Thread by @davidclowery

In the age of Silicon Valley monopoly pseudo-capitalism, a tell that an organization is up to no good, is the use of the word "open." Take OpenAI. It has slathered itself in a pseudo-academic ooze, presenting papers, hosting "discussions, hoping you don't realize who really owns

OpenAI: The same Silicon Valley monopoly pseudo capitalists that have given you all the other monopoly platforms. Start with Sequoia capital. Go from there. Now it's important for the scam to present it as something that is "open" to the public as if they are creating something..

like a public park or library (one of SVs favorite Trojan horses). Because what they are really doing is taking private property (copyrights, TM, ROP) that rightfully belong to artists (big and small, professional and hobbyist) without permission and converting it to a private...

company owned by the same people who brought you the current monopoly platforms. The trick works cause commentators (especially tech journalists) willfully repeat the framing that a public good is being created. Not the next Google.

The second trick these cynical pseudo capitalist opportunists are playing is that nothing is really"owed" to creators because no one is harmed, AI is simply creating new works, based on collective Artist impulses. Really? The why can I input "in the style of Panhandle Slim"...

If you're not familiar Panhandle Slim is a high volume folk artist. You can commission him to paint a portrait or scene. (Used to be $100 but his fee has likely risen.) If an "open" AI can knock him off, why can't other enterprising scam artists do the same? Copyright much...

maligned by a certain type of progressive or academic (curiously many turn out to be funded by Silicon Valley companies, see the Google Academics report or check funding for "rights" outfits like EFF), is actually a natural and democratizing brake on the growth of parasitic...

private institutions favored by Silicon Valley pseudo-capitalists. The common repeated talking point is "how can AI companies possible license all those works." Apologists for AI are willfully ignoring the 100+ year old institutions that blanket license the public performance

of songwriters works on radio stations streaming services, tv etc. If my song is played on KROQ in Los Angeles the station has a license and I get paid. If the station doesn't like the terms of the license offered by my performing rights society, they don't use the song...

what is so hard about that? The simple answer is they don't want to pay. They don't want to ask permission. But the hide this fact by dressing it up in all this bullshit: "Open" "Democratizing Creation" "Public Good" "Great benefits to the consumer." You know the rest.

Finally the last part of the scam is the invocation of inevitability. The idea is AI is coming, no matter what we do. This is the most puzzling and contradictory part of the Silicon Valley pseudo-capitalist catechism, in this case rather than technology empowering the individual

they now adopt a Calvinist view. A kind of techno determinism. Technology has a will and a predetermined plan. Kind of like The Almighty. Except of course with this (false idol) Almighty there is a pantheon of lower case gods, AIs that are owned by an interlocking network of

Silicon Valley investors. Unlike a true public good, whatever good (if any) that comes of this it will be controlled by a very small group and will enrich even fewer.

But there's another way this techno-Calvinism is bullshit. Implied is the notion that licensing works will

keep society from benefitting from AI? Really? When in the past has this been the case? What public good innovations has permissionless innovation provided us?

Permissionless pirate sites largely enriched Putins oligarchs or ground softening apologists (See Hitler memorabilia collector former wired magazine cover boy Kim Dotcom). Malware distributed by these platforms enabled vast botnets etc. But when Daniel Ek switched from uTorrent

to Spotify, that is permissionless to largely licensed, that's when you can argue some benefit begins to accrue to the public. (Despite my successful class action on behalf of songwriters let me be clear: Spotify is now a fully licensed corporate citizen. Low royalty rates..

are largely due to federal compulsory license that sets songwriter rates). YouTube by contrast relies on a "permissionless" loophole (like all pseudo capitalists) to present often unlicensed music to the public. Thus YouTube royalty rates (averaged across all its offerings) are

1/20th of Apple Music. Which brings me to another point. When has Apple ever taken the permissionless approach? Does this have something to do with its towering market cap compared to the other Silicon Valley corps. Aside from Apple all these other Silicon Valley firms rely on

Loophole exploitation. Airbnb ( what? we aren't a hotel?) Uber? copy Chicago Flash Taxi app, but claim not a Taxi so you don't have any taxi regs, expenses. That's what I mean by pseudo-capitalism. There is no value adding innovation, just loophole arbitrage.

End for now

BTW I've been thinking about this cause OpenAI is clearly training it's "jukebox" on live recordings of artists. The loophole they are trying to push, is that the sound recordings have ambiguous ownership. And are likely hosted on Internet Archive (A reliable partner...

in Google et al, always present at these deliberate copyright brushfires). Unfortunately they don't seem to understand their is also a copyright to the composition. Here they've copied Merle Haggard's words verbatim. .jukebox.openai.com/songs/787984252

I suppose because Cracker covered this song. Its not that I think this shitty AI product is yet a competitor to what I produce, it's just nobody asked me if I wanted to participate in their for profit scheme. When I provide resources either capital or expertise to a startup

usually I'm given stock warrants or actual shares in the company.

See Groupon and Reverb. @OpenAI let's talk about a terms sheet.