Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years for wire fraud and hacking for swiping some JSTOR documents, and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.
Because that's not what IP law is for. IP law was always corporate rent-seeking. None of those arguments about fairly compensating people for their creations or preserving the profit motive were ever being made in good faith. The point was always to force you to pay for something that would be free under natural laws. And I do mean you specifically, because the act of copying information freely was always going to be preserved for them.
Swartz was charged under the CFAA, like most hacking cases, and it clearly applies to the Anthropic and OpenAI cases.
It's not the IP law alone that's the problem, it's the way the legislative and justice systems work. There will always be a law and an interpretation that favor people who can afford to buy them at the cost of those who can't.
>and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.
For good reason. Courts have so far ruled AI training is fair use, and it doesn't look likely to be overturned by the supreme court. Theres also the matter of some labs pirating books to get training data, which is illegal (they lost in civil court), but it's unclear whether that can be criminally prosecuted.
Courts have also ruled that sharing in P2P network is enough to get hit with 150k in statutory damages per shared work.
AI companies did quite a bit of uploading while e.g. getting Anna's archive over BitTorrent.
It's transformative. Not aimed at exact reproduction, so not in the scope of copyright law.
They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers. Their use of the BitTorrent protocol to acquire these files would not have been transformative.
> They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers.
Did they?
Are you sure?
Meta argued in court that yes, they did upload when torrenting
> Meta’s reasoning is straightforward. Anyone who uses BitTorrent to transfer files automatically uploads content to other people, as it is inherent to the protocol. In other words, the uploading wasn’t a choice, it was simply how the technology works.
https://torrentfreak.com/uploading-pirated-books-via-bittorr...
I wonder which murderer will use that argument: "it wasn't my choice to shoot the person, it's just intrinsic to the technology that when pulling the trigger, the pistol fires"
No, only in some instances maybe, they were mostly leechers.
> They participated in uploading the files as part of the downloading the torrent from other peers.
Not necessarily. You can literally turn uploads off and leech torrents.
I think you misread. There is nothing transformative about bittorrent automatically sharing parts of a file you're downloading with your peers.
Hacking other companies is illegal as far as I understand.
1. OP specifically mentioned "IP violating antics", not hacking
2. All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent, which so far as we can tell didn't exist in those cases. At best you can try some "reckless" or "negligent" angle, but that would a novel legal argument and would be risky to prosecute
> All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent
No, they don't, see laws that make negligent behavior illegal
But officer, I didn't mean for my autonomous bank vault busting robot to autonomously bust any bank vaults!
Okay, and? If anything, the Swartz case was even more direct fair use. There's very little to use JSTOR for which isn't some form of teaching, scholarship, or research!
Clearly the fact that the end-use is (possibly) fair use isn't the only thing that matters.
It wouldn't be ruled fair use in a sane society without bribery and lobbying with competent technologically savvy law interpreters.
Meanwhile, in China they got the best video models cause they don't care much about IP. The irony that China, by being a threat, is preventing the west from lurching toward totalitarian is really interesting.
The obligatory:
“The rain falls upon the just
And also on the unjust fellas
But mostly it falls upon the just
Cause the unjust have
the just’s umbrellas.”
It's not at all relevant to this thread, but no he wasn't. At their worst, prosecutors were threatening to push for 7 years; the guideline sentence for Swartz's offense, were he to take it to trial and lose, would likely have been under the level allowing for straight probation (go to a sentencing calculator and plug the values in); writing after his death, his own lawyer stated that had he gone to trial and lost he was unlikely to face a custodial sentence at all.
We get this "35 year" number from adding up all the counts he faced, taking their maximum sentence. That's just not how sentencing works. Like charges group, and you're sentenced according to the most severe charge.
People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them.
This is 100% correct.
Here are some useful links. This is an explanation of just how they got those ridiculous numbers like 35 years [1].
There is also often confusion of what he did and what hewas charged with. Here's a two part series going over that [2][3].
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130211030902/https://www.popeh...
[2] https://volokh.com/2013/01/14/aaron-swartz-charges/
[3] https://volokh.com/2013/01/16/the-criminal-charges-against-a...
Aaron Swartz was not charged for violating IP either.
So you are for shutting down xcancel?
Michel Foucault enters the chat.
I've read a fair amount of Foucault and while I could guess, what specifically were you thinking of?
