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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

#211

Post by layer8 »

emporas wrote: post #156
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody posted this link in a comment on a thread the other day: https://news.artnet.com/market/koch-brother-loses-it-on-air-... And it occurred to me that this is precisely the thing that's holding back humanity: "Koch estimates that he has spent $25 million on legal fees—far more than the $5 million he originally spent on the fake wine itself." We have a legal system that is completely inaccessible to the average…

Two friends of mine, created a pretty good song some time back in 2013, and they tried to copyright it. One lawyer and mutual friend of mine and the band, asked for 200 euros to copyright just that one song. Later they realized, they could copyright the song for just 30 euros. On some other totally unrelated news, my parents knew a person who sold en mass music on cassettes illegally copied from other cassettes back…

You don’t have to “copyright” a creative work in Europe for it to enjoy copyright protection. It automatically does so by virtue of being a creative work.

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

#212

Post by gmerc »

mattmanser wrote: post #207
gmerc wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

businesses use photocopiers, there’s Xerox shops, etc. Again, LLMs don’t copy so it’s not a good metaphor.

I know. It's well established. You brought up photocopiers and you never said it wasn't a good metaphor so I don't know why you pre-pended "Again". If it's not a good metaphor, that invalidates your point that: "we didn’t ban [photocopiers] either despite them technically being a lot more useful for violation" So now you're arguing against yourself.

I’m not. Take the printer instead. Much more capable of plagiarism and copyright violation

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

#213

Post by gmerc »

ojosilva wrote: post #159

IANAL, but copyright protections are pretty much tied to content and format and not to the idea itself, with the intent of preventing (or putting a price on) the copying of original works. The Times will have a very hard time proving that their content is being re-marketed by OpenAI. Having a competing product based on your ideas. Compare: "Steve Jobs [was] a tyrant": https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/technology/ste…

> A top concern for The Times is that ChatGPT is, in a sense, becoming a direct competitor with the paper by creating text that answers questions based on the original reporting and writing of the paper's staff

Sounds to me like they are trying to claim copyright over facts rather than the specific expression. That’s just not how copyright works at the moment.

The framing of openAIs recent changes is telling too. OpenAI seems to have nudged their models to reject requests of querying sentence continuation for specific sources - which the press is now framing as “trying to hide the use of copyrighted data”

What we are seeing here is an unprecedented attempt at expanding copyright doctrine to facts, style and information rather than specific expressions - a land grab of latent space by rights holders salivating to own factual information

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

#214

Post by FrustratedMonky »

contravariant wrote: post #206
dillydogg wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, are you making money off of those copies?

Does reading news articles not benefit you? If not why continue reading?

Exactly. If I read a NYT article, and decide to invest in some company, then sell the stock, make a profit. Do I owe the NYT a percentage because I used knowledge I "read" from one of their articles? I "read", input, (into my brain neural net) where it mixed with other inputs.

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

#215

Post by onetokeoverthe »

ojosilva wrote: post #159

IANAL, but copyright protections are pretty much tied to content and format and not to the idea itself, with the intent of preventing (or putting a price on) the copying of original works. The Times will have a very hard time proving that their content is being re-marketed by OpenAI. Having a competing product based on your ideas. Compare: "Steve Jobs [was] a tyrant": https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/technology/ste…

[dead]

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

#216

Post by emporas »

layer8 wrote: post #211
emporas wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two friends of mine, created a pretty good song some time back in 2013, and they tried to copyright it. One lawyer and mutual friend of mine and the band, asked for 200 euros to copyright just that one song. Later they realized, they could copyright the song for just 30 euros. On some other totally unrelated news, my parents knew a person who sold en mass music on cassettes illegally copied from other cassettes back…

You don’t have to “copyright” a creative work in Europe for it to enjoy copyright protection. It automatically does so by virtue of being a creative work.

Oh i don't know anything about copyrights and the exact purpose they had to pay a lawyer. But i do know, that there were so many people scanning books, copying cassettes, cds, dvds etc, who profited by copying information minimum 1000%.

We are well into half a century of copying everything, just using a manual and tedious process. Nowadays with statistical engines and the internet, the copying process is planetary and infinite. So what's the big difference?

Let alone the fact that statistical engines do not copy information!

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

#219

Post by onetokeoverthe »

akolbe wrote: post #70

There is a very real risk that we end up with an inferior product cannibalizing a superior one and driving it out of business. Moreover, AI would seem to be even more susceptible to capture and manipulation than conventional media. When it's a question of guiding thought I prefer the humanities to tech. (Same with art.)

[dead]

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

#220

Post by FrustratedMonky »

pimterry wrote: post #113

Honestly, I think generative AI losing a massive copyright showdown is inevitable at this stage. It's extremely easy to get the latest generation of AIs to produce outputs that in many fields sans-AI would be trivially considered as IP infringement. While there are many interesting reasonable legal & technical arguments that it's not, the result completely undermines copyright protections regardless. If that's accept…

>>"If you do allow that, the many many affected industries have catastrophic problems."

That is the problem. Technically, AI should be allowed to 'read' content, it isn't hidden, and it gets mixed with other content in a 'brain' like thing.

AI and Humans can both spit out a new product that is 'similar' and thus be sued on that similarity.

But it can also produce endless similar variations at low cost and fast.

It is the ease of creating new similar products.

You could just as well prompt the AI "make a Taylor Swift song, but different enough to avoid a lawsuit".

  Think this is an entirely new problem that needs a new law beyond copywrite. Copywrite is not the correct law to us for fighting this.  Copywrite law doesn't ban someone from reading the source altogether.
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