_______ __ _______
| | |.---.-..----.| |--..-----..----. | | |.-----..--.--.--..-----.
| || _ || __|| < | -__|| _| | || -__|| | | ||__ --|
|___|___||___._||____||__|__||_____||__| |__|____||_____||________||_____|
on Gopher (inofficial)
HTML Visit Hacker News on the Web
COMMENT PAGE FOR:
HTML H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office
dredmorbius wrote 4 hours 41 min ago:
The question of why US copyright law is administered and, to some
extent regulated within the Legislative rather than Executive branch
has been raised in a dead thread. The cogent point is made that under
the US Constitution, the phrase "checks and balances" generally applies
to both the division of powers amongst the three branches (Judiciary in
addition to the two previously mentioned), and the principle of review
and oversight amongst those branches (e.g., legislation is passed by
Congress, approved or vetoed and administered by the President /
Executive branch, and subject to interpretation or invalidation by the
Judiciary; executive appointments are subject to Congressional
approval; and members of both the Executive and Judiciary may be
impeached and removed by Congress).
That said ...
... there are other instances in which separation of powers is not
strictly followed. Examples which come to mind are:
- Administrative law judges (ALJs), notably in matters concerning
Social Security and Immigration law, being a judiciary function under
the executive.
- The Sergeants at Arms of the US Senate and US House, both legislative
bodies, but performing executive functions. Recent history suggests
that the Executive cannot be entirely relied upon to provide this
function.
- Judicial Review is probably the biggest appropriation of powers, in
which the US Supreme Court arrogated the right to rule on, interpret,
and invalidate legislation. This is a power arguably derived absent
any constitutional, legislative, or executive foundation.
And of course the present Administration has increasingly expressed a
philosophy not only of Unitary Executive, but increasingly of Unitary
Government, enacting law by decree, executing citizens without due
process, and openly flouting courts. H.R. 6028 could be seen as part
of this expansion of the Executive.
Which still leaves us with the question of how Congress ended up
administering copyright.
I don't have a full history, and have only been exploring the question
for the past hour or so.
The US Copyright Office itself has a history page noting that:
On July 8, 1870, Congress centralized the administration of copyright
law in the Library of Congress at the encouragement of Librarian of
Congress Ainsworth Rand Spofford.
< [1] >
Which remedied the previous arrangement in which Copyright was
administered by ... the Judiciary.
Why Congress ended up regulating copyright is probably largely a set of
historical accidents and conveniences. The Library of Congress does in
fact serve Congress (and IIUC the Judiciary, to which it is also
proximate) as a legislative research tool. I've read enough of the
annual reports in the latter half of the 19th century to know that the
Library was growing rapidly at this time, and was constantly pressed
(literally) for space, culminating in the commissioning, construction,
and opening of the separate Library of Congress Jefferson Building, in
which the main collection is now housed. (As I'd recently commented,
there were concerns at the time of how merely moving to an adjacent
building might affect retrieval time for materials.)
Arguably, the US Library of Congress had, and still has, more expertise
in the management of large corpora of physical publications than
virtually any other institution on Earth. Copyright registration
itself served the interests of Congress by growing the collection. And
as of the late 19th century, the overall size of the US government,
though growing, was still comparatively small. The Executive would
possibly have had neither the interest nor capacity to administer the
Library, or even the Copyright office sufficiently, nor the convergence
of goals in growing the Library's collection noted here. Given
numerous issues with other areas of intellectual property which are
administered under the executive (patents and trademark, though my
criticisms are largely of the former), its also possible Things Could
Have Gone Badly Wrong, though arguably as the EFF piece notes they have
already. Though the House legislation seems likely to worsen that.
The present situation though is that the Library of Congress and
Copyright Office do strongly blur the separation of powers principle,
affording a complex set of legislative, executive, and even judiciary
roles, all under the Legislative branch.
That just my own nonexpert nutshell summary. If anyone has further
information on the history of the US Copyright Office, legislation, and
judicial rulings, please pitch in.
HTML [1]: https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/history-co...
delecti wrote 3 hours 42 min ago:
It's in the constitution. Article I, Section 8, clause 8:
> The 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; [1] Unless your question was more, "why was that written
into the constitution". In which case the answer basically boils down
to the fact that the framers intended for Congress to be the most
powerful branch. The modern de facto running of the country places
far more power under the executive than the framers intended.
HTML [1]: https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
dredmorbius wrote 2 hours 36 min ago:
The Constitutional power of Congress is to enact laws, but not to
execute them. Article I generally lists other authorities of
Congress, e.g., "to coin money", but the Treasury is an
Administrative office, not a Legislative one. Another interesting
example would be the establishment of a Post Office, which is now
an independent agency, though under the Executive.
You'll also find: "The executive Power shall be vested in a
President of the United States of America." Art II, Sec 1. That
establishes the Separation concept, though neither "separation of
powers" nor "checks and balances" are explicitly stated in the US
Constitution. They are part of the political discussion in which
the Constitution was framed, however.
*
jklowden wrote 6 hours 49 min 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 heâs 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 theyâre busy selling the country
for parts, whether through tax policy, or neutering the CAFE standards,
or handing copyright to Disney.
andrekandre wrote 17 hours 8 min ago:
> In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives
passed H.R. 6028, the âLegislative Branch Agencies Clarification
Act.â
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.
HTML [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_vote#United_States
ryanschaefer wrote 4 hours 51 min ago:
> Members can request a division of the assembly (a rising vote,
where each sides rise in turn to be counted)
Isnât this the important bit? IIRC this can be demanded by anyone.
If it passes by a voice vote, assume your representative voted yay or
abstain.
Computer0 wrote 16 hours 52 min ago:
Oh and the biggest bullshit about this is it removes oneâs ability
to hold their local representatives accountable. I just assume the
worst!
inigyou wrote 5 hours 34 min ago:
Nope. If your local representative disagreed, he or she would have
called for an actual vote. Your local representative agreed.
Grombobulous wrote 16 hours 21 min ago:
From what I understand itâs rather true that a lot of Congressâ
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 itâs televised or not as well, especially in
committees.
Iâm just a little surprised that voice votes havenât been
replaced by some kind of digital process. A voice vote doesnât
save time compare to a modern method of tallying votes. Why avoid
making records when records are so âcheapâ these days?
wpm wrote 5 hours 33 min ago:
Because while you are correct that these sorts of things were
invented to make things move faster, they stick around because
the person you were responding to is also correct in that it
makes it harder to hold individual electeds accountable, so
electeds have zero reason to really want to change anything in
their procedures.
OutOfHere wrote 17 hours 24 min ago:
Anything that destroys copyright is a good thing. It is a societal
evil.
tgv wrote 10 hours 8 min 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?
OutOfHere wrote 2 hours 23 min ago:
Your question is a loaded question founded on a false premise that
the author of the content has an innate right to its viewership.
There is no such innate right.
Also, the argument that you made elsewhere about "damages" is
nonsense because there is no damage from someone viewing what they
were never going to pay for anyway, and there also is no
deprivation.
tgv wrote 1 hour 23 min ago:
> Your question is a loaded question
It is not. Abolishing copyright completely, as the parent seems
to desire, implies free access to songs, books, movies.
> a false premise that the author of the content has an innate
right to its viewership
If you pose it this way: can't creators decide who gets access to
their creations? Is it not inherently theirs? What's the
difference with e.g. a piece of bread?
> there is no damage ...
So it's legal to steal stuff that you were never going to buy
anyway?
RiverCrochet wrote 1 hour 2 min ago:
> can't creators decide who gets access to their creations?
If it's on their physical property.
> Is it not inherently theirs?
No. For example, a creator of a song does not own my hard
drive.
> What's the difference with e.g. a piece of bread?
Operating system calls used in copying data locally and
sending/receiving network data locally/remotely fail on pieces
of bread, but don't on a series of bits that when given to an
.mp3 player make sound.
> So it's legal to steal stuff that you were never going to buy
anyway?
Saying somethng is stealing X is a false premise if the owner
is not deprived of X. Saying X is depriving Y of future profits
is false unless you know for a fact that X was going buy
anything from Y.
RetroTechie wrote 3 hours 44 min ago:
Provided a friend of mine agrees to let me borrow (and copy) their
media containing music / movie / book / whatever, what entitles you
to interfere with such agreement?
Especially since that agreement didn't involve you.
There's no $deity-given right to control what happens to stuff you
wrote / designed etc, once it's been published. Copyright is, sorry
was, a legal construct meant to promote people creating artwork.
Once it overshot that intent bigtime, there's no justification for
keeping it around. At least not in its current form.
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote 4 hours 57 min ago:
>what entitles you to free access to any song, movie or book?
Does this sound profound to you? When you see yourself type it out,
does it seem like you've really came up with a zinger?
What entitles them to come in and police my hard drive platters
with "you can't write that sequence of bits to storage, that's our
sequence of bits"? It's sort of a weird idea, sounds kind of
medieval. Like King Cnut has granted them license to "the birds in
the forest, and the timber, and the water that runs through the
meadows".
tgv wrote 2 hours 51 min ago:
Ok. So nobody answers the question, but does so in a very
passive-aggressive way.
RiverCrochet wrote 6 hours 52 min 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.
tgv wrote 1 hour 19 min ago:
> life of the author + 70 years ...
So you object to its current implementation, not to the principle
itself, which is what I was replying to. I agree it's absurd,
especially when the rights can be transferred to corporations,
which cannot even create.
> No one is entitled to be a songwriter, movie director, or
author; society needs people doing other things too.
Isn't that up to the individual to decide?
armchairhacker wrote 9 hours 7 min ago:
Because itâs 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.
tgv wrote 1 hour 22 min ago:
> Most of my favorite artists already distribute most of their
work for free
Excellent. It already works. You don't have to abolish copyright.
RobotToaster wrote 9 hours 29 min ago:
What entitles you to use force to stop me creating a copy of
something?
tgv wrote 9 hours 13 min 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.
RiverCrochet wrote 1 hour 5 min ago:
The comparison with money is interesting but not equivalent to
copyright infringement. The closest valid application of the
concept of counterfeit to songs, for example, would involve
using them to make media and its packaging look like any
original packaging, and also try to sell it as the original. If
you're not doing this there's no counterfeiture.
inigyou wrote 4 hours 46 min ago:
Should it be illegal to use a general purpose computing device
because it damages Tim Cook's livelihood?
RobotToaster wrote 7 hours 43 min ago:
The fact that you use the state as a proxy changes little.
palmotea wrote 14 hours 8 min 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.
OutOfHere wrote 2 hours 39 min ago:
Besides the unfairly long duration of protection, intellectual
property also is unfairly used to squash small firms via frivolous
lawsuits.
I won't use an argument in favor of AI training here because AI can
probably still be trained by fair-use information extraction from
copyrighted works.
Without copyright, we can return to a patronage based system. Both
rich and poor consumers gladly offer proportional patronage for
authors they truly believe in.
Humanity will progress just fine via its scientific works which
don't really require a copyright. Arxiv proves it.
The cost imposed by GPL not working will be negligible compared to
the benefit of free use.
Altern4tiveAcc wrote 6 hours 16 min 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 wrote 8 hours 2 min ago:
> without copyright the GPL is nothing
Thatâs ok, GPLâs 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 thatâs the only way art is created
(which even rich people want, although you probably and I think
their taste mostly sucks, so does everyone elseâsâ¦)
palmotea wrote 5 hours 14 min ago:
> Thatâs ok, GPLâs entire purpose and only restriction is to
prevent other copyrights.
You sure about that? Because I'm pretty sure it's "entire
purpose" is to keep open source code open.
> And without copyright, studios would still pay artists, because
thatâs the only way art is created
Hate to break it to you, but that's just not true. But you know
what would make that true? Abolishing copyright.
armchairhacker wrote 3 hours 32 min ago:
"Prevent other copyrights" = "keep open source open"
Your second point seems to agree: if copyright was abolished,
people (even rich) still want art, so studios would still end
up paying artists, from patronage or some other system.
palmotea wrote 2 hours 0 min ago:
> if copyright was abolished, people (even rich) still want
art, so studios would still end up paying artists, from
patronage or some other system.
Yes, it would be exclusively the domain of the rich and
powerful. If you're a little guy, they'll just shamelessly
take what you make, because abolishing copyright abolishes
the legal protections a small-time creator depends on.
Let's say you put a ton of effort into making an awesome
YouTube channel people love. Copyright is what means a bunch
of randos can't just copy all your work and take all the
revenue from it. They can even undercut you, because they
don't actually have the costs of creating anything. Copyright
give you recourse.
armchairhacker wrote 44 min ago:
> If you're a little guy, they'll just shamelessly take
what you make
Like LLM scrapers?
> Copyright is what means a bunch of randos can't just copy
all your work and take all the revenue from it. They can
even undercut you
If copyright is abolished, nobody's getting revenue from
views. They can resell your work for $0, or can try
charging, but word spreads and everyone will seek the free
alternative (yours).
Attribution is different, but covered by trademark. Or may
be covered by trusted sources like internet archives which
prove who was first.
OutOfHere wrote 1 hour 34 min ago:
YouTube has just so much garbage that drags on. It would be
a good thing to have less of it.
Also, just because randos will copy content doesn't mean
that users will go to other channels to view it if they
subscribe to your channel.
nullc wrote 14 hours 1 min ago:
RMS will happily tell you that he'd trade enforcability of the GPL
for the non-existence of copyright.
palmotea wrote 13 hours 16 min 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 wrote 16 hours 55 min ago:
This bill very much does not do that. It does the opposite, in fact.
I encourage you to re-read the article.
OutOfHere wrote 16 hours 31 min 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.
eli_gottlieb wrote 15 hours 9 min 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 wrote 14 hours 5 min ago:
What we favor, and what is possible, often diverge.
browningstreet wrote 16 hours 10 min ago:
This position makes it impossible to discuss these things.
panny wrote 17 hours 50 min ago:
I usually agree with the EFF on things, but after reading their linked
[1] 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.
HTML [1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/us-copyright-offices-dra...
iloveoof wrote 3 hours 20 min ago:
I could not agree more with EFF.
Thereâs a difference between training a model and using a model.
Training involves copyrighted works but fair use is not just about
use of copyrighted works, itâs about whether the use is
transformative and substitutes the original market. I struggle to see
how is not transformative under these criteria.
The use of the model (being able to output copies of GPL software) is
a different question. This depends on the circumstances: if GPL code
is exactly reproduced then it very well could be subject to the
license of the original work.
I donât understand the legal objections to the fair use of
protected IP. Licenses are legal documents, not moral imperatives.
GPL only exists because of copyright law, and you canât write a
license that supercedes copyright law if you donât like the law.
The Claude Code example is completely different, hosting a repo with
the leaked code is clearly not fair use.
ninjagoo wrote 9 hours 13 min 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.
asgraham wrote 10 hours 50 min 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 donât know about impossible but itâs definitely not a
straightforward read from the post-training weights as youâre
implying, unless youâre aware of some technique Iâm not aware of.
The closest you could get would be the weight differential from
training with a given work. But thatâs massively dependent on
training order, so that itâs certainly not at all a good measure of
âcontribution.â
pona-a wrote 11 hours 14 min 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.
panny wrote 6 hours 43 min 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.
pona-a wrote 4 hours 30 min ago:
I do not defend the current state of things where a select few
companies get to shamelessly violate the law with the entire
legal framework bending around the weight of the money trapped in
this speculative bubble.
I believe LLMs are at the very least an under-researched
technology or less charitably, an ongoing effort to strip
intellectual workers of their rights and privileges.
What I am saying is the reasonable demand for attribution runs
counter to the nature of these systems as we know them. There is
no magical "release the attribution" button Anthropic could press
if they wanted to. Unlike per-state taxes, are actual PhDs
working on, at universities and private labs, because
transparency has been the public number one demand since day one,
and yet all that exists after 4 years of funding are only the
first incomplete steps.
The most likely outcome of imposing this obligation is commercial
LLM providers quickly folding, finding a loophole/displaying
false attribution, or settling for notably worse performance.
That is of course not counting how these companies will be on the
hook for a civilizational amount of licensing fees.
(Per the DRM point, I believe we can agree the goal of
simultaneously displaying a piece of media in the physical world
and somehow protecting the viewer from storing it is effectively
impossible, without hiring a trusted guard to hold the viewer at
gunpoint if they dare touch the trusted viewing apparatus or pull
out their phone, at least in its strict form)
I am personally okay with shutting down an industry that cannot
legally exist in its current form, especially one so openly
hostile to every field of human endeavor. But no matter your
position on that, we must keep in mind no "ethical" or "legal" AI
industry can exist without making either adjective meaningless.
armchairhacker wrote 7 hours 52 min ago:
Itâs very possible to determine similar works that existed
earlier, and from that, recover attribution.
The âdownsideâ is you may attribute similar works that
werenât inspirations, but coincidental. But I think thatâs 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.
anematode wrote 17 hours 48 min 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."
billfor wrote 18 hours 58 min 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.
HTML [1]: https://www.stoneslaw.net/legislative-branch-agencies-clarific...
Grombobulous wrote 16 hours 26 min ago:
The plain language of the billâs summary on the billâs 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 thatâs
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. Itâs hard
for me to tell if that means it has strong bipartisan support? I
guess Iâd 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.
anigbrowl wrote 19 hours 33 min 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 [1] 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.
HTML [1]: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6028/c...
bigstrat2003 wrote 17 hours 56 min 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.
delecti wrote 3 hours 51 min ago:
In 2026, a discussion of a bill proposing to make an existing
position into a presidential appointee is very different if that
bill was proposed by Democrats or Republicans. To pretend otherwise
is to ignore virtually all of the current administrations actions.
armchairhacker wrote 7 hours 42 min ago:
Itâs relevant, because you shouldnât vote for politicians who
make bad policies, and most party members tend to vote with their
party.
Unfortunately, the Democrats havenât demonstrated themselves to
be much better (at least, Iâm not aware of them opposing
copyright).
kgwxd wrote 3 hours 8 min ago:
> the Democrats havenât demonstrated themselves to be much
better
Some introduce awful stuff, but the party isn't run like the
mafia, so they fail to pass nearly as much. Republicans are
handed down orders and they follow. No attempt to represent the
people that elected them. Vassals to the end.
Grombobulous wrote 16 hours 37 min ago:
The identity of the people who crafted the bill is the second most
relevant thing besides the bill itself.
pstuart wrote 3 hours 30 min ago:
Agreed, it's a signal of intention based on past behaviors of the
"authors" (quoted because it's often lobbyists who write the
bill).
colonCapitalDee wrote 16 hours 54 min ago:
Ignoring power politics doesn't make them go away
joshka wrote 15 hours 29 min ago:
But calling them out in a partisan may disincentivize half of the
people to understand the issue.
miltonlost wrote 5 hours 0 min ago:
I love not informing the electorate!
BrenBarn wrote 11 hours 30 min ago:
A large portion of that half will continue to want the wrong
thing anyway.
0xEF wrote 10 hours 28 min 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.
CursedSilicon wrote 13 hours 47 min ago:
If those people want to treat political parties like sports
teams then they aren't likely going to contribute much to the
discussion
thereisnospork wrote 17 hours 28 min 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.
iririririr wrote 2 hours 4 min ago:
their point was that both parties pass those laws. TPP and
first-to-file passed under Obama.
it's so tiring.
phendrenad2 wrote 20 hours 16 min 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...
plandis wrote 17 hours 10 min ago:
> Are people worried they're going to start selectively enforcing
copyright law?
Yes.
hightrix wrote 19 hours 37 min 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.
akamaka wrote 19 hours 47 min ago:
Itâs not hypothetical at all. The FCC is currently being used for
political attacks: [1] Those who are under attack happen to also be
the biggest copyrighter holders, so this would open up a new avenue
of attack.
HTML [1]: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/28/media/abc-fcc-disney-licenses...
RobotToaster wrote 9 hours 25 min ago:
It's really hard for me to feel sorry for Disney here. Is it
possible for both sides to lose a lawsuit?
gwerbin wrote 9 hours 0 min 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 wrote 16 hours 46 min 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
mohamedkoubaa wrote 18 hours 36 min ago:
It's not hypothetical nor an unintended consequence. Most likely
this is the point
XorNot wrote 19 hours 27 min 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 wrote 18 hours 47 min 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.
z3c0 wrote 19 hours 58 min ago:
Never gotten any emails from lawyers, I see.
Copyright laws are heavily enforced, only selectively.
gwerbin wrote 8 hours 59 min 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 wrote 20 hours 0 min ago:
Are you kidding? If thereâs something in there they donât like I
donât 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 situationâ¦
vjvjvjvjghv wrote 17 hours 49 min 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 wrote 8 hours 57 min 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 wrote 19 hours 55 min ago:
> Are you kidding? If thereâs something in there they donât
like I donât 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.
echelon wrote 18 hours 36 min 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 wrote 18 hours 12 min 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 wrote 19 hours 18 min 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.
jaggederest wrote 19 hours 47 min 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
DIR <- back to front page