Industry Presses The FCC To Keep Funding Broadband Growth; + more notable news

I think this is one of the few times in history that I'm actually cheering for the RIAA. Don't get me wrong. They are one of the most greedy and despicable corporations on earth. But if they can keep this AI from becoming the norm and keep music as the art form It has been over history, I think I can get behind that as a music lover(Who hates all this autotune and shit). Because AI has been ruining a lot of things, like journalism and creativity. It can definitely be a useful tool. But you won't see me lining up to buy music that was simply created by a computer. I'm having another reality TV moment when I questioned how our standards have gotten so low. During the mass flood of reality TV shows, I had that exact thought.

I don’t have strong objections to AI created music. My objection, which RIAA shares (I too am dumbfounded to be cheering for them) is how the AI outfits are hoovering up EVERYTHING they can get their hands on without regards to copyright, licensing, or even common sense/decency. They Don’t Care and if anyone else did it they’d be in jail for massive copyright infringement.

It’s Yet Another Example of tech bros “moving fast and breaking things” and it will end badly for everyone except the tech bros themselves. The gig economy broke decades of labor and consumer rights, social media broke civil society and may yet break democracy. Amazon is anti-consumer and employee in a way Walmart (remember when THEY were the bad guy?) could only dream of.

Everything they’ve done has arguably been a Net Minus for society. They can’t be bothered to follow the rules the rest of us do. If I had built a business through premeditated law breaking as Uber did I’d be in jail. Their Founder is now a billionaire.

AI should end with the computer from the Enterprise-D. With these idiots in charge, we won’t get the Star Trek universe, we’ll get the Hunger Games one.

Be equally upset with how the public doesn't give a hoot about that and is happy to use the AI crap in their daily lives.

It's the further enshittification of society.

ALL of this. Agreed 100%, including the reality TV crap.

I grew up when bands had to be great musicians and vocalists themselves, and it didn't matter what they looked like. We loved them for who they were and what they brought to our lives. Imagine today's music industry finding itself face to face with a young Mick Jagger; they'd toss him on the trash heap and never look back. "He doesn't have the look." This is really no different than what we learned about the industry from the Brady Bunch and Johnny Bravo. But I digress.

What I'm fascinated with in this matter is that this is 100% a perfect reason for a lawsuit. No laws have ever been written with this situation in mind, not even a hint. I fully support the record industry in bringing this suit, and I fully support the AI industry in fighting this suit. Each side is as right and wrong as the other, and this deserves to be brought to the public light in a court of law where the merits can be judged by whatever current laws we have.

I think this will come down if the courts are ready to declare a computer 'a person' in terms of sensory rights and what level of AI or algorithms makes this 'computer thinking' like a human. Regardless a computer is still an extension of a human who programmed it or owns it so can a human legally play music and record it with their own personal computer? Also, can a human listen and make derivative works without proving they obtained or listened to the copyrighted work legally or illegally?

Currently a standard for a "derivative work" is a human decided it if it is different enough. It is very subjective. If a judge or jury determines it is a derivative work (different enough) then legally there are no damages and a human cannot be stopped from making money off their inspired work.

Streaming services will have a TOS that will say no computer or AI can listen or subscribe, but is it then illegal for a human to play their streaming on loudspeaker and for another person or computer to listen?
It is illegal for a computer or AI to listen to the radio?
Is it illegal for a computer or AI to listen to someone's bootleg music stream?
It is illegal for a computer or AI to listen to free streaming services that dont require an account/TOS acceptance?
It is illegal for a computer or AI to listen to another person's legally obtained stream?
It is illegal for a computer or AI to use another person's streaming account?
Is it illegal for a computer or AI to listen to someone else's legally purchased mp3 collection?  

Are these same things legal or illegal for a human to do?

My guess is the court will make a non-precedent setting ruling around TOS violations and that the files were copied to a computer and not played at its original speed like a human would have to listen to it. They will say the company cannot prove they obtained all materials legally. They will kind of set up that copyright law is intended for humans and fair use/derivative works are only valid at the normal speed that a human can go for sensory perception. But once in memory/brain then the computer can go as fast as possible since we dont have a limit for human thinking.

Then AI companies are going to then change to feeding in information at normal speeds but with "multiple input sensors" in parallel. So the next case will then argue that copyright law only applies at the speed of human perception and 1 at a time. So then any input into a single memory has to be at the normal played speed, one at a time.
Then you now will start the war of companies owning, human paced, memory banks that can legally be used for derivative works. That could be the next bitcoin for value. People can then lease their single brain to someone else to use for their projects. This also prevents competition as competition would have to start from scratch at human pace for inputting copyrighted works. You will have lobbyists now for AI/computer rights to get copyright laws changed.

This is all going to get complicated over and over again between human laws and computers.
The funny part is no one actually has real AI right now, they just call it AI.

The RIAA lawsuit seems to be a very interesting hybrid of patent/copyright infringement and public performance. And they still might have a case if a computer were to be declared as a human being, as scary of a thought as that is. The patent part comes from the copyrighted Work basically being implemented in computer code, In the process of the training. When it reproduces derivatives and sometimes exact reproductions(oops) of the work, that would actually possibly run afoul of public performance rules that are currently on the books.

So if a computer were argued and accepted as being a human being, these public performance laws regarding copyrighted works would very much apply to human beings. They were created for human beings. The lawyers might want to be careful where they step on this one for future precedent, but I think the RIAA has the upper hand here. Of course, this could get companies like Microsoft involved, who have a huge stake in the technology and the lawyer armies could get very large. It would not be the first time a corporation tried to defend a smaller company, in order to protect their own interests. And yhe RIAA doesn't need to get computers declared human beings because a human is operating them In a manner that infringes. People are not generally allowed to perform copyrighted music, even if the "Instrument" Is a computer, and distribute it on the Internet without permission.

I think each case will take the easiest way out to avoid ruling on the actual issue.
Right now these companies are ripping 100 years of music in 1 hr which is not possible for a human. It will be so easy for a court to rule that the fair use and copyright exemptions were made to only go at normal human speeds which is listening to one song at a time and at normal play speed.

Delaying tactics like lawsuits may slow the corporate pressure for the AI Apocalypse but it will inevitably make copyright ( and likely patent and trademark ) effectively meaningless. Regurgitation of established art is already preferred over new, and this will only get worse.