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But I was never party to that contract! I never agreed not to distribute it, and I also didn't actually distribute it. I just downloaded it from Pirate bay.

Not sure that’s extortion but yes, generally speaking, people have the right to use force to prevent and address the arbitrary in social life (#1345).

So then JK Rowling can use violence against me to extort the value that I have supposedly stolen by downloading a book that was uploaded in violation of a contract by a third person?

Yeah. And if he takes it against your will and replaces it with a brand new bike it’s still theft.

There's this nice bit in Man, Economy & State where Rothbard explains that durable goods can be broken down into their unit services (not sure that's the term) and that all durable goods get used up as they provide service.

So I guess someone would reduce the serviceable lifespan of the bike by using it during the times that you aren't using it.

It’s about value not physical scarcity. If you only steal it while I’m asleep and return it before I wake up and want to use it it’s still theft.

Duplicate of #1346.

It's a good point, but I don't think those two compare. Again, bicycles are scarce.

‘Couriers who jump start their careers by stealing bicycles wouldn’t exist.’

It was Muhammed.

Midjourney wouldn't exist... Our cool pics of Mujahideen eating Bacon wouldn't exist.

I doubt it.

You just say that without any reasoning.

I doubt it.

Unclear what “it” refers to.

Duplicate of #1329.

I doubt it. I hope they keep doing it. I hope to live in a world where copyright isn't enforced. I expect to see more creation and novelty.

They are creating some but also stealing lots. You could steal a bicycle to become a courier and create value as a courier, but you still shouldn’t steal the bicycle in the first place. And if the thief complained about not being able to create value because it’s illegal to steal bicycles, everyone would rightly laugh at him. It’s his responsibility to find win/win solutions with people, not leech off others in the name of ‘creating value’.

Maybe LLM coders aren't stealing value but instead creating it?

LLM coders should come up with something else that doesn’t steal value.

I should say, the issue of LLMs isn’t entirely clear cut since they don’t actually redistribute any text. So their output may not be a copyright violation in the original sense. Could maybe be a derivative work of the training data though (see #1322).

There are a lot of open legal questions about AI. See https://hawleytroxell.com/insights/how-i-really-feel-about-chatgpt-from-an-ip-lawyers-perspective/. For example:

Copyright owners and patent holders have no recourse against infringing, illegal AI output since the law has not yet caught up to create a remedy. So if I ask ChatGPT to write me some Star Wars fan fiction and I then place that content on the internet or sell it on Amazon, Disney has no remedy—except to sue me somehow, because they are Disney and have a lot of money.

And:

I cannot register copyrights in content authored by an AI because I am not the author, and the AI cannot register its own copyrights because it lacks personhood.

Nice, much innovation

Yes they are leeches

Wouldn’t copyright make LLMs illegal, too?

When is it "my own words?"

When you come up with it yourself. Like are you doing right now with your messages (to which you own the copyright, btw, unless the Veritula terms disagree, I’d have to double check).

What's "original"?

Drawing stick figures is not, writing down a completely new text with new concepts is. There are some gray areas but again (#1403), that doesn’t mean copyright doesn’t make sense as a whole.