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anigbrowl 14 hours ago [-]
Odd that the article doesn't mention parties at all, although perhaps this was in an attempt to avoid accusations of partisanship that might ensue from stating facts.
Anyway, a quick look at https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6028... indicates that all 4 sponsors of the bill are Republicans. The Actions tab seems to indicated that the bill got only 12 minutes of debate before being passed,; I hope this is an artifact of how the page is updated rather than the actual time spent on considering it.
bigstrat2003 12 hours ago [-]
The article doesn't mention parties because it's irrelevant. A bad bill is bad on its merits, not because of who has brought it about.
armchairhacker 2 hours ago [-]
It’s relevant, because you shouldn’t vote for politicians who make bad policies, and most party members tend to vote with their party.
Unfortunately, the Democrats haven’t demonstrated themselves to be much better (at least, I’m not aware of them opposing copyright).
ArchieScrivener 1 hours ago [-]
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Grombobulous 11 hours ago [-]
The identity of the people who crafted the bill is the second most relevant thing besides the bill itself.
colonCapitalDee 11 hours ago [-]
Ignoring power politics doesn't make them go away
joshka 10 hours ago [-]
But calling them out in a partisan may disincentivize half of the people to understand the issue.
CursedSilicon 8 hours ago [-]
If those people want to treat political parties like sports teams then they aren't likely going to contribute much to the discussion
BrenBarn 6 hours ago [-]
A large portion of that half will continue to want the wrong thing anyway.
0xEF 5 hours ago [-]
Parties were not called out and a large amount of ensuing Othering is happening anyway. Arguably, that proves that the EFF was sound in their decision to mitigate that by not calling out the parties/politicians in hopes to keep the focus on the bill itself, doesn't it? I've long suspected that we humans tend to lose the plot so often because we want to immediately sort everyone into buckets as though compartmentalizing them brings about complete understanding of the issue on the table.
thereisnospork 12 hours ago [-]
For those of us at home who need to decide which team to root for its very much relevant when and what bills a party sponsors.
andrekandre 11 hours ago [-]
> In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.”
wow, i had always assumed actual laws have to pass a recorded vote, but its not true...
from wiki:
> In Congress, "the vast majority of actions decided by a voice vote" are ones for which "a strong or even overwhelming majority favors one side", or even unanimous consent. Members can request a division of the assembly (a rising vote, where each sides rise in turn to be counted), and one-fifth of members can demand a recorded vote on any question, after the chair announces the result of a voice vote.
> It is estimated that more than 95 percent of the resolutions passed by state legislatures are passed by a unanimous voice vote, many without discussion; this is because resolutions are often on routine, noncontroversial matters, such as commemorating important events or recognizing groups.
Oh and the biggest bullshit about this is it removes one’s ability to hold their local representatives accountable. I just assume the worst!
Grombobulous 10 hours ago [-]
From what I understand it’s rather true that a lot of Congress’ actual work is incredibly boring and that these procedures were invented to move it along.
You can see a lot of difference in the way congresspeople talk based on whether it’s televised or not as well, especially in committees.
I’m just a little surprised that voice votes haven’t been replaced by some kind of digital process. A voice vote doesn’t save time compare to a modern method of tallying votes. Why avoid making records when records are so “cheap” these days?
tancop 7 hours ago [-]
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jklowden 54 minutes ago [-]
Hey, the economy is great and gas is cheap. All we had to put up with is mean tweets.
Whenever anyone complains about Trump, remind them he’s not the cause but the product. Seventy million voted for him, and Republicans in congress let him do illegally what they cannot accomplish legislatively. And all the while they’re busy selling the country for parts, whether through tax policy, or neutering the CAFE standards, or handing copyright to Disney.
12 hours ago [-]
OutOfHere 11 hours ago [-]
Anything that destroys copyright is a good thing. It is a societal evil.
palmotea 8 hours ago [-]
> [Copyright] is a societal evil.
Such an extreme and emotional statement makes me think you've never really thought it through. For instance: without copyright the GPL is nothing. Also without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix. Authors wouldn't get a dime anymore, it'll all go to the likes of Bezos.
Altern4tiveAcc 21 minutes ago [-]
> without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix
Assuming copyright gets dismantled is a good-faith way, Netflix/Amazon remaining as gatekeepers sounds unlikely, IMO. Free software clients like Popcorn Time provide a better experience and would be able to exist without threats from copyright trolls.
It's also much more robust regarding cultural preservation (as users and organizations can keep DRM-free local copies) and censorship (being torrent-based makes it much harder to delete a movie from existence).
armchairhacker 2 hours ago [-]
> without copyright the GPL is nothing
That’s ok, GPL’s entire purpose and only restriction is to prevent other copyrights.
