Aaron Swartz was facing up to 35 years for wire fraud and hacking for swiping some JSTOR documents, and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.
>and the DOJ has done nothing against the AI companies and their IP violating antics.<p>For good reason. Courts have so far ruled AI training is fair use, and it doesn't look likely to be overturned by the supreme court. Theres also the matter of some labs pirating books to get training data, which is illegal (they lost in civil court), but it's unclear whether that can be criminally prosecuted.
Courts have also ruled that sharing in P2P network is enough to get hit with 150k in statutory damages per shared work.<p>AI companies did quite a bit of uploading while e.g. getting Anna's archive over BitTorrent.
Hacking other companies is illegal as far as I understand.
1. OP specifically mentioned "IP violating antics", not hacking<p>2. All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent, which so far as we can tell didn't exist in those cases. At best you can try some "reckless" or "negligent" angle, but that would a novel legal argument and would be risky to prosecute
> All the hacking legislation (and criminal law in general) require proving intent<p>No, they don't, see laws that make negligent behavior illegal<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_rea</a>
But officer, I didn't <i>mean</i> for my autonomous bank vault busting robot to autonomously bust any bank vaults!
Okay, and? If anything, the Swartz case was even more direct fair use. There's very little to use JSTOR for which <i>isn't</i> some form of teaching, scholarship, or research!<p>Clearly the fact that the end-use is (possibly) fair use isn't the only thing that matters.
It's not at all relevant to this thread, but no he wasn't. At their worst, prosecutors were threatening to push for 7 years; the guideline sentence for Swartz's offense, were he to take it to trial and lose, would likely have been under the level allowing for straight probation (go to a sentencing calculator and plug the values in); writing after his death, his own lawyer stated that had he gone to trial and lost he was unlikely to face a custodial sentence at all.<p>We get this "35 year" number from adding up all the counts he faced, taking their maximum sentence. That's just not how sentencing works. Like charges group, and you're sentenced according to the most severe charge.<p>People cite these numbers in part because DOJ posts them in their press releases. DOJ is in these instances lying. When we amplify those lies, we're doing their work for them.
So you are for shutting down xcancel?
Michel Foucault enters the chat.
God I would love to see Sam Altman behind bars for cornering the DRAM silicon market. Even though there were other factors, I uniquely place him as the destroyer of home computing this decade!
It won’t happen, but if it did the CEOs have no one but themselves to blame. They’re hyping up their products as being able to destroy the human race then are somehow surprised at the level of anti-AI sentiment out there in the world.
If the nuclear power or life sciences people were putting out press releases saying "our product may kill us all", they'd be dragged into endless Congressional inquiries.
I honestly don’t know what anyone expected given all the labs started building self-driving malware at about the same time.<p>I remember lots of people talking about running agents in VMs or on whole dedicated machines, yet barely anyone talking about how they were using mundane OS access controls.
AI is a very competitive market where consumers are getting the product for much less than it costs. This does not seem like an area where the government needs to butt in.<p>Attention would be better spent on long list of other poorly behaved companies: cable ISP monopolies, health insurance companies, home insurance companies, etc.
Why wouldn't the government have incentive to intervene to end a market inefficiency like the one you described?
Bear with me here: we could do <i>all</i> of them.<p>You can get these companies under control. You just have to, y'know, try.
Source: <a href="https://x.com/linamkhan/status/2099204390548639960" rel="nofollow">https://x.com/linamkhan/status/2099204390548639960</a> (seems like a single post, so you don't need to log in and see replies)<p>I can't tell if Khan is being realistic when she says laws against “unfair or deceptive [acts]” or “unfair methods of competition” apply to AI labs. Her 2-sentence justifications aren't enough to convince me. But maybe it's sufficient for state AG's who want to start investigations.
She is a former FTC Chair so she knows what she's talking about, although her approach to enforcement was more expansive than others. The FTC would investigate, likely along the lines she summarizes, build a case in writing, and refer it to the Justice Dept, which would actually prosecute the case. Not going to happen under this administration, but Khan is saying it's entirely possible that such an enforcement action could be brought to bear, now or later. Personally I hope she gets her job back at some point and does it herself.
All these things do is market a preemptive universal Presidential pardon - Hunter Biden style. And this President successfully sells those. So I suppose it’s marketing to enrich him.
The passage banning “unfair competition” is utterly marvellous:<p><pre><code> A trader may not, by pursuing a dishonest practice, force his competitors to choose between its adoption or the loss of their trade. A method of competition [is ‘unfair’ when it] casts upon one's competitors the burden of the loss of business unless they will descend to a practice which they are under a powerful moral compulsion not to adopt, even though it is not criminal…
It is true that the statute does not authorize regulation which has no purpose other than that of relieving merchants from troublesome competition … But here the competitive method is shown to exploit [those] who are unable to protect themselves. It employs a device [that has] met with condemnation throughout the community. Without inquiring whether [other criminal statues apply] … it is clear that the practice is of the sort which the common law and criminal statutes have long deemed contrary to public policy. For these reasons a large share of the industry holds out against the device, despite ensuing loss in trade, or bows reluctantly to what it brands unscrupulous. It would seem a gross perversion of the normal meaning of the word … to hold that the method is not 'unfair.'
</code></pre>
Apply it immediately!
[flagged]
So is the solution to only nominate corporate bagmen who have a perverse incentive?
And therefore shouldn't be allowed to have opinions on crime and antitrust? Is that your argument?
None of those things you list that she has never done help in any meaningful way with understanding antitrust law.
Running a business is a rude awakening for anyone who hasn't done it. Like a ballet critic who has never taken a ballet class. Or a commander who has never been shot at. Or a sailor who has never been at sea.<p>Mayors Katie Wilson and Mandami have never run a business, or worked for a business, and it shows.<p>How can one regulate a business without ever being in the trenches?
So what.
Lina Khan has never eaten breakfast cereal out of a boot, nor even a shoe.
If you execute a ponzi scheme with thousands of degens — but it’s magic crypto tokens<p>When you perpetrate a huge hacking job with thousands of attackers — but it’s magic agent swarms
It’s definitely happening in 2029 if the election goes a certain way. They all know that too.<p>There WILL be an end to this.