When it comes to copyright, I am not so optimistic. When the AI bubble bursts, the usual corporate interests will resurface with a vengeance.

So long as there's big money interests around copyright, I assure you it will not die. And all the predictions about the knives coming out after the AI bubble pops are spot on.

It took a while for the DMCA to happen after Napster. But it indeed happened, and we all know the saying about history repeating itself.

> It took a while for the DMCA to happen after Napster.

By the time they came for Napster technology had already moved on. I can still download entire albums and movies in minutes 2 decades later. Heck, Usenet is still a bastion of piracy and that's been around for 46 years.

> I can still download entire albums and movies in minutes 2 decades later.

Yeah, but you cannot do so legally; you can't build a business of it. The AI companies are trying to build a business, not download movies for their kids to watch during school holidays!

The DMCA was passed in 1998. Napster didn't really hit big until 1999.

The 90s young people are familiar with are... way different from the 90s I remember. Their understanding of it is like... if someone asked to AI-gen the decade.

Wow, you're right. The DMCA happened while I was out of the country doing something very not-tech-scene related, so I completely missed that it passed way the heck back then.

I suppose my point still stands if you are willing to stretch back to Usenet, BBSs, etc. as an inflection point in mass copyright infringement.

I have been using the alias feature for years now with Fastmail. Deleting an alias is hands-down the quickest and most convenient way to unsubscribe from whatever drivel a company ends up sending my way care of their slimey marketing vendor.

I just use my area code followed by 867-5309. It's quick, non-confrontational, and completely lost on whatever generation is currently manning the register.

Ah yes, good old Jenny. I use the same trick for persistent door knockers or sales drones.

I have been telling door knocking, clip board holding sales people that "we rent" for forty years. Also hold my phone up to my ear pretending to be on a call just in case they persist.

Bummer that you got shadow banned.

Now many of us will get to learn how to find meaning in a life where your time is worth about $2-4/hour, which is the reality for about 2 billion people today.

The font color is so close to the background now that I can't even read your edit. Sorry, bud.

Depending on the make and model, send a reverse feed code and then overwrite with block characters. You will know that something bad happened, but you won't know what.

That makes it inconvenient to read, not impossible. E.g. use transmitted instead of reflected light (shine a bright light behind the paper) to see how much ink is in each place.

So overwrite with random patterns of dots. You could "arms race" this all the way to the point where you need a scanning electron microscope.

But this line of discussion is entirely missing my original point.

Maybe I am living in a bubble, but no company I have worked at in the past 15 years has cared in the least about either Windows or Office.

For me the analogy doesn't totally hold up. Suppose the CEO of Smith & Wesson were to host a firing range on their own property without adequate barriers in place to keep stray bullets from hitting neighboring houses, vehicles, and businesses. Maybe that analogy isn't perfect, but seems closer to what is actually happening.

The analogies are so bad because you might prompt an agent “Please give me a recipe for lasagna” and instead it decides to hack a nuclear reactor.

Is it my fault or the company who trained it and is running the inference?

That still sounds like it would be the company’s fault. If I asked it to hack a nuclear reactor, maybe it would be different. I’m also thinking about instances where OpenAI’s own test models escaped their own sandboxes — I would expect them to be responsible for the damages they caused.

The correct analogy is playing Russian roulette. The company says "you can pull the trigger but sometimes a bullet will come out" (see: "an AI can make mistakes"). However, is the company allowed to sell such a dangerous device, under these terms?