> And these weavers have big enough money to rock the boat.

But they're up against multi-billion dollar companies, and the richest man in the world appointed by the US president to dismantle federal oversight.

The weavers don’t care.

In four years there will be yet another president. Probably even from a different party the way things are going. They know the system swings back and forth like that. These people have been working that system for over a hundred years now.

How do you think they got d@mn near a century IP protection on a fricken mouse? Who’s in power doesn’t matter to these people.

I'd argue the same goes with Big Tech. I agree the length of copyright protection has gotten out of hand, and I'm normally against any expansion of copyright law, but there are several aspects of training AI that seem blatantly problematic in the way it's currently carried out.

I wanted to see if you yourself were qualified to make this statement but your SSL certificate is expired.

Nah, your browser is a corporate one with only corporate use cases that only accepts certs with extremely short lifetimes. I self-signed the cert so it's good till 2050. You can always turn off JS and access the HTTP version of the site.

As for my qualifications, I've trained a very small (~0.8B) LLM myself on 3GB of IRC logs. So I kind of know what I'm doing and have a basic understanding of the theory involved and the pragmatic issues.

Is that meant to be a humorous claim to authority?

"My opinion is more important than the opinions of the greatest musicians of all time, because I once built an LLM myself on 3GB of IRC logs" - superkuh, 2025

It's like thinking the greatest musicians of all time have reliable expert opinions on audio electronics. Sure, it's technically music related but the skill set doesn't really transfer to, say, ADC design.

I'm not saying I'm great. If we go back to my original comment which started this thread, I'm saying this group has few relevant qualifications besides celebrity and profit lust. Which means even I know more than them about generative and LLM AI training, and the regulatory implications, despite just being a "hobbyist" in the domain.

You win on hubris, I'll give you that

How could you possibly know that you know more than them about anything without knowing them? It's all assumptions

It's actually like thinking that the most influential musicians in history are somehow not qualified to step up and discuss the licensing and legal implications of LLMs, having spent half a century battling similar corporate forces, and warning the industry how history likes to repeat itself.

Get over yourself bud

Stock iOS Safari, and I do not accept your beginner-hobbyist credentials and superficial comments on genuine political issues concerning copyright law and fair labour compensation, not copy-pasted Python tutorials.

> Stock iOS Safari

to be fair that's not a bastion of quality either.

What do you mean by quality, exactly?

My up to date list of recognised certificate authorities in one of the two major smartphone OSs does not validate his certificate. This is not a matter of 'quality' of Safari, or iOS.

That's fine. I understand. Only corporations matter. And this is a corporation with celebrity names associated! Surely that means the people involved know what they're talking about more than a random person with direct experience. After all, that person isn't trying to make money. Their opinion can't possibly matter if they're not trying to make money.

Yes, they should have ran with "More than 400 of the UK's leading media and arts professionals" as the headline. But realistically, they are probably trying to appeal to a certain reader who won't be found in the comments section of a HN article.

Sounds like you're stereotyping... do you say that because of their age or their profession?

Their profession. I doubt they understand what generative AI or large language model training actually involves. It's obvious from the ideology which comes up with an absurd law like, "If your computer has something I've made in ram at any time you must tell me about it."

I do admit there are many quite informed and technically capable professional musicians but I doubt they'd support a law like this.

> The group [...] said the amendments tabled for the Lords debate would create a requirement for AI firms to tell copyright owners which individual works they have ingested.

They are demanding to be informed.

That list would be practically endless. It might make more sense to list what wasn't used.

That sounds like a them problem. Sorry if it’s inconvenient to cite your sources, but that’s life.

What are the necessary qualifications?

> But like usual the weavers will get upset about mechanical looms.

Except the mechanical loom folks are dependent on the IP of the weavers.

In other words, not a good analogy.

Fans of AI see artist like icemen complaining about refrigeration but it is not the same thing. Generative AI doesn't exist without their prior work and it is used to copy it 1 to 1. Make them say things they didn't say or make art they didn't make. It is fair that they want transparency, consent, and payment.

If someone uses AI to produce an infringing copy of an existing work, the person who prompted the AI to do that can be sued just like if someone hand drew a copy or used a photocopier to make duplicates. That isn’t unique to AI.

Indeed; this is like stealing the icemen's ice to fuel refrigeration. If some technology makes your job (partly) obsolete, too bad for you. But you shouldn't be forced to contribute to this technology against your will.

I can. Commenters on HN.

Are you saying that people who are affected by the AI's impact on their income/wealth are the least qualified to be concerned about it?

AI is a tool. Just like with a drum machine or a DAW, you need to be a musician to be able to use it to create something worthwhile. And just like sampling, drum machines and DJing didn’t kill acoustic music, AI won’t either. It will merely create a new type of music that will coexist along with all of the other types of music just fine.

AI just raises the level of abstraction and therefore the capabilities of an individual.

Since you brought up sampling in music and I feel compelled to point this out in any AI thread when that gets mentioned:

sampling machines don't give you a free pass to sample music all willy nilly, if you're going to publish the result for commercial gain you have to clear the sample, the original artist is getting royalties from it. This is something that was fought for and won by musicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Upright_Music,_Ltd._v._W....

(Not that you implied otherwise, I just want to point that out)

Thanks for pointing that out, I actually didn’t know that! It is very relevant, although it doesn’t affect my core message. Let’s see what the future holds.

This is a very primitive, pre-genAI type of thought process.

People like you can only see copyright infringement when it's blatantly staring you in the face, like Studio Ghibli style AI images. Why is it obvious in that case? Because we have a large enough preexisting sample of Studio Ghibli style frames from anime to make it obvious.

But move closer to zero-shot generation, which anyone with a modicum of knowledge on this subject understands was the directional impetus for generative AI development, and the monkey brain short circuits and suddenly creatives who want to protect their art can go fuck themselves, because money.

You may not find common cause with multi-millionaire artists trying to protect their work now, but you certainly will in hindsight if the only fiscally-sustainable engines of creativity left to us in the future are slop-vomiting AI models.