Intimidation is what these copyright monopolists are all about.
> We knew recording was useful, but the app’s ability to apply audio effects anywhere on the Mac carried much less legal peril.
Look at this. Innocent software developers, intimidated by these nebulous "legal perils" of copyright infringement to the point they felt afraid of marketing a perfectly reasonable and legal feature.
I can't possibly be the only person deeply offended by this. We don't need their blessing to record anything. We should be free from their tyranny but it binds us to this day.
This is why open source software and non-walled garden systems are so vital. With open source software and hardware where you can install your own software, all it takes is one developer somewhere in Russia or China who is not afraid of the RIAA's intimidation, and all of us will have access to the recording in a way that cannot be taken away. We must defend open source software and fight against walled garden promoters (like Apple) to secure our right to general purpose, freedom-respecting computing.
Not always... a single issue "friend" isn't generally enough to stay that way and bigger issues can prevail.
While I appreciate a lot of the hardware and hard work that comes from China, I think their government makes them adversarial to the point where the US should seriously work on shoring up domestic production and alternative supply chains. China has been working hard to make the US unnecessary for their own. Not many countries can really exist without at least their neighbors, but it's very concerning. Similarly with alignments with Russia going through.
Not that I advocate for the military interventions going on right now for the most part... I just think the US govt and industry have become so short sighted to the point that long term harm is inevitable.
Yes, and that's why they're trying to own our computers before they even leave the factory. They want a world where only the programs they approve can be executed. That's literally the only way that copyright can be enforced in the 21st century. In other words, they are the antithesis of everything hackers stand for. Computers are too powerful and subversive for them, they need to control it. Governments have similar aspirations. They want to contol access to cryptography software.
While I do agree: "keep your hands off my computer", There's a huge difference in wanting to close down a computer and wanting cryptography software banned.
Government don't care if you use open or closed source software, in fact it probably welcomes hackable (as in easy to tinker with, more moving parts that they could easily extract data from) open computers more.
Don't we have LLaMA? The quantized version is runnable on top end consumer hardware, which is within reach for many people if a bit expensive. You can also use it on a rental GPU unit from something like vast.ai or another commercial vendor. AI on demand for free is not a viable economic proposition for now, lest you create a way to vouch for legitimate users and purposes, but at that point most people would rather pay a bit. Maybe in a few years it will become economical.
You really think Open Source is going to solve the problem? I love the FOSS as much as the next man, but it's not some holy panacea for all of our freedom-loving woes. RIAA doesn't have to sue the developer in Russia, they can just take the legal fight to the consumers (and they HAVE done so).
How would they tell? RIAA has no right to check your computers. I doubt it would be possible to outright ban the software from existing or being installed since it has totally legal uses too.
I think open source is more important and relevant than ever, especially in an era when LLMs are controlled by a select few. But we can both say “Nu uh” and “yes huh” at each other and it won’t really advance the discussion. Do you have specific examples?
> No, regulation is the solution. Learn about politics, learn the local and federal laws and get on the horn with people if you’re so concerned.
I have a degree in political science, completed about half of law school before deciding I didn’t want to leave technology, have worked in and around government for most of the last 25 year.
Transparency—and open source plays a big part in this—in the answer. Regulation can be important to, but if there isn’t transparency in the field (even if not for all models, though that will be important) and particularly for anything adopted for important use in administering policy and pressure from the open source community on proprietary vendors, the dangers of AI are magnified.
Yes, I know people tied to the big vendors are selling the idea that opacity and regulatory restrictions are the answer, and I’m telling you read Adam Smith:
The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.
That's the perils of using a proprietary service beholden to the law of the US. Ideally you would want redundant services in different jurisdictions to circumvent takedown requests like this. It is crucial to have control of your infrastructure, even if it may be mirrored elsewhere.
The problem is that it's extremely risky as a platform operator to stand up for blatant abuse of copyright infringement tools under the current model, especially when you do anything at scale.
Basically if you operate any website, as long as the DMCA request you get is reasonably properly filed, you are required to process it or else you risk legal liability.
It's a goddamn mess and when you're operating on the scale of say, Google, you don't have the option to risk that liability and hire people who can examine those claims. No, what you do is blindly process all claims and just hope that people counterclaim the bad ones.
It's why for example GitHub sticking it's neck out for 1201-related violations (where they manually investigate any anti-circumvention related takedown) is such a big deal. They are running a risk by doing that where if they tell the RIAA (who usually files these requests) to go fuck themselves, that they could be forced to eat crow in court, but they're doing it because well... the RIAA abused that part of the DMCA to file a dodgy claim against youtube-dl[0].
