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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

#31

Post by twoodfin »

Tao3300 wrote: post #26
twoodfin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That copy didn’t go into a human’s brain. It went into GPU memory. It’s a copy under the law, no different from copying a Taylor Swift mp3 onto a flash drive.

Whether that copy was fair use is the key question.

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

#32

Post by throwaway3618 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #17
nullindividual wrote: post #10

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…

Seems copyright works in part because of the effort involved in producing something that's similar to something else. You can't just copy and it takes effort to make something different enough, that gives the original a bit of a "moat".

If you take away enough of that effort, the investment in new stuff becomes unviable, perhaps.

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

#33

Post by twoodfin »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #29
twoodfin wrote: 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.

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…

You don’t need a fair use exemption for transient copies in service of licensed or fair uses.

Computers and networks have been around a long time. These issues have been given a good workout.

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

#34

Post by FormerBandmate »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #29
twoodfin wrote: 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.

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…

OpenAI is pretty clearly using their work to make derivative content that in certain cases (CNET) is a direct competitor. Honestly, this seems open and shut

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

#35

Post by throwaway3618 »

BudaDude wrote: post #27
staticman2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

Not just for the LLMs

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

#36

Post by prepend »

twoodfin wrote: post #9
brrrrrm wrote: 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.

Do you think OpenAI doesn’t subscribe?

I too load creative works into all sorts of temporary structures in order to read the paper. I don’t need to license it, I pay for a subscription.

Should I pay more if I memorize the paper? Should I pay more if I read it to my sick friend in the hospital? Should I pay more if I save copies to my own hard drive and grep for words in the files? Should robots have a higher subscription price?

This whole “they copied it into a gpu” doesn’t matter. People read and interpret. Robots read and interpret. I don’t want to live in a world where every specific device and use needs to be licensed. Especially ex post facto. That will suck so hard.

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

#37

Post by version_five »

prepend wrote: post #36
twoodfin wrote: 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.

Do you think OpenAI doesn’t subscribe? I too load creative works into all sorts of temporary structures in order to read the paper. I don’t need to license it, I pay for a subscription. Should I pay more if I memorize the paper? Should I pay more if I read it to my sick friend in the hospital? Should I pay more if I save copies to my own hard drive and grep for words in the files? Should robots have a higher subscrip…

  Should I pay more if I memorize the paper? Should I pay more if I read it to my sick friend in the hospital?
It's not even close to either of those things. It's "should I pay more if it infinitesimally affects my perception of english grammar or knowledge of a subject". The llm isn't, for any functional purpose, memorizing, it's getting weight updates as it learns from these examples which are teaspoons of information in a sea of trillions of tokens.

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

#38

Post by Scion9066 »

swalling wrote: post #16
dragonwriter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think the Times has a far better case for presenting mechanical copies (including with mechanical alteration) than it does with model training. The tool building of model training is more likely to be fair use than the use of the tool to provide mechanical copies of copyirght-protected material that competes directly with the original in the market.

Fair use only covers very limited circumstances which probably does not include selling a subscription (ChatGPT+). If you’re selling a repackaged reproduction of someone else’s copyrighted works, that’s never protected by fair use.

But you generally can't copyright the underlying facts, only the creative expression in the article/work itself. If they can get it to extract just the facts and how they relate to one another, that wouldn't really be protected by copyright. They might try to bring back the "Hot News" doctrine though.

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

#39

Post by twoodfin »

prepend wrote: post #36
twoodfin wrote: 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.

Do you think OpenAI doesn’t subscribe? I too load creative works into all sorts of temporary structures in order to read the paper. I don’t need to license it, I pay for a subscription. Should I pay more if I memorize the paper? Should I pay more if I read it to my sick friend in the hospital? Should I pay more if I save copies to my own hard drive and grep for words in the files? Should robots have a higher subscrip…

How about “they copied it into a terrific text-to-speech engine and sold ads against the resulting podcasts”?

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

#40

Post by BudaDude »

throwaway3618 wrote: post #35
BudaDude wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not just for the LLMs

True, any neural network. This is a very grey area and rushing to call it "property" ignores what the technology is emulating.
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