Of course, talking about “the Left” is a very broad brush. So, as an example, I’ll give Jacobin.com . If you search for “copyright”, you will find that they have published a number of wonky articles critical of copyright pre AI-hype, just as one would expect. In recent years the tone changes. In the context of AI, you find an article just regurgitating lines by capital owners. Reporting on the legal troubles of the Internet Archive, the issue gets a both sides treatment.
In contrast, the Internet Archive - or libraries in general, as well as other organizations devoted to free information - have not pivoted to the right. But these are not left-leaning, as such.
How the rise of AI has affected the financial interests of traditional capitalists is obvious. What’s not obvious is why left-leaning spaces support these interests.
What gives?
(I’m sure many will feel that I completely misunderstand this. If you want to CMV you could explain what the endgame is supposed to be. How will it help the general public to grant more privileges to owners of intellectual property?)
I believe that in the age of AI many leftists have evolved and many now believe that copyright is now necessary to protect human creativity, expression, and culture from Generative AI. A pragmatic shift rather than a ideological shift
I’m a leftist that wants to abolish copyright but I believe that genAI stans are closeted copyrightists. how else could you as a leftist look at massive corporations lobbying to further destroy labor rights via AI colonialism, using it for mass layoffs, colonizing culture in a way that hasn’t been seen since Europeans extracting resources and knowledge from Africa AND still claim that you support workers and marginalized people?
I think they spent so much time behind a terminal that they started to believe they too could one day own their own little fiefdom in Silicon Valley.
the “move fast and break things” mentality manifests itself in anarchist instances like db0 thinking they can liberate the workers if they just lick the boots of their tech overlords hard enough and mimick the way they speak.
I think the reason why tech oligarchs love genAI so much is because they want to create a new world shaped by copyright 2.0 similarly to how crypto shills peddle the web 3.0 gospel.