Improper DMCA claims are technically punishable as perjury but the actual process is so draining that it's super rare to see someone convicted for it.
[0]: The RIAA assumes that youtube uses actual encryption to protect people from downloading them. They're wrong - YouTube doesn't use widevine or anything like that for regular uploads (movies are a different case, they do use widevine), they have their own rolling cipher which is just a plaintext javascript file that your browser fetches when loading YouTube. Youtube-dl contains a python reimplementation of that cipher. Fully legal insofar as section 1201 is concerned, but the RIAA filed it under that anyway (because they'd have no actual standing to file a regular DMCA claim for basically blatantly reusing Google code, since the RIAA isn't Goole).
There was a singular reason for this: UX. The IP mob absolutely despised anything different to their existing business model, and were too boneheaded to recognize the opportunity to make something good. Most of all, they hated that they needed to change. It took decades, but now only niche enthusiasts download music, even though it’s as easy now as it was then.
The same thing could be said about TV streaming, of course, although they’ve done a worse job on the technical side.
Thankfully Spotify came out and it reduced music piracy far more than all the RIAA lawsuits combined by simply offering better service than both RIAA (who wanted to sell albums only) and pirate sites (that didn't offer discovery features and there was no quality control).
> that didn't offer discovery features and there was no quality control
Pirate sites generally had better quality than iTunes (which was 128kbps for way too long), and were often ripped from a better sounding source or master because the people uploading albums were dedicated fans of the material. One great example is the soniclovenoize uncensored stereo version of "We're Only In It For The Money".
Don't know about iTunes, but some music on pirate sites was only available in 128k or below. I'm so glad that I don't have to hunt for quality releases on those sites any more.
Spotify is infamous for paying artists poorly, but not being on it is risky for an artist due to its popularity. I don't know that it's fair to say it solved the problem, at least from the perspective of artists.
For the vast majority of the artists record studios also paid poorly, if at all. And even for the greatest names, you'd better have a very experienced agent and a team of shrewd top crack lawyers or the studios would surely rip you off.
The recording industry was always a very shady business.
In my eyes the main issue is political standing, which we had very few.
When in France the RIAA equivalent came up with a plan to add a tax to all digital storage media, because it could be used for piracy, the tax was applied an we all ponied up. Why ? because they make money, deal with politicians everyday and make sure the wheels are well lubrificated when they need them to turn.
For a very long time the computer industry had none that, and/or wanted contents right holders on their side, with not enough negociation power.
Now I feel we're on the other side with Apple straight telling legislators to turn a blind eye because they need their semi-monopoly to keep printing money.
> When in France the RIAA equivalent came up with a plan to add a tax to all digital storage media, because it could be used for piracy, the tax was applied an we all ponied up. Why ? because they make money, deal with politicians everyday and make sure the wheels are well lubrificated when they need them to turn.
RMS has suggested a similar tax on internet users in exchange for legalizing file sharing [1].
The idea of taxing something associated with the consumption of creative works in order to fund the creators instead of the direct sale of copies model is one of the more popular ideas among those who try to actually figure out how creators should be funded in an age where anyone can make unlimited copies for essentially no cost.
I think it could have been a sensible approach if it stopped at "something associated with the consumption of creative works".
Sadly it (is ?)was way broader than that and you'd have a tax on hard drives sales whatever you would do with them. Imagine needing two extra hard-drives for your home NAS to store your family pics and videos and something like 2 to 3% of the price goes to some artists that _might_ be impacted by piracy some way or another.
> The idea of taxing something associated with the consumption of creative works in order to fund the creators
... usually ends up as a barrier to creators, because the funding goes to established creators or industry cartels, reinforcing their existing advantage over upstarts and independents.
Indeed, the big problem with the tax approach is deciding how to distribute the money.
The government could do it via grants to creators, but then you've got the government playing a major role in determining what art gets created, which would not doubt in the US end up a partisan thing. Yuck!
Another approach would be to track downloads and distribute the money based on popularity. That at least gets away from having the government decide what gets funded.
> We knew recording was useful, but the app’s ability to apply audio effects anywhere on the Mac carried much less legal peril.
Look at this. Innocent software developers, intimidated by these nebulous "legal perils" of copyright infringement to the point they felt afraid of marketing a perfectly reasonable and legal feature.
I can't possibly be the only person deeply offended by this. We don't need their blessing to record anything. We should be free from their tyranny but it binds us to this day.