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Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

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Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#511

Post by sysop073 »

e-neko wrote: post #484
ignoramous wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second-order effects matter, though: If everyone is allowed to steal books, what's the incentive for experts to write new ones, and for the publishers to reward them for it? Btw, not a fan of "but what about the kids" rhetoric: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

But this is clearly not "everyone". This is just one/two readers. Not even copiers, as the network does not "remember" the content of the book, at least not better than a casual reader. Infringement in this case is more like standing in a book shop reading the book for free, or loaning one in a library for a day, not actually copying for keeps.

The comment they replied to literally said "Let's take a second to remember that copyright is the reason ~every child doesn't have access to ~every book ever written."

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#512

Post by zugi »

amf12 wrote: post #400
Zambyte wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is much newer than books.

So is internet and rapid copy-sharing of books. I personally feel our copyright laws are too rigid, but that doesn't mean copyright shouldn't exist. After x years, any book should be free to read, after y years, it should be free to be incorporated into AI models, after z years it should be in the public domain.

That's already the case, but x = z = 120 years (and y = 0 or 120, depending on who you ask...)

The first U.S. copyright law set x = z = 14 years. That's why many people think copyright law is out of control.

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#513

Post by xhkkffbf »

temp51723 wrote: post #479
ignoramous wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second-order effects matter, though: If everyone is allowed to steal books, what's the incentive for experts to write new ones, and for the publishers to reward them for it? Btw, not a fan of "but what about the kids" rhetoric: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_of_the_children

> If everyone is allowed to steal books Nothing was stolen- just copied.

As a book author, I can say that, "Yes, something was stolen. My opportunity to earn a living taking care of readers."

Now you may believe the incredibly self-serving baloney from big companies like Google. You may want to pretend that infringement isn't theft. To you, I hope that some homeless kid breaks into your home, starts squatting, and says that, "Hey, this isn't theft. Nothing has been destroyed."

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#514

Post by xhkkffbf »

avidiax wrote: post #485
adamc wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that would wholly destroy the ability of writers to actually make a living writing novels. The fact that the living isn't great now does not justify this.

People wrote great works before copywrite. People write for reasons other than money from the sales of the book. This accounts for most authors, who aren't famous enough to negotiate a great deal with a publisher. And we don't need to abolish copyright outright. Just require that it is continually published at a steady or decreasing price, or it becomes public domain. And put works in the public domain a little soone…

Yeah, these were rich people like Jane Austen and Mrs. Percy Bythe Shelley. Copyright makes it possible for the non-rich to create these works and make a living from a willing audience.

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#515

Post by throwaway290 »

NLPaep wrote: post #374
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMO, a better argument is that this is fair use There is no way in Hell that this is fair use! Fair use defenses rest on the fact that a limited excerpt was used for limited distribution, among other criteria. For example, if I'm a teacher and I make 30 copies of one page of a 300-page novel and I hand that out to my students, that's a brief excerpt for a fairly limited distribution. Now if I'm a social media influ…

You are assuming the LLM spits out exact copies of everything they’ve read.

It doesn't matter what goes out, it matters what goes in because that's what's required for LLMs to work

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#516

Post by two_in_one »

pessimizer wrote: post #86

> The complaint lays out in steps why the plaintiffs believe the datasets have illicit origins — in a Meta paper detailing LLaMA, the company points to sources for its training datasets, one of which is called ThePile, which was assembled by a company called EleutherAI. ThePile, the complaint points out, was described in an EleutherAI paper as being put together from “a copy of the contents of the Bibliotik private t…

> But companies like Google and Facebook get to play by different rules

It's simple, copyrighted materials can be used for academic research. That's what they are doing. Trying new AI modes, publishing results, etc. Facebook doesn't make money on LLaMA, they even require permission to use their models for, again, academic research.

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#517

Post by two_in_one »

PostOnce wrote: post #182
8organicbits wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between "information wants to be free" and "Facebook can produce works minimally derived from your greatest creative work at a scale you can't match". LLMs seem to aggregate that value to whoever builds the model, which they can then sell access to, or sell the output it produces. Five years from now, will OpenAI actually be open, or will it be a rent seeking org chasing the next quarterly gains?…

"Will OpenAI actually be open" That ship sailed, friend. OpenAI is no longer a charity in any meaningful sense of the word anymore, it's now an adversarial organization working against the public good with the sole aim of making a few rich men richer. After privatization, they sent their PR people to lobby congress to make it impossible for anyone to compete with them (important note: not out of any interest in actua…

> an adversarial organization working against the public good with the sole aim of making a few rich men richer.

I wonder what is _not_ in the list?

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#518

Post by comfypotato »

derangedHorse wrote: post #438
WillAdams wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already many more public domain books than people are inclined to read: https://www.gutenberg.org/ https://librivox.org/ many of which form the basis for an education: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34630153 And most of which, when in copyright, paid their authors quite handsomely in terms of royalties. If you believe that books should exist without copyright, then one has to ask --- how many books ha…

The good public domain books are typically outdated in both content and language. This makes it hard for those with less resources to stay competitive and makes the task of understanding unnecessarily hard. The link you posted that you say used public works to form a “basis for an education” uses Aristotle as an author for example, and seem to be taught in the context of an instructor-led class (where an expert can d…

The notion that you need cutting edge books to educate yourself is poorly informed.

There are countless well written resources for every aspect of a good education available for free online. They are often not as easy to find as their well-advertised modern equivalents.

Saying there aren’t good free textbooks is like saying there aren’t good free classics on Project Gutenberg. It’s ignorant.

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#519

Post by jazzyjackson »

xhkkffbf wrote: post #513
temp51723 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If everyone is allowed to steal books Nothing was stolen- just copied.

As a book author, I can say that, "Yes, something was stolen. My opportunity to earn a living taking care of readers." Now you may believe the incredibly self-serving baloney from big companies like Google. You may want to pretend that infringement isn't theft. To you, I hope that some homeless kid breaks into your home, starts squatting, and says that, "Hey, this isn't theft. Nothing has been destroyed."

squatting monopolizes space, only one person can own it at a time

cool thing about information is when you make a copy, you've doubled the information - plenty for everyone! if only housing worked the same way

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#520

Post by mitchdoogle »

698969 wrote: post #307
holmesworcester wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take a second to remember that copyright is the reason ~every child doesn't have access to ~every book ever written. While it might be too disruptive to eliminate copyright overnight, we should remember that our world will be much better and improve much faster to the extent we can reduce copyright's impact. And we should cheer it on when it happens. A majority of the world's population in 2023 has a smartphone…

Then most people stop writing books because they can't get paid for their time/effort and ~every child will be stuck with outdated knowledge within a decade.

There's an obvious middle ground here. 15-20 years seems about right
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