> without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix
This is already true in most cases: companies own everything their employees create for them. And without copyright, studios would still pay artists, because that’s the only way art is created (which even rich people want, although you probably and I think their taste mostly sucks, so does everyone else’s…)
nullc 8 hours ago [-]
RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
palmotea 7 hours ago [-]
> RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of the GPL for the non-existence of copyright.
Thankfully, RMS is not my guru.
Copyright is a valuable legal technology. It should be reformed to curb abuses, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
tadfisher 11 hours ago [-]
This bill very much does not do that. It does the opposite, in fact. I encourage you to re-read the article.
OutOfHere 11 hours ago [-]
I understand it risks adding unpredictable political corruption to the process, but I feel that such unpredictable corruption is exactly what it takes to gradually destroy something in an indirect way.
It is not clear to me what their political agenda is. Overall it might be good for AI if the goal is to scrape freely and use it for AI training.
browningstreet 10 hours ago [-]
This position makes it impossible to discuss these things.
eli_gottlieb 9 hours ago [-]
When I aim to accomplish something, to destroy some institution, I tend to favor the direct way, because it relies on fewer intermediate points of failure than the indirect way.
quantummagic 8 hours ago [-]
What we favor, and what is possible, often diverge.
tgv 4 hours ago [-]
Last time someone uttered something similar, I didn't get an answer, so I'll ask it to you: what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
RiverCrochet 57 minutes ago [-]
This: The basic idea of freedom, that I should be able to generally do things including accessing media without interference from a third party.
Someone using a physical property can possibly deprive others of its use. This applies to the physical mediums of songs, movies, or books, but not the songs, movies, or text of the books themselves.
Intellectual property isn't real, it's a concept that exists to support copyright, which exists for this exact purpose stated in the Constitution:
"[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I'm ok with accepting a temporary limitation on my freedom to support those who make songs, movies, or books, but life of the author + 70 years, plus the ability to assign the right to corporations which don't die, is not reasonably "limited" these days. It should be something like 5 years today.
No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or author; society needs people doing other things too.
armchairhacker 3 hours ago [-]
Because it’s effectively free to copy.
I want copyright to be completely abolished and patronage to re-become normal and common. Most of my favorite artists already distribute most of their work for free and rely on the latter.
RobotToaster 4 hours ago [-]
What entitles you to use force to stop me creating a copy of something?
tgv 3 hours ago [-]
Not me, the state. That is significantly different.
The reason is damaging someone's livelihood in the cases I mentioned. Or large scale economic damage in case you're copying money.
RobotToaster 2 hours ago [-]
The fact that you use the state as a proxy changes little.
panny 12 hours ago [-]
I usually agree with the EFF on things, but after reading their linked https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/us-copyright-offices-d... I couldn't disagree more. An LLM is a predict the next word algorithm. If the model is overfitting, it's basically copy paste. There have been several documented instances where that happened and full GPL code, including headers and attribution were copy/pasted by the "AI."
AI is essentially copy paste with more steps. The part that AI companies use to defend this is ?how are we supposed to decide how much each author deserves? They try to wave this away, but their own model can tell them. Their models work off of weights. They can determine how much each work contributed based on those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible. The way the models are engineered now don't make this possible, but that's intentional and we can all recognize that. They throw up their hands and claim it's not possible because they simply don't want to pay.
The most infurating thing however is how AI companies sidestep the IP rights of authors, but then claim to own those IP rights when their own generated output leaks. Anthropic filed DMCA takedowns on the leaked claude code repos, claiming ownership over something they explicitly have stated is almost entirely AI generated as part of their marketing. They take code, mix it up just enough to scrub away the GPL or whatever license belongs on it, then try to claim ownership of the result, in spite of the Copyright Office repeatedly stating that AI generated works have no copyright protection at all.
pona-a 5 hours ago [-]
Is it actually possible to determine how much the weights were influenced by each work?
I might recall reading some interpretability paper years ago that trained a special model that could attribute each answer to a part of the corpus (like Wikipedia, ArXiV, or "Blogs") but it had a non-zero effect on performance and wasn't nearly as straightforward as weights go in, attribution comes out.
armchairhacker 2 hours ago [-]
It’s very possible to determine similar works that existed earlier, and from that, recover attribution.
The “downside” is you may attribute similar works that weren’t inspirations, but coincidental. But I think that’s an upside: when someone discovers something novel and great but their work fails because of bad luck or non-novel details, then the discovery is finally recognized in another work, I think they should still be attributed.
panny 48 minutes ago [-]
>Is it actually possible to determine how much the weights were influenced by each work?
