Today in Labor History June 27, 1905: The mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin began. Tensions were already high because of recent loses in the Russo-Japanese war and the presence. Furthermore, the crew was made up of recent recruits and the officers were relatively inexperienced. The mutiny began when sailors refused to eat the borscht that was served to them because of the meat was crawling with maggots. The ship’s 2nd in command threatened to shoot the men if they didn’t eat it. When he did shoot one of the mutineers, the crew attacked him and other officers, promptly killing nearly half the officers on board. They then decided to sail to Odessa to join the General Strike that was going on there. After that, they escaped to Romania where they obtained political asylum. The mutiny is considered an important step toward the Russian Revolution. It was depicted in Serge Eisenstein’s classic film, “The Battleship Potemkin.”
Today in Labor History June 14, 1905: The crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin mutinied after sailors were shot for complaining about being served maggot-ridden meat. Civilians soon joined the mutineers in revolutionary actions that included the burning of granaries, quays and ships in harbor. The insurrection was part of the 1905 Russian Revolution in which the first soviets were formed. The mutiny was the basis for the seminal film by Sergei Eisenstein, with music scored by Dmitri Shostakovich.
When it comes to AI art (or "art"), it's hard to find a nuanced position that respects creative workers' labor rights, free expression, copyright law's vital exceptions and limitations, and aesthetics.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
And unless you think that Facebook should be allowed to use the law to block projects like Ad Observer, which gathers samples of paid political disinformation, then you should support scraping at scale, even when the site being scraped objects (at least sometimes):
After making transient copies of lots of works, the next step in AI training is to subject them to mathematical analysis. Again, this isn't a copyright violation.
Bruce Schneier coined the term "feudal security" to describe Big Tech's offer: "move into my fortress - lock yourself into my technology - and I will keep you safe from all the marauders roaming the land":
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Meanwhile, every time a worker - or their ally - is tricked into calling scraping "stealing," they do the bosses' job for them. And the bosses - being remorseless seekers of return to capital - don't care about the collateral damage in their war on scraping.
Scraping is how we find out if Facebook is making money by selling paid political disinformation: