Daily Tech News 31 August 2023

• OpenAI has disputed the claims in a class action suit brought by various authors such as Richard Kadrey, and "authors" such as Sarah Silverman, responding with your momma is a derivative work. (Ars Technica)

  Authors claim generative AI is just a "grift" that repackages original works.

  The first half of this is self-evident.
  
  The second half is like saying steak is just repackaged carbon dioxide. Yes. Grass absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to grow. Cows eat grass. People eat cows.
  
  But the carbon dioxide is free, so it's irrelevant.
  
  In just the same way, authors - and "authors" - repackage the work of previous authors. We accept this if they're sufficiently subtle about it, and the flavour comes out different, just like cows and grass.
  
  We don't expect grass to pay for the right to absorb carbon dioxide from the air, nor do we require authors to pay commercial licenses for the books they read as they learn to write.
  
  But if we are served a plate of alleged steak, and it is green and leafy, we tend to riot and burn the restaurant down. Metaphorically.
  
  Much as I loathe OpenAI as a bunch of useless grifters, what they are doing is clearly fair use under US law. Which doesn't mean they will win in court, and certainly doesn't mean that the law won't end up changing.
  
  It just means that they are right.

• Australia's government has dropped planned age-verification legislation for online porn - which is to say, the entire internet - and will instead leave it to the online porn industry - which is again to say the entire internet - to muddle through somehow. (The Guardian)
  
  Apparently a factor in this decision was the argument that such legislation would unfairly burden the LGBTQ+ community.
  
  Which, well, whatever. Use their own rules against them. A win is a win.
  
  
  
• You can track anyone's travels on the New York subway with just their credit card details. (404 Media)
  
  An MTA official responded to the report, saying "Was that wrong? Should we not have done that?"
  
  
  
• I've quoted articles from new news site 404 Media a couple of times recently, so I checked to see if they were worth following.
  
  Internal emails show superintendents struggling to comply with "Don't Say Gay" law.
  
  No, it's the usual hyperpartisan liberal dogshit. Like The Verge, but with worse typography.
  
  
  
• The EPA has removed protections for most of America's wetlands. (NPR)
  
  Not because they are suddenly pro-development, but because they claimed control over every damp patch and mud puddle in the country, and got a Stinger missile to the face from the Supreme Court.
  
  
  
• If you save - not bookmark, but save, which is a different mechanism somehow - a link in Google Chrome, and Google doesn't like it, they will delete it. (TorrentFreak)
  
  Thanks Google.
  
  
  
• We all know Threads is dead. But what exactly killed it? (Tech Crunch)
  
  The problem is twofold: First, Twitter already exists. You can't just build a better Twitter. If it was still the Day of the Failwhale, maybe. When it was still under the control of Vijaya Gadde and her Stalin Youth Squad, maybe. But right now, it's... Mostly adequate.
  
  Second, people online are mostly either boring or awful, and the ones fleeing freedom of expression on Elon Musk's version of Twitter - the ones flocking to Threads in those heady first minutes - are both.
  
  The article doesn't come to either of those conclusions, though, because it is written by those same people.
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:10 AM

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