Post #942391
2026-03-05 13:59 UTC
GenAI broke copyright law, and I don't mean just infringing the rights, but disrupting the core foundations that copyright laws were built on.
Copyright enforcement assumes ability to identify whose work has been copied, but models can untraceably mashup everyone's works.
This completely messes up what a derived work is, identifying whose work has been infringed, what is fair use and remixing. Forcing old definitions to fit this either makes copyright meaningless or a maximalist dystopia.
Replies (1)
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@kornel@mastodon.social 2026-03-05 18:10
Copyright has always been a tricky balance. Trying to distinguish between inspiration and a ripoff. Let authors make a living, but not put the entire shared culture behind a paywall. Allow education, parody, commentary without creating loopholes for freeloaders (with lots of grey areas, flaws, gaps, and abuses in practice). If copyright didn't exist, we'd have even more paranoid DRM used to defend commercial interests. If copyright was harsher, we'd get more walled gardens and DMCA-silencing.