He explains that “cutting-edge AI capabilities” are now available for every company to buy for the price of standard software. But that instead of building a whole AI system, he says many firms are simply popping a chatbot interface on top of a non-AI product.

Well, yeah, because that’s what LLMs can do.

We’re not near the point where it’s reasonable or intelligent to allow “AI” into the driver’s seat. There are specific spaces where machine learning can be a useful tool to find patterns in data, and you would plug that model into normal tools. There are plenty of normal tools that can be made more user friendly with a well designed LLM based chatbot.

There are not a lot of spaces where you would want an ML model and and LLM interface, because there’s just too much extra uncertainty when you aren’t really sure what’s being asked and you aren’t really sure where the underlying patterns of the model come from. We’re not anywhere close to “intelligence”, and the people selling something claiming they’re “doing real AI” are almost certainly misrepresenting themselves as much as anyone else.

I’m always skeptical of anything LLM, but this looks like an interesting use case on the surface.

It doesn’t matter if the copy is all at once. Every bit of the file touching your computer involves multiple copies. It is fundamentally impossible to share any file without copies being made. The original digitization is already probably illegal because it’s for the purpose of distribution and not one of the fair use exceptions. Again, this is exactly identical to the claim that pirate sites providing streaming is legal.

Libraries do not make copies. Legally, it’s exactly that simple. There is no ambiguity in any way. It is copyright infringement under current law. It is not possible to defend this without throwing current law in the trash and starting over from scratch. If the judge did somehow rule in IA’s favor the Supreme Court could overrule him in about 30 seconds with basically no deliberation. Courts do not have the authority to change the law.

There’s no possible way to apply the law where the Internet Archive is permitted to do their lending program. It very clearly is illegal copyright infringement that does not come anywhere close to fair use.

The judges do not have the authority to completely overrule both the text of the law and the massive body of precedent. The Supreme Court could, except the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the right to regulate IP how they see fit, and the law is super clear that you can’t do anything that resembles what IA is doing in any way.

https://fortelabs.co/blog/the-secret-power-of-read-it-later-apps

So this article was included with Omnivore, which is suggested elsewhere in this thread, but it does provide a bunch of well structured arguments for the utility of a dedicated app.

Thanks for this. I don’t usually dive into longer format article stuff because I find it on my phone and reading on my phone sucks. I tried pocket, but it didn’t function at all on my reader.

This solves that problem reasonably well.

(Edit: also an RSS reader? Maybe I should start using RSS again. I do wish it offered paged navigation controls to better work on an ereader, but it’s definitely an improvement still.)

Because the libraries have explicit licenses from the IP holders.

The encryption is literally entirely irrelevant.

The argument that a copy in your browser is legally defensible is the equivalent of claiming that sites can legally stream movies to you. It is a copy, both legally and in reality.

Then write new laws. Digitizing the book is already relying on fair use. Judges aren’t lawmakers, and this case doesn’t have the tiniest hint of the tiniest shred of a leg to stand on.

There is no first sale doctrine for digital. There is no such thing as ownership of a “digital copy” to begin with. The framework doesn’t exist. You have a license.

Yep. Libraries can’t just buy an ebook like they can buy a book. They have to negotiate a contract with the copyright holder to be able to lend them out.

I really don’t think anyone envisioned the way digital distribution would change when the DMCA was written.

But my point isn’t that there’s political will to make a change, but that the judiciary really doesn’t have the capacity to rule any other way than the obvious “you can’t do this”. It would be a completely wild precedent for this case to somehow result in a ruling that it’s fair use based on the actual law and the history of previous rulings.

I tried. It’s basically the only app I couldn’t get to work on my boox.

But there’s a very clear distinction in the law. Libraries are covered under first sale doctrine. You can do effectively what you want with a physical object that contains copyrighted material placed there by the owner.

Digital anything is not covered by the first sale doctrine. Every individual loan is a copy. Every time a “copy” moves between devices is a copy. There is no legal framework for ownership of anything digital. It’s always a license, no matter what permissions that license grants you.

You have to pass new laws to match the digital world. Under the current laws, it’s extremely clear that lending unauthorized digital copies of a physical book is copyright infringement. Wholesale copies of a work aren’t even in the neighborhood of fair use, especially when you’re distributing a bunch of them. DRMing those copies is completely irrelevant legally.

If you’re scared about Microsoft tracking your UX engagement on a website, the best way to make sure your sex life stays private is to file it in federal court.

Yeah it’s not really supposed to be “funny”. It’s just Barney being corny because that’s who the character is. (When he’s not being a sociopath with women.)

Imagine that.

DNS names are restricted to your tailnet’s domain name (node-name.tailnet-name.ts.net)

I guess that’s fine for some. Not a compromise I’m willing to make though.

According to the article, they basically copied and pasted code from the earlier version to a new place for some new purpose, which is the same thing Hashicorp did for the same purpose in their new version.

No idea what the actual details are, but that seems pretty likely to be permissible under the first license to me.

Discussing piracy is most definitely not illegal in the US. It’s protected by the first amendment, and there aren’t laws that even try to restrict it.

The only part of the DMCA that really has any complexity is the anti-circumvention bit, and that has no relevance anywhere to discussing piracy or tools that can be used for piracy.

He’s talking about user generated content from other users.