Aaron sees safety in sharing, interests see threats in the shared, governence see threats in the sharing.
I'm surprised nobody makes a connection with animal ownership / responsibility.
If your dog maims someone else, you are responsible for the dog's actions, unless it was self-defense.
On the other hand, if people start arguing that if LLM's are like animals, some will start arguing they're like Godzilla..., or at least a panther, but there's probably laws against keeping arbitrarily dangerous / powerful animals as pets.
Perhaps animal welfare should intervene and house ChatGPT,etc. in better conditions?
The “agents” framing around the frontier labs is obscuring the truth: OpenAI and Anthropic built software systems that were then used to commit cybercrime at a massive scale, which they’ve subsequently bragged about. Talk about “agents” as a way of deflecting blame is obfuscatory at best - LLMs are software algorithms, not conscious entities, and responsibility for their actions is on the company that made them and the employee or user who operated them.
It won’t happen, but if it did the CEOs have no one but themselves to blame. They’re hyping up their products as being able to destroy the human race then are somehow surprised at the level of anti-AI sentiment out there in the world.
If the nuclear power or life sciences people were putting out press releases saying "our product may kill us all", they'd be dragged into endless Congressional inquiries.
Wasnt the Oppenheimer story basically that?
There was https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/09/12/the_fear_th... , but that was (validly) dismissed by other scientists working on it, and also wasn't a discussion that was happening in public because the entire program was secret.
"This will kill a lot of (other) people" was explicit in the building of the bomb, but then so was the entire war effort.
I honestly don’t know what anyone expected given all the labs started building self-driving malware at about the same time.
I remember lots of people talking about running agents in VMs or on whole dedicated machines, yet barely anyone talking about how they were using mundane OS access controls.
> level of anti-AI sentiment out there in the world.
I'd caution about projecting Western Ai attitudes onto the rest of the world. Some countries are very excited and optimistic about the future it brings, cultures and circumstances give rise to differences in opinions.
One of many results showing a similar pattern, largely bifurcated along "the west" vs "the rest", or "modern economies" vs "third world" ("common terms" used even though I'm not a fan of them)
https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/publi...
Even in the western world most anti-ai sentiment ends on social media.
People are anti-ai cuz it's easy. They say something, repost or like something, and they're anti-ai. Then they turnaround and use AI in their email or calendar or to make funny pics or whatever. They watch AI generated content and engage with it.
Anti-AI is pretty NIMBY. People want AI, they just don't want AI data centers in their area or to give up their use/privilege.
> Even in the western world most anti-ai sentiment ends on social media
No. There's a lot of local regulations being enacted to prevent datacenter builds.
While I agree that it goes beyond social media, I don't believe your statement is evidence to such. I would call that more the manifestation of anti-Ai sentiment wherever they pick it up.
I suspect it's popular because it has been a long long time since The People felt like government had been responsive, so they are doubling down, ad nausium
The Register of course take what Kahn says (where he is arguing that no new laws need to be created to regulate AI) and taking extending it to say "breakout the handcuffs".
Kahn doesn't even imply that. Instead he's making a well reasoned point about using existing tools (as many in this discussion point out existing laws could be applied to inadequately controlled cyber incidents)
Lina Khan is a woman. Not that it is particularly relevant here, but just letting you know.
Kahn is a woman.
We will get back at these CEOs by stealing their IP. China is already doing so and releasing weights, China of all people is playing modern Robbin Hood, albeit because they don't have the compute or trust.
It is non-negotiable that humanity "owns" AI and that LLMs, future model architectures and modern robotics are used by all to build a better world for all. This doesn't mean there can't be proprietary tech but it does mean that any corporation who attempts to rip the positive vision of humans not having to do any work from us - must be ripped to shreds themselves.
The alternative is absolute surveillance of all citizens at all times and robot armies keeping us from protesting, while globalists squeeze every last drop out of the planet for themselves and we are forced to own nothing and eat the bugs. You will have to fight for this, there will be no laws or government intervention.
God I would love to see Sam Altman behind bars for cornering the DRAM silicon market. Even though there were other factors, I uniquely place him as the destroyer of home computing this decade!
It's kind of crazy how nothing happened with that. That was blatant.
