Tag: crime

De-AIification

Recently, I had two images on my parent business website that I generated using AI, meaning that I am guilty of causing the associated energy use to create non-essential images. I have taken them down and commit to not using AI-generated images (or AI-generated anything) in the future.

Oh, and unlike countless people active in cyberspace, I do not steal images of any sort and unlawfully republish them in cyberspace without permission of the owner.

Unlawful use of copyrighted material—including images—is rampant in cyberspace. The almost guaranteed anonymity and unreachability of the offenders has led people to make their peace with, meaning surrender to, this unlawful behavior, and I don’t think a system with accountability is going to appear any time soon.

Cyberspace is a lawless land, and that lawlessness destroys trust and fattens the bank accounts of cyber-oligarchs with no demonstrable socially redeeming qualities.

Publishing of Intellectual Property without Permission: It’s unlawful in most places.

Publicly sharing a stolen image in a social media post that consists almost entirely of the stolen image is unlawful in most legal jurisdictions.

Adding a credit to or citing the originator doesn’t make it lawful without first getting permission to publish, and many such “credits” just name (often by a meaningless pseudonym or platform name) the immediately previous thief who unlawfully published the image elsewhere.

All of this is a win for platform owners like Mark Zuckerberg and a loss for the universe of people still purporting to know right from wrong. Zuckerberg is guilty of countless violations of ethical common sense and profits from the IP theft by the criminals using his platforms.