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Can the music industry make AI the next Napster? (www.theverge.com)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Nice generative AI platform you have there. Would be a real shame if the RIAA… happened to it. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Sure, everyone hates record labels - but the AI industry has figured out how to make them look like heroes. So that's at least one very impressive accomplishment for AI.

AI is cutting a swath across a number of creative industries - with AI-generated book covers, the Chicago Sun-Times publishing an AI-generated list of books that don't exist, and AI-generated stories at CNET under real authors' bylines. The music industry is no exception. But while many of these fields are mired in questions about whether AI models are illegally trained on pirated data, the music industry is coming at the issue from a position of unusual strength: the benefits of years of case law backing copyright protections, a regimented licensing system, and a handful of powerful companies that control the industry. Record labels have chosen to fight several AI companies on copyright law, and they have a strong hand to play.

Historically, whatever the tech industry inflicts on the music industry will eventually happen to every other creative industry, too. If that's true here, then all the AI companies that ganked copyrighted material are in a lot of trouble.

Can home prompting kill music careers?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Fuck eternal copyright.

Anything thirty years old belongs in the public domain. You should find no restrictions on the discography of Nirvana or any John Candy film. They're ours, now. That's what the money was for.

But you can train generative models on albums published yesterday. Training is transformative use. Now: sharing a song blatantly similar to Taylor Swift's latest hit will end with her owning your house. Which also applies to actual human musicians. Similarity of the end product is all that matters, for infringement - and only if you share it. Copyright is about copying.

Shredding every MP3 on the internet into a gigabyte of math soup is not copying.

A program that makes new songs, in any genre and subject you can describe, is not the same thing as a pile of records. The program can't play the White Album. The pile doesn't have any ska about weather balloons.

The dumbest possible response to all this AI nonsense would be giving more power to known bastards.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You had me right up until you started to stan for the AI corpos.

Just because you like them doesn't make what they do legal. Does US Copyright law suck? Yes. Should GenAI be allowed to flaunt it? No.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Just because you don't like them, doesn't make what they do illegal.

My actual argument is right there. Feel free to engage with it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

How did they get the MP3 to turn it into math soup? That's right. They copied it. Just like all the families that Cox Communications is working on transferring their ' liability' to, since they lost their stupid infringement case. I just want the AI corpos to be held to the same standards and I think you should, too, because if it can't be free for everybody, then it should be an Equitable system of compensation. Happy Bobby Bonilla day.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If they'd bought a pile of CDs, would your opinion be any different? If not - that's all pretense.

I can quote passages from a book I shoplifted, and that outright theft doesn't change whether my use is fair use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

If they paid for CDs, if they paid for the books that they trained on, if they paid for the videos they trained on, then they can do what they want with it. Buying is owning, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, US copyright law doesn't see it that way, And arguing that is pointless.

The crux of the matter is that they're not paying, and trying to scam their way out of it by calling what they do free use, transformative, when it's not. Free use is for academics, critics, and artists. Gen AI is not art, Art requires intention.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Well good news, all those court decisions said they're still getting sued for piracy. The one time Lemmy seems to care about piracy.

Fair use is anything transformative. Shred a book and pick whole words from the scraps. The resulting poetry has no intent, but is still yours. Even if you stole that book.