The Open Source Initiative has a giant list of licenses that anyone can use to make their works fully open-source.

Some are just for code, but I’m sure they could be adapted to things like medicine, if needed.

I would be at least a bit worried too, but unfortunately the only reason this exists is because corporations decided to wall off access to producing their drugs legally so they could continue to exploit vulnerable people for profit.

For a lot of the people using this tech, it’s the only way they’ll get life saving medication, and without it, they’ll die. If that’s the kind of gamble they have to make, a possible risk of impurities or negative reactions is better than the considerably less desirable option of death.

Technically, drug dealers are using the tech (more specifically, other people are using it, then selling the product to the drug dealers, who then sell it to their customers as a ‘service’ included with the drugs)

The thing is, they’re not doing it to make stronger drugs, or for PR purposes. They’re actually adding pre-exposure prophylactics (PrEPs) into their heroin, which then creates the side effect of preventing the contraction of HIV from the needles. (referenced about 1/3rd of the way down this article)

If people are already going to be addicted to these drugs, them not getting HIV from it is just one harm reduction measure that can reduce their risk of serious, permanent illness.

Well that’s the coolest part about this, everything is based on the existing research.

The drugs they’re making are the exact same chemical compounds formulated by the drug companies, and contrary to popular belief, the compounds can actually be relatively simple, it’s the process of finding which compound that takes the most money from R&D.

So if you have 2-3 very standard chemicals, with well known reactions and outcomes, and you have the exact blueprint of what the final result should look like, and you can chemically test it afterward to see if it combined as expected, then anyone who has enough reason to use this instead of traditional means (i.e. being priced out of lifesaving medication completely) can be reasonably confident it will work.

And it’s only made more inspiring by the fact that he has his own personal history with the pharmaceutical industry that didn’t work for him.

I found another article on him and the collective, and there’s this honestly saddening quote:

“A toast to the dead, for children with cancer and AIDS,” Laufer said, raising a glass of bourbon and quoting the hip hop artist Felipe Andres Coronel, better known as Immortal Technique. “A cure exists, and you probably could have been saved.”

It’s even posted up on their page for the MicroLab right at the top.

They could do that, but the drugs are still much too expensive comparatively, and it doesn’t include many drugs, especially the ones that are the most absurdly priced.

For instance, after looking through various articles on him and scraping together some of the data, out of the medications referenced as being some that he’s made:

Misoprostol (Abortion Medication) - $14.90 on CPG - $0.89 via MicroLab

Sovaldi (Cures Hepatitis C) - Not available on CPG (normally $84,000) - $70 via MicroLab

Kalydeco (Treats Cystic Fibrosis) - Not available on CPG (Normally ~$500/day) - $10/day via MicroLab

Daraprim (Treats Parasitic Diseases & Some AIDS Patients) - $2443/30 pills on CPG - $80/30 Pills via MicroLab

Epinephrine (Treats Allergic Reactions, AKA epipen) - Not available on CPG (Normally $650-$750) - Initially $30 via MicroLab ($3/reload after)

The pharmaceutical industry is so screwed up, and these prices only show it more clearly.

As opposed to dying from the disease you already have because the traditional pharmaceutical industry makes the drugs you need out of your price range?

It won’t be a life long ailment for long if you’re going to die from a lack of care soon anyways.

DRM is relevant to the legal redistribution because that is part of the terms of their license agreement and for no other reason.

This is simply not true. If someone takes means to prevent illegal action, in a situation where they can choose to either do so, or not do so, taking those means shows they are attempting to prevent any negative legal outcomes.

The Internet Archive was explicitly, voluntarily enacting similar policy to libraries that directly license books from publishers, because they knew that it would show they were making an effort to lend responsibly. To me, it seems they carried on this set of ethics to when they opened up more copies than they originally had on hand, because that was during a time when library branches were becoming physically inaccessible, and physical resources were becoming increasingly hard to access, thus, responsible lending would include effectively making the inaccessible physical copies in other libraries accessible. That part might not be considered legal, but again, who cares? These publishers saw a substantial increase in profits during the time they were supposedly hurt by the Internet Archive, and continue to squeeze traditional libraries for every penny they can get under exploitative lending agreements. What the Internet Archive did was for the objective moral good of society.

If anything’s illegal, it’s compelling libraries to only license your content directly from you for a higher rate, while trying to discourage them from using the physical copies they can buy once like any other sane person.

Petition for changes to the law. Don’t lie and pretend the law says what you want it to.

I have not misrepresented the law by pretending it says something else. I have given you citations and quotes straight from the letter of the law, directly backing up my claims, while proving your blanket statements that all digitized lending was illegal as patently false.

Petitioning to change the law is not the only way to change it. For instance, I believe piracy from, say, streaming services, is ethical, if those same streaming services are jacking up rates, adding ads, and enshittifying their core product for the sake of making a quick buck. how else are you supposed to change things?