It will be very possible once they become the owners of the intellectual property being infringed. Think about how it was "impossible" to implement DRM on music and movies in the early days of youtube. Now, Google owns the content and platform, and suddenly their "rolling cypher" which involves no encryption at all is supposedly enforcable DRM.
The Silicon Valley tech bros play the same game every time. They violate the law, say it's just too darn difficult to obey the law without stifling progress, and then they get away with it until they kill all the competition. At which point, the law is once again applicable to anyone that might try to challenge them.
Remember how Amazon destroyed all the other retailers when they had a decade of no sales tax while brick & mortar had to obey it. "Calculating sales tax for 50 different states?! That's impossible!!!" What a load of shit...
Now, knowing that they're going to do this playbook again, how do you think it's going to play out? We've already seen it. Anthropic steals your copyrighted code, puts together their claude code project, the code for that project leaks, but now THEY own it! They sent DMCA takedowns on that AI generated code. AI generated code enjoys no copyright protection, it cannot be DMCAed under the law, there's no copyright on it. But Anthropic claims there is, and Github will obey the takedown, and nobody has the money to step up and stop them.
See where this is going? Once they achieve market dominance, they will claim that all the code generated by claude belongs to Anthropic, your prompts belong to you, but THEIR machine generated THEIR code and you only purchase a license to it with your tokens. A limited license. It might be revokable, it might expire, maybe you need to pay an annual fee to keep using THEIR code Claude generated for you. And if you actually just write code on your own, without Claude? Well, prepare to be sued like a network printer is sued by the RIAA because that's going to happen too. They will have their robot scour your code for "fair use" training and discover that it's just too similar to something their machine generated a year earlier. Sorry open source programmer, here's your legalese nasty gram. It appears you owe Anthropic some money.
asgraham 5 hours ago [-]
> They can determine how much each work contributed based on those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible.
I don’t know about impossible but it’s definitely not a straightforward read from the post-training weights as you’re implying, unless you’re aware of some technique I’m not aware of.
The closest you could get would be the weight differential from training with a given work. But that’s massively dependent on training order, so that it’s certainly not at all a good measure of “contribution.”
ninjagoo 3 hours ago [-]
> An LLM is a predict the next word algorithm.
This is what's known as a category error; an LLM is a 'model', not an algorithm.
It's not even an accurate claim; LLMs predict the next token, not the next word.
> AI is essentially copy paste with more steps
What about when AI creates a limerick about a kubernetes cluster run by Buddhist Monks? Or any number of other novel creations?
Fortunately the courts recognized the transformative use involved in making a model, which is fair use of copyrighted works, in kadrey v meta platforms.
> The most infurating thing however is how AI companies sidestep the IP rights of authors
transformative use falls under fair use, permission from authors is not needed to use legally acquired copyright works for training. Kadrey v Meta Platforms and Bartz v Anthropic.
> but then claim to own those IP rights when their own generated output leaks.
Corporations gonna do corporate things. Blatant hypocrisy is par for the course. Organize and take them to court.
anematode 12 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Moreover, the authors of copyright law could never have anticipated this type and scale of abuse. Maybe the companies are legally in the right, maybe not, but that's irrelevant for the question of whether it's ethical. The EFF's post definitely goes against their mission to "ensure that technology supports freedom, justice, and innovation for all people of the world."
jeremyjh 16 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
shimman 15 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
relyks 15 hours ago [-]
Yes, but saying just "congress" implies both chambers passed it
shimman 13 hours ago [-]
No, you would say passes both houses of Congress in that case.
Just don't like the immediate dismissal of the people's House when it comes to government affairs. When Congress does something it's important, regardless of the house it originates from.
righthand 15 hours ago [-]
Not necessarily. In the US traditionally the House Reps are referred to as congressmen (unlike the rest of the world) and the Senate, senators. So sometimes Congress is shorthand for the House. Though I agree it shouldn’t be.
15 hours ago [-]
enraged_camel 15 hours ago [-]
This is false. Traditionally, when only one chamber of Congress passes a bill, headlines explicitly state which chamber. "The House passed a bill that..." or "The Senate passes a bill that..."
The OP is correct that Congress implies both chambers. Yes, "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" refers to House members. But the headline says "Congress".
It suppose I can see "executive power should be part of the executive branch" as a facile argument because it does seem basic and a bit tautological, but it is still quite a strong point. It needs to be addressed rather than just identified and dismissed.
bradleyjg 13 hours ago [-]
I suppose in that case you are wholly opposed to the regulatory system as legislative power should be part of the legislative branch?
rayiner 10 hours ago [-]
Even people who believe the administrative state is constitutional rest that conclusion on the premise that "rulemaking" is merely the formalization of the exercise of enforcement discretion. But that means that rulemaking must be performed by the executive branch, because that is the branch charged with enforcement of the law.
