulate social media by demanding you present ID to be able to post (or else gimp your site to fit one of the carve-outs they have which conveniently ensures that users cannot engage in public posting of any kind towards one another) such as Texas's HB 186 (from 2024).

Put simply: You've all been asleep at the switch while the US-side Internet has been systematically under attack by pornscolds trying to implement Chinese-style censorship, this article's author included.

The average developer, whether of open source or otherwise, refuses to use even the bare minimum of engineering discipline in realizing their programs, thereby resulting in an explosion of bugs that the rest of us have to pay for with our time, effort, and sanity.... and they want taxpayer money for that? HOW ABOUT NO. And don't tell me things would be different if we paid them since commercial software developers are certainly incentivized to do things properly and they STILL refuse to use proper engineering practices.

"Futurama does not endorse the COOOOOOL crime of fraudulent misrepresentation!"

Seriously, Futurama and Cyberpunk and 1984 were all supposed to be warnings... not how-to manuals.

..........not a hotdog.

Haunted? Hell, it's positively possessed.

....a little of column A, a little of column B, really.

The fact that they refer to it as "sideloading" rather than just "installing" is all I need to know about where their priorities lie. As long as they view installation of arbitrary programs by end users as being something deviant then I can correctly conclude that they do not view me as the owner of my own hardware, and therefore I won't be buying anything from them.

Louis Rossman was right.

Better question: Why do I need to use my bank's special snowflake website, or their special snowflake app, when both do the exact same thing that I was doing via a text terminal dialing into Bank of America's HOMEBANKSF service on Tymnet? Why do I have to use their decommoditized solution when there could be a standard solution for banking activities?

Yeah, we both know the answer is lock-in... but maybe that's a sign that the gnomes and gnome-adjacent need to be tard-wrangled for the good of society?

Just a note: At the bottom of the page they mention a book on Embedded System Design that they contributed to but there's no link. It took a little digging but I found the book they're talking about: https://us.artechhouse.com/A-Hands-On-Guide-to-Designing-Emb...

We just got through talking about how the players involved have deep pockets, and have a vested interest in seeing their way prevail... so cheap doesn't matter, likely is malleable, which leaves only "fast" which I do not contest.

Deep pockets are not a get out of jail free card. If a case escalates to the SCOTUS there will be many firms that submit amicus curiae outlining their position on the matter and how it threatens their rights. Those people, arguably, represent more money and influence than Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, etc. So if we accept the premise that all legal matters are decided on a basis of pure politics as mediated by money, then ultimately every court battle is a battle to assert that your actions don't actually affect the interests of interested parties and that you'll fight them if they try to assert otherwise, and on that count it is reasonable to surmise that there are more interested parties with deeper pockets than any firm or firms fielding LLMs that might be caught up in a lawsuit over this.

Ultimately, if an author can demonstrate protectable expression has been incorporated into an AI's training set and is emitted by said AI, no matter how small, they've got a case of copyright infringement. That being the case, LLM-based companies are going to suffer death by a thousand paper cuts.

In my circle usually people would either go by their middle name or they'd very quickly earn themselves a nickname... although now that I think about it we did use lastnames for some guys. Whatever works, really. Nobody was a stickler about how they were addressed.