thebooktocome

> To take a simplistic example, even janitors might potentially have access to ITAR controlled materials if engineers threw them out into a bin bound for a shredder/incinerator and janitorial staff are trained and trusted parts of the disposal chain (which they should be!). Anyone might be able to overhear water cooler conversations.

As I mention elsewhere in this thread, if this is really how SpaceX operates then they’re already in (ethical, if not legal) violation of their duty to protect ITAR from dissemination. ITAR documents should never just be sitting in an unsealed bin waiting for disposal. Employees shouldn’t casually be discussing ITAR around the water cooler.

Assuming everyone around you is permitted to handle ITAR is a recipe for disaster.

Yes, exactly; thanks.

> For SpaceX to internally segment ITAR from non-ITAR is a huge bureaucratic overhead for them which leads to a possibility of mistakes.

They decided to become an aerospace engineering firm in the US. ITAR security is part of the cost of doing business.

If the typical e.g. janitor or cafeteria worker at SpaceX has access to ITAR, as SpaceX seem to have alleged before they got caught, then their ITAR security is pure theater.

It’s complicated, but not always.

Regardless, the ITAR issue is secondary; they hire for roles that do not touch ITAR.

> SpaceX recruits and hires for a variety of positions, including welders, cooks, crane operators, baristas and dishwashers, as well as information technology specialists, software engineers, business analysts, rocket engineers and marketing professionals. The jobs at issue in the lawsuit are not limited to those that require advanced degrees.

The fact that SpaceX deals in ITAR does not prevent them from hiring refugees for roles that do not handle ITAR.

They’re not mine; I pulled them directly from the parent comment.

The client "needs" in question here are low cost overall, low marginal cost for each revision, and a totally-interactive "do what I mean" interface.

Shoving a human artist in the middle is a liability on each front.

Can you give an example of a “clear and bright” line in copyright law that does protect “folks who don’t have the money to fight an uncertain battle in court”?

For context, I’m in the process of translating a work that I know for a fact is in the public domain (sole author died 90+ years ago) and I’ve still got legal questions that I’m going to have to hire a lawyer to solve.

> Overall I think this is a net win, especially because I don't think this needs to be the end of the road for human illustrators, but this will force them to adapt and bring more sensitivity to the needs of their clients.

The advantages of AI that you crow over simply can’t be met by any human professional artist. A human can’t do hundreds of revisions profitably. There’s increased “sensitivity” and then there’s needing to read the client’s mind.

If you think this isn’t a death knell for human illustrators in this particular market, you’re deluding yourself.

Author conflates legal and ethical options for preventing copyrighted work from being used to train ML image generators.

There’s nothing legally inconsistent about passing a law saying, e.g., “ML training is not fair use”. Doing so will not even reduce existing fair use rights being exercised by actual people.

The author’s argument is that doing so is philosophically analogous to human creative processes, but those are—and I can’t underline this enough—human. And the law is not (and cannot be, should not be?) consistent in such a way.

And if you have absolute dominion, so does everyone else around you—and then nobody gets water after the aquifer collapses.

This feels more like a tool that arrests creativity before it can even put its shoes on.

The Chinese have made it clear through their economic and legal policies that international collaboration can only occur on their terms and under their unilateral control. Nuts to any corporation or organization that tries to achieve equitable footing with their Chinese branch.