DMCA rulemaking is actually an example of something that would probably be constitutional if the executive did it--even if administrative agencies in general are unconstitutional. The DMCA creates civil and criminal penalties, and calls for rulemaking to define exceptions to those penalties. Defining exceptions to civil and criminal liability falls squarely within executive enforcement discretion.
bradleyjg 4 hours ago [-]
I don’t think it does. Discretion is fundamentally case by case. Drawing categorical lines is legislative.
It’s akin to the distinction between law and equity courts at common law.
Stepping back, both doctrines (non delegation, unitary executive) are fundamentally about the courts overstepping. If both houses of Congress pass a law creating an agency with a director that can only be fired for cause and the president signs it, the Supreme Court should stay out of it.
Enacting legislation is very difficult, the presumption of constitutionality should be taken more seriously.
rayiner 58 minutes ago [-]
> Drawing categorical lines is legislative.
That’s even worse. If that’s the care, Congress must adopt those exemptions by law. It can’t delegate lawmaking powers to employees.
> Stepping back, both doctrines (non delegation, unitary executive) are fundamentally about the courts overstepping
Unless you toss out the concept of judicial review altogether, policing the structural rules of the constitution is exactly what the courts should be doing. The courts have no say about the merits of Congressional acts. But they should review whether Congress has allocated powers to various entities in a way that’s consistent with separation of powers.
roenxi 12 hours ago [-]
Well, probably in theory. I don't rate that on my top 50 issues I care about and haven't given the idea much thought. But having the legislative branch be responsible for the regulatory system does sound proper.
The US executive branch has very limited decision making bandwidth and it should really be reserved for matters of war and peace.
stonogo 14 hours ago [-]
Except that's a bad summary of a bad argument. "Rulemaking" is what Congress is supposed to do.
rayiner 10 hours ago [-]
The Constitution doesn't say that Congress can have its employees (which is what the Copyright Office is) make legally binding rules. Congress can make laws, but only through a specific process involving votes in the House and Senate and the signature of the President.
14 hours ago [-]
anigbrowl 14 hours ago [-]
No surprise that you'd show up to shill for it.Your argument boils down to 'if it looks like an executive branch agency, then the Executive branch should have control over it' rather than accepting that Congress is free to set things up as it sees fit within the Constitutional constraints.
rayiner 10 hours ago [-]
"Shilling" would require me to care about the policy, which I don't. The genius of the founders is that they realized that structure and power allocation was more important than policy, so that's what I'm commenting about.
On that point, Congress cannot "set things up as it sees fit." The constitution goes to great lengths to create a complex, three-branch system of government with specific powers allocated to each branch. Anytime Congress creates something new, it has to fit it into the three-branch model in a way that is consistent with the principles of that model. It's like a "pure" microkernel in computer science: there is a framework that dictates what goes in kernel space versus user space. Except with the constitution, the structural principles are legally binding. You can't delegate executive functions to mere employees of the legislative branch, just like in a pure microkernel you can't put the GUI into the kernel.
In this case, the DMCA creates civil and criminal liability. Creating exceptions for that is the exercise of a quintessential executive power--enforcement discretion. That power must be allocated to an executive-branch agency.
avmich 8 hours ago [-]
Looks like an opinion. If structural principles are legally binding, we can remember other cases from other areas.
rayiner 56 minutes ago [-]
This isn’t an “opinion.” It’s how almost everyone thinks the constitution works, including people who think modern administrative agencies are permissible. They don’t deny the tripartite structure is binding; they think that executive agencies exercising quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative functions can be defended as really being an exercise of executive discretion.
roenxi 13 hours ago [-]
Hypothetically, if Congress passed legislation saying "it looks like an executive branch agency, the Executive branch should have control over it" you'd consider that a generally reasonable position all else equal?
If you concede that it looks like an executive agency then it actually seems quite proper that the executive control it.
anigbrowl 12 hours ago [-]
No. Congress can set up and modify different parts of the executive branch, but can also set up wholly independent agencies that are not parts of the executive branch. The current administration often argues (through legal filings or proxies) that such agencies are somehow illegitimate and the executive branch should have authority over everything. That idea isn't peculiar to this administration, they just seem to have gone all-in on 'unitary executive theory' because it provides arguments for consolidating as much power as possible in the office of the Presidency.
roenxi 12 hours ago [-]
The current administration doesn't seem to be involved in this. This appears to be Congress, on paper, saying that the executive should control something that looks like an executive agency.
I can see how someone might disagree with that for various reasons (see the article) but in context "if it looks like an executive branch agency, then the Executive branch should have control over it" seems like a great argument and one that would probably carry in Congress, they have tended to put executive agencies under control of the executive in the past.
avmich 8 hours ago [-]
An argument against could refer to established practices of limiting power of executive branch in particular...
