If making money is the only reason to create maybe it’s good if they stop.

Oh yeah, I forgot artists are spiritual creatures who don't have to eat. It certainly isn't the only reason to create but a necessary condition to actually be a professional artist, no ?

Reread my comment again. If your __only__ motivation is money, you will have a problem.

I agree it’s necessary to pay artists - but we don’t need copyright for that! There are many tried and proven alternatives.

>There are many tried and proven alternatives.

Other than patronage, what is there?

Also, patronage is garbage, in my opinion. It ensures artists are exclusively either already wealthy, or well connected. It also helps ensure that the wealthy are most often represented in the art created; for some reason this seems like a bad idea to me.

copyright based scarcity is effectively dead for anyone with an Internet connection anyway

honestly I think a gratuity model may become dominant with or without any legal changes at this point

you'll often see on YouTube patreon revenue equally or dwarfing ads the reliance of the music industry on merch seems similar too*

I think people are more willing than you'd think to pay for art simply because they understand it won't exist without money.

*(if that sounds like a stretch, consider if in a world devoid of copyright, whether a Walmart printed band shirt for cheap would be equivalent for most purchasers to the same shirt sold by the actual artist )

So naive lol. How many independent, unconnected rich artists were born pre and post YouTube for instance?

No idea - do you know?

Why don't you just ask for an increase in the allowance from your family trust fund? People have become so lazy nowadays, they can't even be bothered to have a hard talk about their financial estate with their rich grand-papá anymore.

Your unwillingness to pay doesn't give you the right to steal, that only gives you the right to not take the deal and walk away.

What exactly am I stealing if I don't take the deal, walk away and then enjoy an AI-generated artwork that just so happens to resemble the thing closely instead? I'd think that stealing requires taking something away from someone, regardless of how hard certain industries try to gaslight me into expanding the definition to protect their business model.

Stop trying to gaslight yourself into thinking what you are doing isn't morally wrong.

If you do not agree with their business model, don't get involved with their business, at all. Your disagreement doesn't give you the right to exploit flaws in their methods to protect their business. Just like the fact you don't want to pay for something doesn't grant you the right to exploit the fact that the laws of physics allow you to just grab something you didn't pay for with your hand and run away with it.

You still equate copyright infringement with physical theft. They are not the same.

In what sense would I be running away with something? The original thing is still there, to the extent you can talk about data being somewhere.

I don't think I need to "gaslight myself" into anything; as far as I can tell, making a copy has not ever felt morally wrong to me.

> Your disagreement doesn't give you the right

If I fully believe in the concept of fair use and transformative content, then yes it absolutely is my right to take advantage of generative AI.

Fair use is a common concept used in all sorts of media.

You don't get to hand wave that away just because generative AI is getting good.

creation should happen for its own sake. You don't see GMs stopping chess because bots are that much better.

> creation should happen for its own sake

Creation should happen for whatever reason its creator becomes inspired with. The only absolute I can think of is no one should actually categorize worthy and unworthy motifs.

I can categorize them easily.

The only invalid reason is because you need to feed yourself, and the fact that we need to do that, we need to pay artists and everyone else just to survive, shows our failure as broader society.

creation <> competition.

I agree with your premise but the chess analogy falls flat.

We might, legitimately, see an enormous dropoff in people creating original works of literary, musical, and visual art (without AI).

This is an centuries old argument. Most people don’t create to make money, they create because they __have__ to.

If those motivated purely by money stop creating little of value will be lost

People that create art, must eat and sleep under a roof.

and we can definitely feed them. Plenty of resources lying around.

We don't feed or house tons of people right now, despite those resources.

We can, we (as in society) doesn't, because the powers that be benefit from it.

Somehow Finland can manage, but US can't? Please.

The roofless exist to send a message, "stay in your lane, be a cog in the machine, don't disrupt the system and you won't end up like THEM".

Most people who create for a living aren't motivated purely by money, but are driven by the necessities of capitalism to do so. You're presenting a false dichotomy, pretending to care about the quality of art, but really like everyone, you just want other people's work for free.

Great art - especially in modern times when that art involves expensive education (which if you're American must be paid for with interest) and the incorporation of technology and equipment - takes time and effort. If that time and effort cannot be paid for, then no matter how passionate an artist may be, unless they have sufficient personal wealth, that art must suffer.

Even the great artists of old needed patrons, because they needed to eat like anyone else. Michaelangelo didn't paint the Sistene Chapel ceiling for the love of the game, nor would he have.

I guarantee you that the working artists who have already lost commissions and work due to AI care about their craft.

Im happy to pay the artist directly - which is why I use services like bandcamp or buy artworks directly from artists I know personally.

I care little about paying „rightsholders“ and their ilk - so I have zero empathy if they complain about imagined losses.

Don’t jump to conclusions about people who have never even talked to

Artists are "rightsholders" and their ilk. You didn't even separate the two in your former comment, so you clearly weren't talking about corporate owners of IP like Sony and Disney, exclusively.

Maybe you believe no artist who works for a corporation has any motivation but money, as opposed to purely "indie" artists, I don't know where the line in your head is drawn, but you do seem willing to throw most artists under the bus for some arbitrary standard of purity.

AI is harming working artists right now, and will likely never harm corporate rightsholders. They'll simply run their own AIs and fire as many people as they can get away with. The end result will not be that only the "true" artists survive but simply less art of any kind, everywhere. So I stand by my comment.

With rightsholders I mean exactly those big corporations who do nothing else but buy up copyrights to successful art.

I for example have never benefited from copyright, neither from GEMA (the German artist association for musicians) - 99% of payouts go to the rich and successful mainstream artists and „indie“ artists get nothing but are forced by law to pay in if they want to perform in public.

So yea I have little sympathy for artists who only work for corporations or are rich enough to afford lawyers to enforce their copyright.

The way I see it there exist 3 ways to make a living as an artist now: - be rich trustfundkid and don’t care about money - be „purist“ and just live from selling your art and be on the brink of starvation constantly - get a „money“job and produce art in your spare time

Apparently there exists a huge population of artists who can make a living from working for corporations - but I have yet to meet one in real life. They are always brought up in these HN discussions but in my experience they don’t exist.

I didn’t say anything about money. Why are people talking about money

I’m not pretending anything. I’m just making a statement about what might happen. I don’t personally care much one way or the other.

I didn’t say anything about money or the motivation to create?

Chess, at some point, and after you move beyond the opening, is creation.

People didn't stop painting because photography exists, they created new forms of photography. People didn't stop writing music or using new / unique instruments when synths and programs came along.

I genuinely believe that people will keep creating, it's in our nature, and we also like things made by other humans, because we can relate to them.

Imho your argument is faulty at its base. The objective of chess competition isn't to produce a reasonably good game for the lowest possible cost (blunders and comebacks are actually pretty valuable parts of the spectacle). It also isn't the reason why chess players get paid. Yes, running still was a thing even after the invention of bicycle. This is just invalid logic in my opinion.

Chess hustlers in central park don't play for money, or for a competition, they play for the fun of it, for the sake of chess itself, for the sake of exploring the game, the thrill of finding a solution.

It has nothing to do with whatever "value" the capitalist system assigns to the act as a side-effect.

Chess hustlers are a particular niche case and I think many of them would disagree with you (the money part). Making arguments in such an absolute manner and speaking on behalf of many people (mostly with whom you share very little I assume) is guaranteed to be wrong I think.