I’m sure you’ve seen the immense public backlash and legislative attempts to fix the rapidly enshittifying entertainment industry. They haven’t worked.

Look, even regardless of all my arguments for how I believe the vast majority of what the Internet Archive did was legal, I don’t care if it was. Because, in the end, If you own a book, you should be allowed to let other people read it. If people are losing access to literature, you should be able to make it available to as many people as possible. If companies are rapidly exploiting the public library system and looting it for everything it has, you should be able to offer an alternative.

These publishers do not deserve my, nor your sympathy.

you’re very conveniently ignoring the “material objects” part of that definition

I’m not, it’s just that the wording of the definition could lead to you interpreting it as such. It does not mean what you think it means.

In essence, it’s saying that if a material object is “fixed” (under copyright law, that tends to mean captured in a medium that allows it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated) it is considered a copy. Copyright law generally considers things like written texts (i.e. transcribing a book onto other sheets of paper) to be copies, but it also includes things like recordings, which are very much nontangible. (although still stored on tangible hardware) Also, note the “either directly or with the aid of a machine or device” section of that description.

DRM is entirely irrelevant. It has no bearing on anything.

The fact you consider DRM to be irrelevant in a conversation about managing legal access to digitally distributed content shows a lot about your understanding of this topic, to say the least.

DRM is highly relevant. If it were not, then all libraries would already be illegally publishing copies under the agreements they sign with publishers when they distribute books through DRM-protected applications like Overdrive or Libby. Legal consequence also does not extend past the original publisher if the intent was clearly not to deliberately allow for further copying. (i.e. if the Internet Archive stated they lent books so users could copy them and later share them with friends, that would be a violation. Instead, they have loan terms, limits, and DRM)

If anything done by a user after the lending of any material, outside of reasonable safeguards (like DRM) was to be considered illegal, then any store would be liable if someone used a kitchen knife to kill someone, and any chemical distributor would be liable if someone in a lab mixed the wrong chemicals together and made an explosion. Liability has an end point, and DRM helps signify that by placing technical restrictions on redistribution of material, while also carrying heavy legal penalties for breaking it, which would not be present if it wasn’t applied in the first place.

Publishers should not be able to sue libraries for lending their books, digital, physical, or otherwise. Especially when the publishers could not demonstrate any material harm.

You are actively defending multi-billion dollar publishing companies suing a library for lending content they legally acquired, using faulty interpretations of the law, and deference to lawsuits as a means of judging the morality of actions. You haven’t made a single point that wasn’t either verifiably untrue, or misinformed.

I would advise you to reevaluate your position.

That law is not about digital lending and cannot be applied to digital lending.

That’s provably incorrect.

“it is not an infringement of copyright for a library or archives […] to reproduce no more than one copy or phonorecord of a work”

Title 17, USC 101 defines a copy as “…material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device…”

Digital replication falls under the legal definition of copying in the US Code, and is directly cited in the prior section of the code I reference in my last reply.

The Internet Archive’s loans also utilize DRM, a standard kind of software used by every other library out there to restrict further replication of copies. This same technology is in use with libraries who have contracts with publishers to directly download and publish digital copies of non-printed ebooks, which would violate that contract by not using DRM. The Internet Archive, without any express contract from publishers, is still implementing the strongest measures of protection that the publishers themselves would require whether or not content was directly licensed from them instead of being scanned in from a physical copy.

It’s relevant because it forced the hands of the publishers to take action.

Nothing forced them to do anything. These publishers voluntarily decided to file a lawsuit because of mounting pressure from libraries as a collective to stop charging insanely high prices on ebook rentals from publishers, which they saw as being undermined by the fact that the Internet Archive was able to still pay for the books in question, but lend them out in the same manner that physical books are already lent, just through a screen.

As I mentioned before, if the Internet Archive had never done this in the first place, public outcry would be practically nonexistent, and the Internet Archive wouldn’t be lending out those books at all, just like they’re not legally able to now. There is no difference to if they had or had not done this, other than the fact that it is now more visible in the public sphere, and has active legal challenges instead of being quietly subverted by regulation and practices publishers have continued to mount against all libraries to re-establish what it means to own a copyrighted work.

Any digitized lending was always illegal.

the law is well beyond clear.

I think Title 17, Chapter 108 of the U.S. Code would beg to differ. Digitized lending was always allowed, especially for libraries and archives. The only ambiguous part was the number of copies allowed to be digitized of any individual work, (many of the books the Internet Archive digitized only had one copy digitized and lent at any given time) so most of what the Internet Archive engaged in was fully legal under this code, and only a fraction of the 500 million titles that are now illegal to lend would have been affected, even though all 500 million can now not be legally lent due to this ruling.

You need new laws to apply to the digital world.

True, we can agree on that. We need new laws. Until that point, no change will happen if the boundaries are not pushed.