8note 12 hours ago [-]
youd also have to consider that the executive branch isn't allowed to make decisions, so the copyright office couldnt actually do anything, unless congress specifically passed a law saying a certain work has or does not have copyright protections, and which specific protections.
no more major questions doctrine
ai_critic 15 hours ago [-]
I don't think you've at all addressed why moving anything there towards the executive is desirable, especially given the capriciousness of the current executive.
14 hours ago [-]
14 hours ago [-]
dannyobrien 15 hours ago [-]
FYI: though EFF articles have individual named authors, they go through an extensive collective editing process. Every post will have had at least one domain-specific lawyer reviewer who signs off on it.
csb6 14 hours ago [-]
That is a rather narrow definition of checks and balances. The term can be applied to any group of organizations where each organization has power and interest to limit the power of the others.
rayiner 14 hours ago [-]
The article is talking about a bill that restructures a body in the U.S. federal government. In that context, “checks and balances” has a specific, well-known meaning. It’s like writing an article about Fedora 42 and using the term “kernel.” In that context, readers expect the term to be used in a specific way.
14 hours ago [-]
phendrenad2 14 hours ago [-]
I don't really understand the hypothetical problems here. "The copyright office head would be a presidential appointee, which could make the copyright office more political". I mean, I guess? Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law? But they don't enforce copyright law right now...
Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of attack.
mohamedkoubaa 13 hours ago [-]
It's not hypothetical nor an unintended consequence. Most likely this is the point
RobotToaster 3 hours ago [-]
It's really hard for me to feel sorry for Disney here. Is it possible for both sides to lose a lawsuit?
gwerbin 3 hours ago [-]
It's not about feeling bad for Disney. Disney is tremendously powerful, so if the federal government can coerce them to do whatever the federal government wants, that has massive widespread effects for everyone. It creates an environment in which powerful corporations are expected to act as political enforcers, creating a monoculture of ideas and suppressing dissent.
ronsor 11 hours ago [-]
> Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of attack.
Don't threaten me with a good time
XorNot 14 hours ago [-]
Conversely you're already not dealing with that, so the letter and spirit of the law are both being ignored and the American voter doesn't care.
WarOnPrivacy 13 hours ago [-]
> the American voter doesn't care.
The American voter doesn't know because copyright misuse and malfeasance is on a long list of public-impacting topics that news orgs have rigorously ignored for generations.
hightrix 14 hours ago [-]
>Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law?
Yes. Not only that, but to grant copyright protection only to those that are allied with/loyal to/bribe the current administration.
This would have massive, far reaching effects.
plandis 11 hours ago [-]
> Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing copyright law?
Yes.
z3c0 14 hours ago [-]
Never gotten any emails from lawyers, I see.
Copyright laws are heavily enforced, only selectively.
gwerbin 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, so what this does is centralized that selective enforcement directly under politicized control, so that it can be weaponized against political enemies.
dyauspitr 14 hours ago [-]
Are you kidding? If there’s something in there they don’t like I don’t put it past this administration to break it internally and then make a case for shutting it down. This whole thing sounds very similar to the postal service situation…
vjvjvjvjghv 12 hours ago [-]
They will break the system and use it for their friends. No way they are shutting it down. There is way too much money to be made in selective enforcement.
gwerbin 3 hours ago [-]
It's not about money as such, it's about political control and suppressing dissent. All of that is a means to an end for a small number of rich people becoming even richer, yes, but it's part of the bigger picture rather than some isolated corruption move. Although I assume it will be understood that you can make your copyright problems go away by posting a generous donation to some Trump-aligned charitable foundation.
roenxi 14 hours ago [-]
> Are you kidding? If there’s something in there they don’t like I don’t put it past this administration to break it internally and then make a case for shutting it down.
Might be a win? The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant advantage. To say nothing of the corrosive influence on culture of locking down music and stories. The biggest IP success in the last 50 years seems to have been Open Source because they built a framework inside the copyright system to achieve the opposite outcome and build a thriving industry despite the lawyers trying to encourage them in alternative directions.
The people defending the copyright system should have to keep making their case until they come up with something persuasive for how they're helping.
jaggederest 14 hours ago [-]
Tongue in cheek, but the copyright system should only last for 12 years, with one straightforward renewal, without specific reauthorization. Just like copyright in works, in my opinion
echelon 13 hours ago [-]
> The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant advantage.
Expand on this.
Wasn't it instead our desire to be the world's reserve currency and rely on cheap imports? You can't be both a net exporter and the world's top reserve currency.
