this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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You can't patent math, though you can copyright a specific explanation of math concepts.
If Open AI (or any AI company) is including copyrighted works in their solution, that's a copyright violation and should be treated as such. But if they're merely using the information from a copyrighted work but not violating the copyright itself, they're fine.
That's rather the irony - mathematics takes a great deal of work and creativity. You can't copyright mathematical work; but, put a set of lines together and shade in the polygons created and suddenly it becomes copyrightable. Somehow one is a creative work whose author requires protection, and the other is volunteered for involuntary public service.
The reason mathematics cannot be copyrighted: because it's a "discovery", rather than a "creation" (very much a point of view, and far from irrefutable fact). In mathematics, one should be aware, that the concept and it's explanation (proof) are much the same thing.
All in all, the argument is either mathematical work should fall under copyright (an abhorrent idea), or copyright should be abolished as it rarely (if ever) does much good.
The point of copyright is to protect creators from having their work stolen.
If an indie artist creates a work, a larger company could copy that work and distribute it as their own, and since that larger company has deeper pockets than thy indie artist, they can flood the market before the original artist has a chance to profit from it. Or perhaps a larger org creates an expensive work (game, movie, etc), anyone could redistribute it without paying the original creator.
Without copyright, we'd get way more paywalls, invasive DRM, etc. We get a taste of that today, but it can get way worse.
So we definitely need copyright, it just needs to be a lot shorter (say, 10-20 years).
I mean, the point was definitely stated as protecting creators. We've seen some solid David Vs Goliath stories of artists taking people who steal their work down.
However, this isn't the reality for the majority of copyright. A lot of it just ties up works to companies owned by speculative shareholders (think of the lord of the rings).
Limits to duration would definitely help this, and we'd be on the same page there. However, I do still wonder if it shouldn't be shorter for certain things (e.g. medical treatments or manufacturing), with the option of a public domain buyout to cover (reasonable, non-inflated) research costs.
Both would be patents, no? Those are 20 years in the US, whereas copyright is 70 years after author's death (or 95-120 years for "work for hire" works). Both should be reduced, but they protect very different things and need different considerations.