A.K.A.
@AlexanderESmith
@AlexanderESmith
There’s no need to encrypt this data. Any entity that is watching you knows how to see the domains you visit, and everything on this site is on the main page, or a click away from it.
An SSL here is nothing more than security theater, or marketing.
The first sentence directly addresses your comment “it’s not theft” with “the law says it is”.
The rest of the post attempts to explain why it is so and some of the moral or ethical discussions surrounding some examples.
I might have missed it, but it doesn’t look like their site accepts payment data, or has a login of any kind.
Why would the lack of SSL concern you?
The MPAA and music industry would beg to differ. As would the US courts, as well as any court in a country we share copyright agreements with.
Consider that if a movie uses a scene from another movie without permission, or a music producer uses a melody without permission, or either of them use too much of an existing song without permission, everyone sues everyone else, and they win.
Consider also that if a large corporation uses an individual’s content without permission, we have documented cases of the individual suing, and winning (or settling).
Some other facts to consider;
mp3 file is not inherently illegal. Nor is a torrent file/tracker/download.mp3 file contains audio you don’t own the rights to, it is illegal, same for the torrent you used to download/distribute it. In the eyes of the law, it’s theft.In the mp3 example, its largely an individual stealing from a large company. On the Internet, this is frequently cheered as the user “sticking it to the man” (unless, of course, you’re an indie creator who can’t support yourself because everyone’s downloading your content for free). Discussions regarding the morality of this have been had - and will be had - for a long time, but it’s legality is a settled matter: It’s not legal.
In the case of “AI” models, its large companies stealing from a huge number of individuals who have no support or established recourse.
You’re suggesting that it’s fine because, essentially, the creators haven’t lost anything. This makes it extremely clear to me that you’ve never attempted to support yourself as a creator (and I suspect you haven’t created anything of meaning in the public domain either).
I guess what it comes down to is this; If creators can be stolen from without consequence, what incentive does anyone have to create anything? Are you going to work your 40-60 hours a week, then come home and work another 20-40 hours to create something for no personal benefit other than the act of creation? Truely, some people will. Most wont.
“The world seeing [their] work” is not equal to “Some random company selling access to their regurgitated content, used without permission after explicitly attempting to block it”.
LLMs and image generators - that weren’t trained on content that is wholly owned by the group creating the model - is theft.
Not saying LLMs and image generators are innately thievery. It’s like the whole “illegal mp3” argument. mp3s are just files with compressed audio. If they contain copyrighted work, and obtained illegitimately, THEN their thievery. Same with content generators.
Eh. This is not a new argument, and not the first evidence of it. I don’t think you’re gonna be high on their list of retaliation targets, if you register at all (to say nothing of the low-to-middling reach of the fediverse in general).
Hell, just look at photographers/painters v. image generators, or the novel/article/technical authors v. … practically all LLMs really, or any other of a dozen major stories about “AI” absorbing content and spitting out huge chunks of essentially unmodified code/writing/images.
I agree that their replies are a little… over the top. That’s all kind of a distraction from the main topic though, isn’t it? Do we really need to be rendering armchair diagnoses about someone we know very little about?
I mean, if I posted a legitimate concern - with evidence - and I was dog-piled with a bunch of responses that I was a nutter, I’d probably go on the defensive too. Some people don’t know how to handle criticism or stressful interactions, it doesn’t mean we should necessarily write them (or their verified concerns) off.
I’m not quite sure who’s argument you’re making here. It reads like you agree with OP and I (e.g. “LLMs shouldn’t be using other people’s content without permission”, et al).
But you called OP paranoid… I assumed because you thought OP thought their content was being used without their permission. And it’s extremely clear that this is what is happening…
What am I missing?
It’s not paranoia if you have proof that they’re stealing your content without permission or compensation.
You come off as an AI bro apologist. What they’re doing isn’t okay.
I was wondering what that ominous music was when I woke up this morning
Hello fellow mbin user! I just got my personal instance set up 👍
“Best practice” isn’t a catch-all rebuttal. Best practices are contextual. I’m keen to see your justification for encryption beyond “all sites should encrypt everything always”.
My assertion is that this isn’t necessary in this case. Why do you think that it is necessary to encrypt open-source, freely available, non-controversial site content?