You have to run trade deficits if you want to export dollars.
roenxi 12 hours ago [-]
It comes down to comparative advantages more than anything else and the US raising the cost (in some sense outright banning) people from deploying good ideas in an industrial way seems like it'd be a significant comparative disadvantage to attracting investment. And a much bigger deal than the practical reality that the US imports more than it exports.
Maintaining an import-dependent economy might be a factor, economies are complicated. But there isn't a fundamental reason that taking in more stuff than gets exported should mean that Asia has to be more successful. If anything, a country in a position to import more than it exports should be seeing big jumps in living standards, rather the gains going to a country notionally taking the bad end of the bargain. And there are some easy resolutions to being a net importer and while having a strong industrial economy - import raw materials, make stuff that isn't for export as an example.
z3c0 13 hours ago [-]
I mean, I agree with your general point that copyright might need to be reconsidered, but this doesn't seem like an attempt to reconsider it. It's rather transparently enabling further cronyism.
billfor 13 hours ago [-]
This is a one-sided article which does not discuss the opposing view, or the reason why they thought congress should appoint. Ironically, if this became law then it might have prevented Trump from removing the librarian as he attempted in 2025 (still pending in the supreme court). It also includes a term limit of 10 years.
The plain language of the bill’s summary on the bill’s web page (ignoring the EFF article) explains it quite clearly:
1. Gives power to Congress to appoint/remove the librarian rather than the president (cool, great)
2. Strips the copyright power held by the Library of Congress away, library of Congress becomes a supporting resource like a consultant
3. Reassigns that same power to a different position that’s politically appointed by the president.
What you are saying is technically true, but the deck chairs have been shuffled around in a way that seems to at least partially negate the positive change.
I also find it odd that this was passed in a voice vote. It’s hard for me to tell if that means it has strong bipartisan support? I guess I’d have to watch a video recording of the proceedings to know. If I am recalling correctly, congresspeople can call for a tallied vote if they think the voice vote was too ambiguous.
Anyway, a quick look at https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6028... indicates that all 4 sponsors of the bill are Republicans. The Actions tab seems to indicated that the bill got only 12 minutes of debate before being passed,; I hope this is an artifact of how the page is updated rather than the actual time spent on considering it.
Unfortunately, the Democrats haven’t demonstrated themselves to be much better (at least, I’m not aware of them opposing copyright).
from wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_vote#United_StatesYou can see a lot of difference in the way congresspeople talk based on whether it’s televised or not as well, especially in committees.
I’m just a little surprised that voice votes haven’t been replaced by some kind of digital process. A voice vote doesn’t save time compare to a modern method of tallying votes. Why avoid making records when records are so “cheap” these days?
Whenever anyone complains about Trump, remind them he’s not the cause but the product. Seventy million voted for him, and Republicans in congress let him do illegally what they cannot accomplish legislatively. And all the while they’re busy selling the country for parts, whether through tax policy, or neutering the CAFE standards, or handing copyright to Disney.
Such an extreme and emotional statement makes me think you've never really thought it through. For instance: without copyright the GPL is nothing. Also without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix. Authors wouldn't get a dime anymore, it'll all go to the likes of Bezos.
Assuming copyright gets dismantled is a good-faith way, Netflix/Amazon remaining as gatekeepers sounds unlikely, IMO. Free software clients like Popcorn Time provide a better experience and would be able to exist without threats from copyright trolls.
It's also much more robust regarding cultural preservation (as users and organizations can keep DRM-free local copies) and censorship (being torrent-based makes it much harder to delete a movie from existence).
That’s ok, GPL’s entire purpose and only restriction is to prevent other copyrights.
> without copyright, all of the profit made on creative works (of a perhaps smaller pie) would get be kept by distributors like Amazon or Netflix
This is already true in most cases: companies own everything their employees create for them. And without copyright, studios would still pay artists, because that’s the only way art is created (which even rich people want, although you probably and I think their taste mostly sucks, so does everyone else’s…)
Thankfully, RMS is not my guru.
Copyright is a valuable legal technology. It should be reformed to curb abuses, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
It is not clear to me what their political agenda is. Overall it might be good for AI if the goal is to scrape freely and use it for AI training.
Someone using a physical property can possibly deprive others of its use. This applies to the physical mediums of songs, movies, or books, but not the songs, movies, or text of the books themselves.
Intellectual property isn't real, it's a concept that exists to support copyright, which exists for this exact purpose stated in the Constitution:
"[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
I'm ok with accepting a temporary limitation on my freedom to support those who make songs, movies, or books, but life of the author + 70 years, plus the ability to assign the right to corporations which don't die, is not reasonably "limited" these days. It should be something like 5 years today.
No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or author; society needs people doing other things too.
