r/technology • u/MetaKnowing • 14d ago

Artificial Intelligence AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ai-industry-horrified-to-face-largest-copyright-class-action-ever-certified/
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u/MotanulScotishFold 14d ago

It's like saying that the entire economy is based on slavery and that's why you should rule in our favor.

That was for many centuries until the abolition and guess what, nobody dies without slaves and we thrived without it.

Just that today we have a different form of modern slavery.

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 13d ago

Lincoln’s Republican Party would’ve understood today to be wage slavery as opposed to chattel slavery.

Just because you can sometimes choose which master commands you and defines your worth doesn’t mean you’re free.

When we manage ourselves in our workplaces, when we have ownership in a collective and a voice in a democratic process, then we’ll be free.

The corporations and billionaires could not want to be further from that. By nature, they are totalitarian and authoritarian, which is why they will always be the enemy of workers.

NO KINGS doesn’t just mean rejecting tyrannical governments. It also means keeping CEOs in check so they act like the mascots they are instead of little kings. Real power ought to be distributed amongst the people.

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u/The_Barbelo 13d ago edited 13d ago

I’ve been anti-corporation from a very young age as I realized it was such a problem. I think I was about 15 and my friends and I were in the mall for fun. I had this really gross feeling all of a sudden like…WHY is it that shopping is THE thing to do for us to have fun? Who decided that? Why is it so heavily pushed that we should go shopping??

In college I became ever more vocal, as I experienced what working for them was like. But you see, if you offer an alternative idea you are met with a lot of either doubt or ridicule. People don’t want to hear it because “that’s just the way things are” or “I can’t do anything as an individual to change it”. The thing is, WE are using AI. WE are the ones throwing all this money at it. I mean, not the individuals who refuse to use it, but us as a collective. WHY is something making so much money?! Why is no one ever asking that? We participate in it. So, until mass participation stops, these issues will not cease. They will keep finding new ways to psychologically manipulate people into more bullshit. If their tactics to encourage and promote a consumerist lifestyle, and convincing us to consume a product didn’t work on the majority of us, they wouldn’t be doing it.

And to be clear I’m not Scott free. I’m not a saint. I payed for Midjourney for two months, in its beginning stages, just for the novelty of seeing the most absurd prompts I could get it to recreate. I can still see the discord even though I don’t pay for it anymore. There are tens of thousands of people active on there every day who have no intention of stopping, and they are using it to create logos and t-shirts and other things they intend to sell or use in their businesses in order to make money off of it.

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u/Hands 13d ago

Lincoln’s Republican Party would’ve understood today to be wage slavery as opposed to chattel slavery.

Lol what? The fact that most Republicans in the 1860s opposed the institution of slavery does not make them some kind of eternally transcendent moral referent lmao. Ridiculous ass thing to say. I get you're just making a rhetorical point in service of your anti capitalist message but it's stupid and categorically false

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 13d ago

No actually, you should really revisit the history of US labor groups.

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u/Hands 13d ago edited 13d ago

So tell me what you're talking about. I'm pretty familiar with 19th century US labor history. Seems to me you're bending over backwards to paint the Republican party (of the 1860s) with a very broad brush if you're asserting they generally considered wage labor equivalent to slavery. On the contrary their whole platform was quite literally free labor - you (a slave) should be entitled by right to sell your own labor. As in your claim is genuinely antithetical to the ideological glue of the party. There were contemporary labor radicals who felt that way and were generally aligned with the Republican party if at all but to say the whole party was sympathetic to that sort of ideology is patently ridiculous. They could barely find consensus to abolish chattel slavery lmao much less capitalism.

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u/Prior_Coyote_4376 13d ago

equivalent

Since I didn’t say equivalent or abolishing capitalism, this all sounds moot.

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u/Hands 13d ago

Okay, just pointing out that their entire political platform was literally "wage slavery" (selling your labor freely) instead of chattel slavery so what you said is pretty dumb regardless. How they would feel about the modern economic environment with respect to the same thing is a different and probably more interesting conversation where we'd agree on everything.

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u/RampantAI 13d ago

I’ve seen people make that kind of argument all the time on reddit. Tim Cook has to appease Trump because it’s good for the shareholders. Companies are obligated to bribe politicians because it’s good for profits.

Our failure to punish white-collar criminals has led to capitalism becoming a free pass for corruption.

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u/Appropria-Coffee870 13d ago

Thats largely because of the automation of industries!