I guarantee you there hasn’t been anywhere near the current level of momentum for the rights of libraries to lend digitized books any time prior to this court case. If the Internet Archive hadn’t done it in the first place, we would be in the same situation we’re in after this ruling.

Them doing so pushes the issue forward.

This ruling was a literal guarantee the minute the Internet Archive removed their (unambiguously not in any way legal) pretense of a “single copy”

As I’ll say again, this was not the premise under which the publishers won this case. They won the case under the premise that any digitized lending was not transformative, and thus not “fair use,” even though it’s legal under other statutes. The number of copies held no bearing on the ruling.

They removed the one copy rule temporarily, during the pandemic, it’s now in place again. But the publishers have made any digitized lending illegal, not just more than one copy, any digitized lending. It is now illegal for them to scan and distribute even one single copy of any book.

It was never a problem with the single-copy restriction, and the publishers didn’t bring up that restriction at all as the purpose of the suit, instead attacking the entirety of scanning & lending, even using Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) systems, like the Internet Archive, and other libraries use.

Even regardless of that, the First-sale Doctrine enables all existing secondary markets for copyrighted material. It’s how you can lend a book to a friend, sell a used book after you’re finished it, or swap copies of a video game on disk with somebody.

The Internet Archive is included in this. Changing the method of distribution (lending a digital copy vs a physical copy) has no functional distinction, and the publishers in the lawsuit were not able to demonstrate material harm, instead just stating that it wasn’t “fair use,” and should thus be illegal, regardless of the fact that they weren’t harmed by the supposedly non-fair use.

And on top of that, fuck the law if it’s unjust. I don’t care if it’s supposedly (even if not true) “100% not legal under current law” to do, it should be, and this ruling is unjust.

The Internet Archive is a library.

Not only are they a member of the Boston Library Consortium, but their entire operation is based around preserving not just webpages, but books, and other forms of media.

They even offer loans of various materials to and from other libraries, and digitize & archive works from the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the New York Public Library, and more.

To say the Internet Archive isn’t an “actual library,” and has “stepped out of their fucking lane” is ridiculous.

This ruling doesn’t just affect the Internet Archive, it affects every single other library out there that wants to lend ebooks, and digitize their existing physical copies of books for digital lending.

I don’t know of any super high-quality ones that run well, but the Open Assistant project, (now archived) collected responses from voluntary participants (myself included) to build what is now considered a very high-quality dataset of chat conversation pairs, truly open source, and all voluntarily submitted instead of scraped.

The models are reasonable for fine-tuning, but aren’t very good compared to newer models from large companies.

and keeps for itself.

Which is why they should be legally compelled to publicize all of their datasets, models, research, and share any profits they’ve made with the works they can get provenance data for, because otherwise, it’s an unfair use of the public sphere of content.

One could very easily argue that adblockers are piracy, and those would be stealing from every social media creator, small blog, and independent news site, but I don’t see many people arguing against that, even though that very well includes people who aren’t wealthy corporations.

The issue isn’t necessarily the use of the copyrighted content, it’s the unfair legal stance taken on who can use the content, and how they are allowed to profit (or not profit) from it.

I’m not saying there are no downsides, but I do feel like a simple black and white dichotomy doesn’t properly outline how piracy and generative AI training are relatively similar in terms of who they steal from, and it’s more of a matter of what is done with the content after it is taken that truly matters most.

I think this better solves the issue.

The problem isn’t necessarily the use of copyrighted works, (although it can be a problem in many ways) it’s the unfair legal determination of who is allowed to do so.

I could see this as a way to make fun collage photos of yourself (i.e. you in multiple different poses in a wide shot of you in front of some cool mural/object)

But I feel like this then takes the meaning out of being there in the photo when you directly edit your entire presence into the photo.

I can understand tweaking eyes to remove red-eye, or replacing the background with a slightly better lit one from a different photo in the same shot, because that still captures the original essence of the shot, but when half the people in a photo quite literally weren’t even next to the others, it doesn’t feel like one side of the photo recognizes the presence of the other side, because they weren’t really there.

If OpenAI wants a pass, then just like how piracy services make content freely open and available, they should make their models open.

Give me the weights, publish your datasets, slap on a permissive license.

If you’re not willing to contribute back to society with what you used from it, then you shouldn’t exist within society until you do so.

I find those kinds of chatbots useful, but those aren’t the ones I encounter 90% of the time. Most of the time, it’s a chatbot that summarizes the help articles I just read, giving faulty interpretations of the source material, that then goes on to never direct me to a real person unless I tell it multiple times that the articles it’s paraphrasing aren’t helping. (and sometimes, they have no live support at all, and only an LLM + support articles)

TLDR; “weak people have to conform to social consensus otherwise they get hurt I guess?”

I, on the other hand, am a big, strong, high T alpha male, that isn’t worried about what anyone thinks! I am a free thinker, and I know my opinions are correct because I instantly based this entire opinion on a subjective, anecdotal view of the world that I then extrapolated meaning out of, the best evidence! /s