I want copyright to be completely abolished and patronage to re-become normal and common. Most of my favorite artists already distribute most of their work for free and rely on the latter.
The reason is damaging someone's livelihood in the cases I mentioned. Or large scale economic damage in case you're copying money.
AI is essentially copy paste with more steps. The part that AI companies use to defend this is ?how are we supposed to decide how much each author deserves? They try to wave this away, but their own model can tell them. Their models work off of weights. They can determine how much each work contributed based on those weights, so it's dishonest for them to argue it isn't possible. The way the models are engineered now don't make this possible, but that's intentional and we can all recognize that. They throw up their hands and claim it's not possible because they simply don't want to pay.
The most infurating thing however is how AI companies sidestep the IP rights of authors, but then claim to own those IP rights when their own generated output leaks. Anthropic filed DMCA takedowns on the leaked claude code repos, claiming ownership over something they explicitly have stated is almost entirely AI generated as part of their marketing. They take code, mix it up just enough to scrub away the GPL or whatever license belongs on it, then try to claim ownership of the result, in spite of the Copyright Office repeatedly stating that AI generated works have no copyright protection at all.
I might recall reading some interpretability paper years ago that trained a special model that could attribute each answer to a part of the corpus (like Wikipedia, ArXiV, or "Blogs") but it had a non-zero effect on performance and wasn't nearly as straightforward as weights go in, attribution comes out.
The “downside” is you may attribute similar works that weren’t inspirations, but coincidental. But I think that’s an upside: when someone discovers something novel and great but their work fails because of bad luck or non-novel details, then the discovery is finally recognized in another work, I think they should still be attributed.
It will be very possible once they become the owners of the intellectual property being infringed. Think about how it was "impossible" to implement DRM on music and movies in the early days of youtube. Now, Google owns the content and platform, and suddenly their "rolling cypher" which involves no encryption at all is supposedly enforcable DRM.
The Silicon Valley tech bros play the same game every time. They violate the law, say it's just too darn difficult to obey the law without stifling progress, and then they get away with it until they kill all the competition. At which point, the law is once again applicable to anyone that might try to challenge them.
Remember how Amazon destroyed all the other retailers when they had a decade of no sales tax while brick & mortar had to obey it. "Calculating sales tax for 50 different states?! That's impossible!!!" What a load of shit...
Now, knowing that they're going to do this playbook again, how do you think it's going to play out? We've already seen it. Anthropic steals your copyrighted code, puts together their claude code project, the code for that project leaks, but now THEY own it! They sent DMCA takedowns on that AI generated code. AI generated code enjoys no copyright protection, it cannot be DMCAed under the law, there's no copyright on it. But Anthropic claims there is, and Github will obey the takedown, and nobody has the money to step up and stop them.
See where this is going? Once they achieve market dominance, they will claim that all the code generated by claude belongs to Anthropic, your prompts belong to you, but THEIR machine generated THEIR code and you only purchase a license to it with your tokens. A limited license. It might be revokable, it might expire, maybe you need to pay an annual fee to keep using THEIR code Claude generated for you. And if you actually just write code on your own, without Claude? Well, prepare to be sued like a network printer is sued by the RIAA because that's going to happen too. They will have their robot scour your code for "fair use" training and discover that it's just too similar to something their machine generated a year earlier. Sorry open source programmer, here's your legalese nasty gram. It appears you owe Anthropic some money.
I don’t know about impossible but it’s definitely not a straightforward read from the post-training weights as you’re implying, unless you’re aware of some technique I’m not aware of.
The closest you could get would be the weight differential from training with a given work. But that’s massively dependent on training order, so that it’s certainly not at all a good measure of “contribution.”
This is what's known as a category error; an LLM is a 'model', not an algorithm.
It's not even an accurate claim; LLMs predict the next token, not the next word.
> AI is essentially copy paste with more steps
What about when AI creates a limerick about a kubernetes cluster run by Buddhist Monks? Or any number of other novel creations?
Fortunately the courts recognized the transformative use involved in making a model, which is fair use of copyrighted works, in kadrey v meta platforms.
> The most infurating thing however is how AI companies sidestep the IP rights of authors
transformative use falls under fair use, permission from authors is not needed to use legally acquired copyright works for training. Kadrey v Meta Platforms and Bartz v Anthropic.
> but then claim to own those IP rights when their own generated output leaks.
Corporations gonna do corporate things. Blatant hypocrisy is par for the course. Organize and take them to court.
Just don't like the immediate dismissal of the people's House when it comes to government affairs. When Congress does something it's important, regardless of the house it originates from.
The OP is correct that Congress implies both chambers. Yes, "Congressman" or "Congresswoman" refers to House members. But the headline says "Congress".
<https://www.eff.org/about/staff/joe-mullin>.
He's been working in that capacity with the EFF since at least 2018: <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/02/ipr-process-saves-80-c...>.
Your further objections are ... facile.
DMCA rulemaking is actually an example of something that would probably be constitutional if the executive did it--even if administrative agencies in general are unconstitutional. The DMCA creates civil and criminal penalties, and calls for rulemaking to define exceptions to those penalties. Defining exceptions to civil and criminal liability falls squarely within executive enforcement discretion.
It’s akin to the distinction between law and equity courts at common law.
Stepping back, both doctrines (non delegation, unitary executive) are fundamentally about the courts overstepping. If both houses of Congress pass a law creating an agency with a director that can only be fired for cause and the president signs it, the Supreme Court should stay out of it.
Enacting legislation is very difficult, the presumption of constitutionality should be taken more seriously.
That’s even worse. If that’s the care, Congress must adopt those exemptions by law. It can’t delegate lawmaking powers to employees.
> Stepping back, both doctrines (non delegation, unitary executive) are fundamentally about the courts overstepping
Unless you toss out the concept of judicial review altogether, policing the structural rules of the constitution is exactly what the courts should be doing. The courts have no say about the merits of Congressional acts. But they should review whether Congress has allocated powers to various entities in a way that’s consistent with separation of powers.
The US executive branch has very limited decision making bandwidth and it should really be reserved for matters of war and peace.
On that point, Congress cannot "set things up as it sees fit." The constitution goes to great lengths to create a complex, three-branch system of government with specific powers allocated to each branch. Anytime Congress creates something new, it has to fit it into the three-branch model in a way that is consistent with the principles of that model. It's like a "pure" microkernel in computer science: there is a framework that dictates what goes in kernel space versus user space. Except with the constitution, the structural principles are legally binding. You can't delegate executive functions to mere employees of the legislative branch, just like in a pure microkernel you can't put the GUI into the kernel.
In this case, the DMCA creates civil and criminal liability. Creating exceptions for that is the exercise of a quintessential executive power--enforcement discretion. That power must be allocated to an executive-branch agency.
If you concede that it looks like an executive agency then it actually seems quite proper that the executive control it.
I can see how someone might disagree with that for various reasons (see the article) but in context "if it looks like an executive branch agency, then the Executive branch should have control over it" seems like a great argument and one that would probably carry in Congress, they have tended to put executive agencies under control of the executive in the past.
no more major questions doctrine
Those who are under attack happen to also be the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue of attack.
Don't threaten me with a good time
The American voter doesn't know because copyright misuse and malfeasance is on a long list of public-impacting topics that news orgs have rigorously ignored for generations.
Yes. Not only that, but to grant copyright protection only to those that are allied with/loyal to/bribe the current administration.
This would have massive, far reaching effects.
Yes.
Copyright laws are heavily enforced, only selectively.
Might be a win? The copyright system is one of the major suspects for why US industry ended up crippled and replaced by Asian labour refusing to respect US IP laws to their significant advantage. To say nothing of the corrosive influence on culture of locking down music and stories. The biggest IP success in the last 50 years seems to have been Open Source because they built a framework inside the copyright system to achieve the opposite outcome and build a thriving industry despite the lawyers trying to encourage them in alternative directions.
The people defending the copyright system should have to keep making their case until they come up with something persuasive for how they're helping.
Expand on this.
Wasn't it instead our desire to be the world's reserve currency and rely on cheap imports? You can't be both a net exporter and the world's top reserve currency.
You have to run trade deficits if you want to export dollars.
Maintaining an import-dependent economy might be a factor, economies are complicated. But there isn't a fundamental reason that taking in more stuff than gets exported should mean that Asia has to be more successful. If anything, a country in a position to import more than it exports should be seeing big jumps in living standards, rather the gains going to a country notionally taking the bad end of the bargain. And there are some easy resolutions to being a net importer and while having a strong industrial economy - import raw materials, make stuff that isn't for export as an example.
https://www.stoneslaw.net/legislative-branch-agencies-clarif...
1. Gives power to Congress to appoint/remove the librarian rather than the president (cool, great)
2. Strips the copyright power held by the Library of Congress away, library of Congress becomes a supporting resource like a consultant
3. Reassigns that same power to a different position that’s politically appointed by the president.
What you are saying is technically true, but the deck chairs have been shuffled around in a way that seems to at least partially negate the positive change.
I also find it odd that this was passed in a voice vote. It’s hard for me to tell if that means it has strong bipartisan support? I guess I’d have to watch a video recording of the proceedings to know. If I am recalling correctly, congresspeople can call for a tallied vote if they think the voice vote was too ambiguous.