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New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

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Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#21
post #18
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paraphrasing is not the issue. The issue is that OpenAI copied the Times ’ creative works into a GPU to train a model. That copy was likely neither licensed nor fair use.

If I read it and memorize it, my brain has made a copy.

Not as far as copyright law is concerned. If you then use your brain to write it back down—or sing it as a song in Central Park—now you have created a copy under the law.

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#22
post #18
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paraphrasing is not the issue. The issue is that OpenAI copied the Times ’ creative works into a GPU to train a model. That copy was likely neither licensed nor fair use.

If I read it and memorize it, my brain has made a copy.

Great, can I offer you as a service to billions of people?

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#23
post #5
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s sort of ironic though since the Times is “news” where as GPT is built on historic texts. Of course that gap will tighten until we have near real-time models. But that’s not the reality today.

The Times is not merely news, it is the paper of record for the united states (meaning its historical articles are indexed and commonly used to establish prior facts).

It's not like that's an official designation or anything. It's just something people say.

If you're looking to prove a prior fact in a court case, you're perfectly allowed to cite the Washington Post or the Boston Globe or anything else that has a good reputation. There are lots of "papers of record" in the US -- you're not limited to one per country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_of_record#By_reputat...

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#24
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paraphrasing is not the issue. The issue is that OpenAI copied the Times ’ creative works into a GPU to train a model. That copy was likely neither licensed nor fair use.

The question though is if we want to stifle innovation by requiring LLMs get permission from every single relevant party on the internet. And I usually lean anti-corporate too, but banning people in the US from using data for LLMs might just mean they start being trained somewhere else that doesn't care as much about US law.

Or Fox News or Breitbart or whoever should just declare that all its content is licensed as free for LLM training.

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#26
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I read it and memorize it, my brain has made a copy.

Not as far as copyright law is concerned. If you then use your brain to write it back down—or sing it as a song in Central Park—now you have created a copy under the law.

Right. But the comment above said the issue is with the copy made for training. The "read it and memorized it" copy, not the "write it back down" copy.

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#27

If a human reads something, it goes into their brain, and it becomes an influence on future works they produce. This doesn't mean that 'copywrite' extends into my brain. A company can't copywrite what I'm thinking about. And what if I do try to paraphrase something from memory, from a few sources, and happen to spit out a very similar sentence from memory. Am I breaking the law? To go further. Since all knowledge is…

"If a human reads something, it goes into their brain" Humans aren't property. LLM models are. So the comparison is irrelevant and I'll stop you right there.

When you think about it like that, if LLM's are based on the human brain, did we basically reinvent slavery?

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I breaking the law? The intent of [US] copyright law is to promote new works of art (which can be derivative). So copyright did exactly what it is supposed to do in your analogy. Plus, you're human, which gives you special rights that software doesn't posses.

But. I am allowed to at least read the copywritten material, from which it goes into my brain to become mixed up with everything else, and spit out to produce something 'new' or 'newish'. Some of these lawsuits are trying to prevent the AI from even 'reading' the material. It can't even be used as an influence. Wouldn't it be better to treat the products of the AI with the same laws as humans. If the new 'product' is…

Why would that be better? You seems to assume that because these models have some utility to their creators they should be allowed, even when they have negative utility to others who’s work they consume. Why should that be true?

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#29
post #9
post #3

What’s going to be the name used for the laws that attempt to tackle machine paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing is not the issue. The issue is that OpenAI copied the Times ’ creative works into a GPU to train a model. That copy was likely neither licensed nor fair use.

Did the Times grant a license to every router on the internet to transmit its intellectual property to other routers? If not, the judge should grant an injunction contingent on requiring the Times to verify that every person who accesses their content is doing so only over routers and other devices with express written authorization, for every step in the process. Maybe even extend it to browsers and client libraries for encoding/decoding, to be accurate.

I say if people want to come up with bullshit lawsuits, we should play into them and force those people to suffer the consequences of said bullshit.

Re: New York Times considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl

#30

If a human reads something, it goes into their brain, and it becomes an influence on future works they produce. This doesn't mean that 'copywrite' extends into my brain. A company can't copywrite what I'm thinking about. And what if I do try to paraphrase something from memory, from a few sources, and happen to spit out a very similar sentence from memory. Am I breaking the law? To go further. Since all knowledge is…

> And what if I do try to paraphrase something from memory, from a few sources, and happen to spit out a very similar sentence from memory. Am I breaking the law?

If you're doing this for a commercial purpose, yes. Recording artists have been successfully sued for accidentally reusing a melody they claim to not remember ever hearing, provided it really does sound sufficiently similar to the original.

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