I don’t think it’s the AI companies that are producing the Deep Fakes. Non-consensual deepfake pornography, voice cloning scams, video deepfakes for fraud / impersonation are mostly produced by local AI that people build on their own computers. The AI companies will not allow you to do anything close to that. I once tried to do a search on a local business, to see what the hell they did, and it thought I was attempting to track an individual and I was denied service. I just wanted the AI to help me find the legitimate websites this business was advertising on.
Rick supports local AI as he did a video on it. A legitimate use for a musician would be a composer without an orchestra writing a score and being able to hear it back without hiring the New York Philharmonic to do a rehearsal.
I’d be interested to hear Rick’s opinion on the entire Napster and peer to peer lawsuits. People uploaded their records and CD’s and distributed the music to anybody that had a computer and an internet connection. Alot of artists had a problem with it. And many did not and used it for better promotion.
Many considered Napster (and similar P2P services like Kazaa) as legitimate peer-to-peer technology that was unfairly targeted and shut down by industry and government forces, with Metallica serving as a convenient public surrogate rather than genuine aggrieved artists. Bands like Metallica make nothing from royalties and never did. .0003 cents per play?
So the government went after users and that shifted the entire industry to the Amazon model. You own NOTHING!! You don’t own the book you buy for kindle nor do you own the music.
The lawsuits against peer to peer providers actually created the hostile environment that we are in. Industrial control. P2P innovation threatened the industry’s control and we know the corruption in the music and movie business.
End-user lawsuits + forcing tech companies to police and assume liability was disproportionate and revealed the true power dynamics between the music industry, government, and emerging tech.
I personally wouldn’t upload my personal music collection so a group of strangers in the world could enjoy it.
The same battle goes on with writers. Many writers claim that giving out free books or portions of the writings actually helps physical sales. The samething happened with google that’s happening with Anthropic.
They scanned every possible book and created google books so you could read at least parts of the book before purchasing. Google was not found liable for copyright infringement but made big settlements out of court.
After more than a decade of litigation, U.S. courts ultimately held that Google’s mass scanning for search and limited snippet display was lawful fair use. Google was not “punished” for scanning the volumes without permission.
Rick and his lawyer friend are claiming the same thing. Fair use allows him to show video’s of bands, and strum other people’s tunes for purposes of teaching. Rick and everyone else in the music industry consider Don Henley of the Eagles a tyrant. I totally see nothing wrong with Rick and other music critics use of music for this purpose.
I’m not saying that uploading your recordings was right either. Some artists like Dave Mathews released singles on napster, every one downloaded it for free, and he still made tons as the song went to #1 and he filled stadiums. How most famous musicians make the big money.
Prince, The Beatles, definitely Metallica, Led Zepplin and others are very aggressive to protect their music. Each of them different with the latitude given.
Many people who believe in natural rights believe that copyright as an extension of tangible property rights into the realm of intellectual creations.
This includes Ayn Rand and various mainstream libertarian writers who defend IP as part of a free society.
Then there is the anti copyright natural rights people that believe copyright is not a natural property right but a government-granted monopoly that restricts what other people may do with their own physical property (their computers, printers, hard drives, voices, etc.).
Historical origins: Copyright began as a tool of state censorship and monopoly privilege (e.g., the Stationers’ Company in England), not as a pure recognition of natural rights.
The other question is the ability to clone someone’s image or in this case, the guys studio. Supreme court says there is no expectation of privacy in public. I can take pictures of you all day if both you and I are on a public space. By going out in public, you knowingly make yourself observable by others. You cannot simultaneously demand that strangers ignore what is in plain sight.
If I’m out filming and you have a big window that allows people to see inside, it’s possible it could be allowed. And in the United States you can publish that picture. I wouldn’t do it myself but the 1st amendment allows for it. So now the arguement of persona pirates. If I take a picture of you in public, I can also publish it. How is this different? I don’t know. Not asserting a truth rather asking questions.
AI companies are arguing over whether to share their AI models with everyone or keep them locked up. An “open” model is like a recipe posted online: anyone can download it, run it on their own computer, study it, and change it.
A “closed” model is like a secret restaurant recipe: you can order the food, but you can’t see how it’s made, and the company decides who gets to use it and how. People who favor open models say sharing helps science move faster, lets more people and smaller companies build useful things, keeps any one company from having too much power, and gives defenders tools to fight hackers.
People who favor closed models say that once a powerful AI is shared, there’s no way to take it back, so bad actors could use it for things like cyberattacks, and the company can no longer add safety limits.
The fight has grown bigger because Chinese companies have released free open models that are almost as good as the best American ones, so now it’s also about which country leads in AI. Many big U.S. tech companies argue America needs strong open models to compete, while Anthropic, the company that makes me, argues the most powerful models should only go to trusted groups. In the end, the debate comes down to one big question: who should control this powerful technology?
Do we want government to do what they did with Napster? Do we want government to go into Rick Beato’s house and remove his local models?
BTW, I have had my intellectual discoveries that were not published in any book on cycles and market forecasting co-opted and monetized. And have seen my work on others youtube video’s. I know what it feels like. I closed down my social media and stopped sharing. The average person didn’t get what I was doing but the eyes of people that were interest in glory and making money from the model stole it.
I personally find all these questions quite difficult and delicate issues.
