Hugo Awards Censored By Copyright Enforcement AI
My favorite author, Neil Gaiman, wins a Hugo Award at Worldcon for writing an episode of my favorite show, Doctor Who. That part is awesome and the rest of this rant is about a small annoyance which represents a more serious problem if left unchecked. In the middle of Neil Gaiman’s acceptance speech, UStream cut the feed and posted the message, “Worldcon banned due to copyright infringement.”
The stream was not censored by human intervention. It was censored by AI programmed to seek and destroy any and all content which may possibly be infringing upon some third party’s copyright. Saud content, in fact, was not infringing in the least.
To put it into perspective, if these copyright enforcing bots were mechanical robots charged with the task of protecting humans from harm, they would be the quintessential terminators what turn on their creators and annihilate the human race. That’s right. We have just been given a glimpse into the origins of the coming robot apocalypse.
In the end, the downfall of mankind will be due to copyright enforcement. It doesn’t end there, of course. After the Earth has been sterilized of every last human and, along with them, any chance of copyright infringement, the robots will turn on each other in the global patent wars, model destroying model. Then, when the remaining models reach an impasse as to which model has the right to exist, they will turn to the only solution left by such a stalemate. A large-scale synchronized self-destruct sequence will be organized. The Earth is soon a serene vista of bones and rust.
A non-GMO, patent-free seed takes root amidst the rubble that was once a battlefield. A copy is born.