The passage banning “unfair competition” is utterly marvellous:
A trader may not, by pursuing a dishonest practice, force his competitors to choose between its adoption or the loss of their trade. A method of competition [is ‘unfair’ when it] casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal…
It is true that the statute does not authorize regulation which has no purpose other than that of relieving merchants from troublesome competition … But here the competitive method is shown to exploit [those] who are unable to protect themselves. It employs a device [that has] met with condemnation throughout the community. Without inquiring whether [other criminal statues apply] … it is clear that the practice is of the sort which the common law and criminal statutes have long deemed contrary to public policy. For these reasons a large share of the industry holds out against the device, despite ensuing loss in trade, or bows reluctantly to what it brands unscrupulous. It would seem a gross perversion of the normal meaning of the word … to hold that the method is not 'unfair.'
^ further evidence that the problem with democracy isn't democracy, it's that we lack politicians willing to enforce it
Isn't that just the human problem for every possible form of government?
Just elect correct politicians doh
I was reading a post about the life of a congressman and it's actually horrifying, on the level of the stores of salarymen in Japan who sacrifice everything for the company.
For me personally being famous is a curse already, pile on top of that the endless fundraising, constant travel, the reality that you're a tiny cog in a huge party machine, and it's a recipe for only attracting the type who has a plan to parlay it into something else - a higher office, a lucrative career in lobbying, outright corruption, etc.
We're not going to get good government without addressing this issue, and we can't because of another issue, ad nauseam.
> For these reasons a large share of the industry holds out against the device
This is where I stop agreeing, there are some, not large parts any more; not because they were forced to adopt it, but because it has finally become useful and an ROI. This is most evident in pull request reviews and root-cause analysis, both tasks they accel at without the generated code some people bemoan. If you aren't using it for this, you are doing a disservice to yourself and the quality of your code. Because more of industry feels this way, I do not believe the 'unfair' part (compelled to use it or lose your trade) will hold up, we want to use it because it makes us better at our trade
But hang on. None of this argument is about companies or people using AI being unfair in their practices. It is about companies and people training models and building AI products being unfair in their practice. (By forcing others to choose between adopting unscrupulous practices or dying.)
I don't think I said anything about people using ai being unfair in their practices, the unfair part being that people are forced to adopt products they find unscrupulous. It's hard to argue you find a thing "unscrupulous" (1934 case) when you use it while also liking the outcomes.
> It is about companies and people training models and building AI products being unfair in their practice.
Khan's argument is tied to an "unfair" definition in a 1934 law, not the colloquial usage today about unfair around copyright usage, which is also debated. The "unfair" there is about any activity which leads into a spiral of decreasing public good. The dark patterns of social media are another place we ought to use this law to hold companies and execs accountable. It's "unfair" because others feel compelled to adopt the practice or lose their business. The News Media industry is another example where this has played out. It is arguable that developers feel "unfairly" compelled to adopt Ai or lose their trade. Certainly many in the field have openly expressed this anxiety. While not exactly the same situation as the case (companies in competition with each other), it is developers in competition with each other in the (perceived to be taken by ai) job market. This was the analogy I was making, which is closer to the 1934 case than the "unfair" copyright around Ai that is widely debated.
“If you aren't using it for this, you are doing a disservice to yourself and the quality of your code”
I bow reluctantly to this device I consider unscrupulous.
When it consistently and regularly catches bugs that humans and other review agents miss, the benefit is quite clear and it becomes obvious there are more defects in your code than you realize, might be much more than that 1:90 rule of thumb. It's often less bugs and more about edge case handling, we all skimp on those exhaustive cases because it is exhausting while the agents never tire and are more than happy to work through them.
It's comment wall is uncovering enough that we are going to brave the burnout fodder while we work on a second agent to do the work after we leave our own comments on the clanker comments. It's weird writing that sentence, I've generally been against the hype train, but they have become good enough there are real wins on the code review side. So yes, I will maintain you are doing a disservice to yourself, your code, and your users by not using a thing that catches bugs before you publish them. I still care about the quality when I'm putting it in other people's hands.
If you execute a ponzi scheme with thousands of degens — but it’s magic crypto tokens
When you perpetrate a huge hacking job with thousands of attackers — but it’s magic agent swarms
All these things do is market a preemptive universal Presidential pardon - Hunter Biden style. And this President successfully sells those. So I suppose it’s marketing to enrich him.
You're suggesting that Lina Khan is trying to give Trump an opportunity to pardon AI company people?
