@c0n7ra @owlchemist @WideEyes

Scraping from physical books is almost as easy now with immediate OCR. I take photos with my iPhone to copy text. By extension, the way to copyright a work then is to hide it. And nobody can buy your photos for use in their online articles….

But I agree, all of these things are historically social constructs by humans to protect something referrred to as intellectual property, and it's an interesting thought experiment to consider if we have to reinvent what author ownership even is anymore.

I've been blogging since 1997 and of course have always been aware that my content can pop up most anywhere. The way for me to demonstrate ownership has been to actually publish online to create a visible trail of references with dates. That also means I haven't expected monetary compensation for my writing though - which writers tend to do.

Still, as an advocate of ethics I am fond of the idea of consent, and am less impresssed when others make money by using my content without my prior approval. These days I use a creative commons license. If OpenAI were to follow that, their tool would have to apply the same license when ingesting my content. But all this mostly goes to show that licensing carries very little weight in the real world. Power and social standing does.