Comments on: The library of Utopia

By: MatthewQ

MatthewQ — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:57:20 +0000

Once AI has been developed is either next week or next century, it remains to be seen. In the mean time, I would like to get paid for my work if possible. Why should Stephen King and George R R Martin get to have all the fun? Sure, once benevolent AI is developed we can all slumber in its arms and live our lives in perfect utopian simulations or whatever. But we are not there yet.

I fail to see how I am oppressing anyone by claiming intellectual propriety of the product of my mind. So how long should my copyright period be? A year? A month? And then what? You and Google and everyone else gets to have it? By what right?

You have to keep in mind, the futuristic evolved economy you speak of has not happened yet. However, Google wishes to scan things now. That’s the problem. The issues need to get sorted before they should be allowed to proceed. Otherwise, why would any writer bother to sit down for 6 months and write a novel?

I also refute the notion that an AI could write the same novel I could write. It would have to go back and live my life and integrate all my experiences in a creative fusion with contemporary culture. I do not see this being something an AI could do. Sure, a powerful enough AI could brute force every combination of words in the English language up to say- 100,000 words or so (which wouldn’t even get you a Game of Thrones novel) but the amount of computational power for that would be truly staggering. But the real feat would be for the AI to understand why a human would select one work as a great read and another not. We are a long long way from such a feat. Humans don’t even properly know what book will be a big hit and what not. Look at film. You can have every critic rave about a film and it can be a financial failure because nobody liked it. You’d have to teach an AI to be irrational to even come close and we haven’t even made a rational AI yet.

For all we know, once AI has been created they will create their own sort of copyright laws that prevent humans from benefiting from the product of their intellect. This gets back to the whole ‘how can you know the mind of god’ argument. Sure, we might like to project what a super AI might do but it will most likely be incomprehensible to us and we beneath its notice.

By: Anon User

Anon User — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:43:56 +0000

Once AI has been developed that can create any meme de novo, our species will definitely be free from the oppression bullshit of “intellectual property”. Or when we uplift either sapiens or others some species to transcend the intellect of modern humans. Probably sooner, “copyright” is on an exponential decay trend. Sentient brains assimilate their environment regardless of who created the meme first. There are probably civilizations who have gone through the “copyright” stage of evolution before us, and all human invented memes are thence stolen.

I copyrighted this meme, all your synapses are belong to me.

As for finance, new business models will emerge. Economics will evolve.

By: Anon User

Anon User — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:36:11 +0000

Of course it is

By: Editor

Editor — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 02:21:37 +0000

Good ideas. Spotify is a successful model: they managed to sign 300,000 labels for more than 18 million songs, with more than 20,000 new songs added a day and $250 million paid to rightsholders since launch. — http://www.spotify.com/us/about-us/press/information/

By: eldras

eldras — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:31:06 +0000

People have been screaming for this for years. The British Library has 900km of books being digitalized. It will take until 2343 to complete at present rates. There are dramatic shortcuts that can be done.
1.The copyright rule can be adjusted down to compensate for accelerating technology.
2. Books already digitalized can be imported.
3. The public can be engaged on a Project Gutenberg -type volunteer force.
4. Robots ca be specifically designed that are kinder to handling of books than men and photograph them in1/10th of the time.
used.
5. World libraries can cooperate and translation tools used or invented.
6. Cross-referencing systems can be built into the software that would enable knowledge permutation.

It is not true we have plenty of time. Existential risks may emerge and mastery of information could avert catastrophes: access to knowledge freely may help and woud be come seen as a human right.

By: Anon

Anon — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 18:27:02 +0000

I hope so!

By: MatthewQ

MatthewQ — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:58:19 +0000

I am torn. On the hand, I would like all knowledge to be free and accessible. That would be the perfect world. But on the other I would like to be able to make money from writing. It takes a lot of time and effort to create a novel or screenplay. Look at the latter- screenplays. If Hollywood moguls could get their hands on free scripts they certainly wouldn’t hesitate to make piles of money turning them into films while the writer of the work would find himself struggling to pay his basic bills.

There has to be a way to do it and ensure that writers- professionals and aspiring amateurs alike- would get taken care of. Some form of copyright has to be observed. Perhaps a shorter copyright shelf life than the one we currently use?

I would point out- in case people bring up the music industry- musicians can still make loads of money via live performances of their work. Radiohead, for example, allowed people to pay what they wanted to for one of their albums and download it (meaning people could get it for free) but they were still able to tour and make a killing with live performances. Nobody is going to pay money to see a writer at work unless they are also the type to enjoy watching paint dry.

And I would also point out that the entertainment value of a nice beefy novel is considerably more than a film or a song. It can take you anywhere from 8 hours to a week to read a novel while a song is over in 3 minutes. It’s not a trivial form of entertainment, fiction.

I realise that most people are maybe thinking about research material and ‘knowledge’ per se when they look at this but it was precisely because of Google scanning copyrighted work that it ran into problems in the first place. All these things need to get sorted out properly before they just open up the barn door to a universal free library.

By: Vin

Vin — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 16:56:10 +0000

Do you think copyright power is on an exponential decay trend?

By: asiwel

asiwel — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:22:02 +0000

Although I do understand copyrights, etc., .. and the value of owning unique things, etc., I have always been greatly inspired by the Google book-scanning program and have been saddened by the continual “legal” and “metaphysical” arguments that have constantly impeded it. I always have felt we should be thankful and grateful to Google for this, as we are to non-profit foundations that support research and dissemination efforts for things that may not be “commercial” but can benefit the lives of people all over the world.

By: Frank Callery

Frank Callery — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:09:42 +0000

Having spent many years researching as a privateer, coming up against the profit-based institutions who have cornered the vast Knowledge Well and who have restricted public access — unless you pay through the nose — I welcome Robert Darnton’s efforts to “make all knowledge available to all citizens.” I have to say that of the many institutions I have dealt with, Harvard has been the least restrictive.