ceoln @ceoln@qoto.org

So here's a random #fediverse thing that I don't understand: if I look at (say) a #pixelfed user's profile in #mastodon , it shows me a perfectly normal-looking profile page, with their posts showing and stuff, BUT the (for instance) Followers and Following information is completely different (all zeros, typically).

Why is that? I don't remember anything in my superficial perusal of the standard that obviously explains it...

@blakereid
That's an interesting approach; I'm certainly for UBI and universal healthcare also.

I wonder to what extent removal of the money / survival motive will impact all this sort of thing.

Will the government be free to find far fewer creator rights in (copies and derivatives of) their works, because creators' ability to survive is no longer on the line?

"Sure, person A claimed as their own something heavily derived from person B's original work, but since no money is at stake, we don't have to decide if that was okay." That sort of thing?

I can't decide if that would be great or awful atm. :)

@blakereid @paulalanlevy

Perhaps the point is that if an unknown had done the same thing, it would have been uncontroversial that it was mere copying, and bad.

There is the complication, though, that here there was an explicit license in place to allow Warhol to do things that did not include the actions at issue that he actually did (perhaps because he wasn't aware of the license).

@blakereid

I suppose I'm enough of the stereotype philistine techbro that I don't think art critics would be in any better position to judge here than anyone else. Is there really a fact-of-the-matter about, say, whether the Warhol works are "actually" transformative? I think an art critic's opinion would be just as subjective and personal as a Supreme Court justice's, but maybe that's just my math and science prejudice talking.

In the ideal world, a subjective judgment like this wouldn't even be required in a legal case; but I'm not sure how we get two and maintain the right balance between copyrights and fair use in that ideal world...

I agree Congress could do a better job, on the other hand I don't have a perfect replacement copyright law at hand myself! Does anyone?

@garyackerman
I doubt that anyone seriously making this claim hasn't thought about that issue. (Admittedly the "seriously" there makes this a bit of a No True Scotsman!)

I may disagree with their opinion on the subject, but I don't think their error is as simple as not having thought about how slippery the concept is.

I think a typical response would be along the lines of "No, I can't define it exactly, but we routinely ascribe consciousness to each other on the basis of evidence that's relevantly indistinguishable from the evidence that I have about ChatGPT / Bard / whatever, so that ascription is equally correct."

(Also something seems to have gone wrong with your sentence 2 of 3 there; or at least I don't get it.)