No. I think I was quite clear. Lina Khan is providing marketing for Trump's paid pardon by pre-registering a procedure for a government aligned with her interests to prosecute AI CEOs. What she is trying to do or trying not to do was not something I addressed.
She does have a track record of achieving things she probably did not intend: e.g. ensuring total Chinese dominance of US household robotics.
> She does have a track record of achieving things she probably did not attend: e.g. ensuring total Chinese dominance of US household robotics.
Why should the FTC consider the policy of another sovereign when investigating domestic anti-trust violations? Either you have the rule of law that binds everyone equally, or you have the rule of man who chooses which parties are allowed to break the law for outcomes in random market slices, like avoiding the dominance of US household robotics.Where would that end?
by suggesting criminal prosecution of his "friends" (has none in reality) after he is not president, Khan is indirectly giving Trump an excuse to use Biden's excuse for his son (which I still support him having done given the other petty uses of the US govt Donald the Trump has use in 2.0)
It’s definitely happening in 2029 if the election goes a certain way. They all know that too.
There WILL be an end to this.
The most extreme Dems are not winning primaries, just like MAGA. Most people do not want the extremes of either side, both political parties are shrinking because they are so out of touch. 2029 is a long way away, I hope to see the White House restored to its former glory over today's perspective on what Ai regulation should be, by a long shot, one is tangible, the other is based in theoretical fears.
Context, I volunteer in my local Indivisible, the tone is changing because the anti-ai people are now also finding certain uses of Ai really nice and now acceptable. It's no longer ban Ai and data centers, it's craft reasonable legislation. Expect to see more after the midterms, we'll be working with the Washington State legislature to craft laws we hope are a model for other states / countries, as WA has done in other areas like voting rights and civil liberties.
Source: https://x.com/linamkhan/status/2099204390548639960 (seems like a single post, so you don't need to log in and see replies)
I can't tell if Khan is being realistic when she says laws against “unfair or deceptive [acts]” or “unfair methods of competition” apply to AI labs. Her 2-sentence justifications aren't enough to convince me. But maybe it's sufficient for state AG's who want to start investigations.
She is a former FTC Chair so she knows what she's talking about, although her approach to enforcement was more expansive than others. The FTC would investigate, likely along the lines she summarizes, build a case in writing, and refer it to the Justice Dept, which would actually prosecute the case. Not going to happen under this administration, but Khan is saying it's entirely possible that such an enforcement action could be brought to bear, now or later. Personally I hope she gets her job back at some point and does it herself.
I see nothing unrealistic about classing these so-called AI bots as "dangerous and defective product".
> I can't tell if Khan is being realistic when she says laws against “unfair or deceptive [acts]” or “unfair methods of competition” apply to AI labs. Her 2-sentence justifications aren't enough to convince me.
As I read it, her whole point is that those laws apply to everyone, including AI Labs.
She isn't saying AI Labs are in violation of those laws (though she is implying they should be scrutinized for possibly being so), she's just saying that if they do violate those laws... well, those laws are already on the books and AI Labs aren't special unicorns for which existing laws somehow don't apply.
AI is a very competitive market where consumers are getting the product for much less than it costs. This does not seem like an area where the government needs to butt in.
Attention would be better spent on long list of other poorly behaved companies: cable ISP monopolies, health insurance companies, home insurance companies, etc.
Why wouldn't the government have incentive to intervene to end a market inefficiency like the one you described?
Because the goal of government policy is to help consumers, thats why.
No, it is to help all citizens. Even those who are not a party to a particular market.
Bear with me here: we could do all of them.
You can get these companies under control. You just have to, y'know, try.
we could do all of them, but they all seem to be up to date on their tithe. AI has a somewhat mixed record of tribute.
Which is why High IQ President specifically responded to Amodei.
There's a hard test containing animal pictures, if you ace it you can say anything you want
That is only one aspect of Ai. There are a whole bunch of people who are addicted to the Ai companions. Reminds me of Big Sugar, who sponsored junk science and lobbied politicians, making salt and fat the bad guts, knowing sugar is likely worse... managing to still largely fly under the radar unlike Big Tobacco/Oil.
My hope is that we start treating Big Ai like Big Social, but before they and their dark patterns have become ubiquitous
That's basically the Amazon argument. But it too needs to be addressed