Well thought out and sensible position overall [LWN.net]

Well thought out and sensible position overall

Posted Apr 27, 2026 23:41 UTC (Mon) by dilinger (subscriber, #2867)
In reply to: Well thought out and sensible position overall by cypherpunks2
Parent article: The future of AI in Ubuntu

The difference (for anti-capitalists) is who is doing the theft, and to whom. People are saying that copyright should be abolished because it is a tool that is being used by global conglomerates to impoverish people. Those same people who that AI is theft are saying that because AI is a tool being used by global conglomerates to impoverish people*. It's actually an extremely consistent worldview.

In other words, it's not about copyright, it's about power and class.

* Yes, you could make arguments about open models and AI sometimes being a useful tool to empower people, but by and large the discussion is about AI that is controlled by large corporations and that is being used to further concentrate wealth and power.

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Well thought out and sensible position overall

Posted Apr 28, 2026 2:48 UTC (Tue) by cypherpunks2 (guest, #152408) [Link]

> It's actually an extremely consistent worldview.

A consistent worldview but not a consistent argument. It's possible that those people are just wording their argument extremely poorly.

It would make sense if they argued that theft in one direction is sometimes justified, if they argued that allowing AI companies but not individuals to infringe copyright is a double standard, or if they argued that copyright should not exist but that copyright laws are at least a way to reign in the harm caused by AI training, but I can't see any consistency between "copyright is a legal fiction that should not exist and copying data is never theft" and "AI companies are stealing because they're infringing copyright".

Well thought out and sensible position overall

Posted Apr 29, 2026 5:31 UTC (Wed) by Rudd-O (guest, #61155) [Link] (1 responses)

> Who, whom? (Russian: кто кого?, Kto kogo?) is a Bolshevist principle...invoked by Stalin: "We live according to Lenin's formula: Kto–Kovo?: will we knock them, the capitalists, flat ... or will they knock us flat?"

The friend-enemy distinction could indeed be called a principle, technically speaking.

Well thought out and sensible position overall

Posted Apr 29, 2026 11:52 UTC (Wed) by daroc (editor, #160859) [Link]

I will invite you all to consider the wise words of XKCD 1475, and to let this topic of conversation end here before it goes further astray.