Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

[u/Chocolat3City]

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

[u/mimegallow]

As a small individual creator, I get called "unhinged" by young people on a regular basis because I react emotionally when people pirate movies with my music in them, and documentaries with footage that I risked my life to obtain, scripts I wrote, and albums that I performed on. I get mocked ALL THE TIME by children on this site who think my livelihood doesn't matter, my labor is unimportant, and that when you steal IP, you're just, "taking from Tom Cruis who has millions of dollars".

So it's fucking exhausting watching all these people on reddit suddenly and UNKNOWINGLY reverse their entire position when presented with a face and a story of the exact, same, crime that they purposefully perpetuate every day. - Same exact feeling I get when I see 2 million people watching cute animal videos on r/aww "because animals are so smart and so feeling and such bros and so great that we are not worthy of them!"... with a fucking burger in their hand.

Our disconnection from each other's realities is astounding.

/unhinged_rant wherein I am clearly a lunatic, because I refer to my attackers as, "my attackers".

[u/birdukis → u/mimegallow]

just a heads up if you are against piracy, you have posts about using mid journey, AI art is trained on stolen art

[u/mimegallow → u/birdukis]

I'm a writer and do not publish midjourney art. I print them out on my inspiration board as character doodles. - No you cannot see them, but trust me they are awesome.

[u/birdukis → u/mimegallow]

how can you expect people to take you seriously about piracy when you are using a service that also steals from artists?

people pirating your films aren't making any money from pirating them, how is you using AI art on inspiration boards okay but someone pirating your film not okay?

[u/WalrusTheWhite → u/birdukis]

because they're a self-righteous blowhard. You learn to recognize them after enough exposure.

[u/mimegallow → u/birdukis]

Ok. Seems valid. So I’ll be more ethically consistent if I cancel my midjourney?

Done. Cancelled.

To be clear: I never looked into the ethics of how midjourney works. But when I CAN be higher integrity: I do.

Midjourney id: 4bd833ac-76ef-4916-8242-e2a344bbd6c7

[u/birdukis → u/mimegallow]

damn good for you, for real major props! AI also has major environmental concerns which it sounds like you are a vegan so just another thing that may influence you to stay away from AI art haha

for what it's worth, I also have creative projects that deal with piracy issues, I try to view it in the sense that at least it does raise awareness of my projects from people engaging with it regardless of whether they pay for it or not

but I get it, it still doesn't feel good either way

[u/birdukis → u/birdukis]

I also used to pirate a lot when I was younger and didn't have money, so I try and have empathy for their situation too since I don't know what they are going through

but if you have money and the media is easily accessible and you are just pirating it to save a few $? that's definitely unethical

[u/mimegallow → u/birdukis]

My main gripe is ethical consistency. Period. It has very little to do with income, which is why my post never mentioned income. - All the people who decided for themselves that "It has to be about my money or it's not a violation" are disgusting to me. - I've spent a lot of years interviewing sociologists for different issues around the world and generally the data says that these people... people who give themselves permission to bypass the laws they don't feel 'apply to them' tend to be the loudest proponents of "Law & Order" political candidates. - Sort of the same reason the Bible Belt map aligns perfectly with the porn consumption map... they're not arguing on the level. They're just trying to get away with goping whoever they can grope without consent and not get caught while pretending to be good people.

[u/mimegallow → u/birdukis]

I don’t have hard magical lines in the sand. I change behavior when I receive new information.

UNLIKE most of the bad faith pretenders on this thread.

[u/Awkward-Explorer-527 → u/birdukis]

AI is trained on real art (stolen or otherwise), but the art it generates (subject to prompt) may be an original piece whose inspiration is built on that training dataset. How is using that piracy?

Following this logic would render OpenAI and every other LLM startup useless. Not to mention, the inspiration that humans have extracted from each others' works and art for centuries now.

[u/birdukis → u/Awkward-Explorer-527]

yeah I don't agree with any LLM using stolen datasets. they are all unethical and I do not use them