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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

#311

Post by 8note »

CodeSgt wrote: post #295
zb3 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't consume any of those, I'm just saying what would be better for me. However, abolishing copyright is not the same as making monetization illegal. My view is that people should be paid for their WORK, and copying something doesn't make the author work more. This'd mean the funds 'd need to be bootstrapped (crowdfunding?) before the work is done, but then it'd be free to distribute it.

The first sentence of your initial comment I responded to was ‘It would be great if such "creative" works were simply impossible to monetize.’

The difference being that the artist can still be monetized, even if the art isn't.

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

#312

Post by AnimalMuppet »

8note wrote: post #301
wilsynet wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As previously said, search engines index and provide links. I’ll add that it constitutes fair use because a search engine isn’t itself a replacement for the articles that it indexes. But ChatGPT is actually providing an alternative that obviates the original articles themselves.

Search engines provide links, but also titles and snippets of the page -- enough for you to decide if you want to visit, and Google will show you their cached page if you ask for it. Even the link is a copyrightable item -- artistic effort went into creating it

> Search engines provide links, but also titles and snippets of the page -- enough for you to decide if you want to visit

Small snippets are allowed by copyright law. They are not infringing.

> and Google will show you their cached page if you ask for it.

Really? I haven't seen that in several years. How do you get it these days?

I always assumed Google quit giving you that option exactly because of copyright issues.

> Even the link is a copyrightable item -- artistic effort went into creating it

IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that the current state of copyright law disagrees with you. Can you point to some concrete evidence that you're right?

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

#313

Post by justinclift »

arthurcolle wrote: post #268
endisneigh wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people use these analogies. No person can memorize terabytes worth of lyrics.

What if someone could? What if rainman could

What if rainman could fly too? I guess rainman wouldn't need an airport for short haul trips.

So, "good on rainman".

Now, for the rest of us...

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

#314

Post by telotortium »

Filligree wrote: post #254
lewhoo wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But by business we mean an organization of people.

For the moment. How many years until we see the first person-less business? I’m sure there’ll be a human on the books, on paper.

If a human is willing to be put on the line for any errors the LLM makes, I don't see why a person-less business wouldn't be allowed. The legal system won't tolerate a business where they can't pursue a human in the case of wrongdoing or liability. Something like a DAO won't be allowed in the near future, though.

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

#315

Post by 8note »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #247
Pannoniae wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or on the converse: if those industries are unviable without copyright protection, they could go away entirely. This is a plausible path to "drop copyright entirely", just like encryption was dropped as an export-controlled technology in the late 90s. (remember the 40-bit "international" SSL?) OpenAI etc. have huge amounts of money behind them, they very well have a fighting chance in court to defend their usage of s…

You’ve ironically stumbled upon thenphilosocial argument in favor of copyright! We do want these industries to exist. Without copyright protection in a world of zero effort reproduction, it becomes impossible to make a living this way. This the industries cease to exist. And people stop crafting anything other than the most dogshit of media and programs and writing. If you have to work a different job all day, you’re…

Kickstarter does quite well, as does patreon.

Eg. If team cherry didn't have savings from selling hollow knight, I'd pitch in money for them to work on silk song.

The modern small artist doesn't even get paid for their art, but for things like their audience

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

#316

Post by sumtechguy »

wilsynet wrote: post #244
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…

The NYT argument is going to be that they put up a site, own the copyright for their content and make that content available for either a human to read it for themselves, or software to index for something commonly understood as a search engine. Those terms do not entitle the training of LLMs for commercial use. Therefore, cease and desist. Oh and destroy anything that was created by violating the terms of our licens…

NYT will have to prove that the derivative work is still theirs. Just violating the license may not be enough. That could be bad by itself I guess. But considering the interactive prompt can produce a wild amount of variations of 'not NYT stuff' will make it though to say what sort of damages is this.

A similar sort of issue popped up in the 80s around colorization of films. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-06-20-ca-8405-s... https://chart.copyrightdata.com/Colorization.html

The answer may be 'maybe'? As from what I read they basically split the decision down to 'i know it when I see it' style of ruling. If the copyright is still in effect then NYT owns that portion of the output but not others parts. As the secondary effect would be owned by the generator company (in this case OpenAI) or the person who prompted for it. If that is the case NYT would have to prove what parts (nodes? bacreferences? weights?) they own?

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

#317

Post by 8note »

akolbe wrote: post #162
awesomeMilou wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Google, merely indexing content is not considered fair use. It's a double edged sword, as media outlets have realized, after all Google is responsible for a larger part of the success of these publications. But in Germany for example, Google News basicially just copypasted articles into their service, and monetizing it without involving the publishers. That doesn't qualify as transformative even under…

The trend with Google and other search engines over the past ten years has been for them to incorporate more and more content on their own pages. It's hard to remember that not so long ago Google search results pages were just lists of web pages bereft of any other content. Today, if you Google for a song lyric, that lyric appears in Google. You get a tiny grey source link to Musixmatch or whatever but why would anyo…

For lyrics, why should Musixmatch get the page view anyways? The musician/song writer owns the copyright

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

#318

Post by 8note »

lewhoo wrote: post #223
virgildotcodes wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I agree that legal personhood for LLMs at this point is far-fetched. This would be a separate argument, though, from the notion I responded to above that the difference in the processes of a human mind and LLM are the reason why "learning" from copyrighted material is a violation of copyright in one case and not the other.

(IANAL) I'm not sure if I understand correctly, but I don't think so. Since LLM is not a person in the legal term it really doesn't matter what the difference is. There may be virtually no difference but I imagine the discussion would still be academic. For example: animals aren't granted rights just because they are in some instances similar or in other instances even identical to humans. Primates aren't allowed to…

Stack overflow content is certainly copyrighted, but the copyright is owned by the questioners and answerers, not stack overflow.

There's no damage to the potential market or value of the works because they're given away for free by their owners.

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

#319

Post by 8note »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #157
machdiamonds wrote: post #108

Don't humans operate similarly? We gain knowledge through experiences. These AI models effectively condense a vast amount of experience data into weights. Considering the global race in AI advancements, I'm skeptical about the success of these copyright claims. I do find it hypocritical that OpenAI says that other LLMs can't be trained on data generated by their LLMs.

> Don't humans operate similarly? I'm going to bypass this question a bit and say, who cares? Why do we need to treat these things the same way we treat humans? Why can we not say that it's okay if a human does it, and not okay if it's a computer? There's nothing that requires us to establish 'fair' as treating them the same as people.

I care because I can't tell the difference between an LLM summarizing news and blogspam.

We've been living in a world where people read news articles, then wrote almost the same article on their own website to sell ads. It's been a standard business practice for a decade now, what's so special about LLM based blogspam? The end impact is still the same, people reading the blogspam instead of the source

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

#320

Post by dilap »

endisneigh wrote: post #262
dilap wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems unfair as we converge on AGI. If I memorize the lyrics to a song, is that a copyright violation? The lyrics are encoded in the arrangement of my neurons, after all.

I don't know why people use these analogies. No person can memorize terabytes worth of lyrics.

Does that invalidate the analogy?

The point I'm trying to make is if you rule these behaviors illegal, then you're necessarily making intelligent AI illegal, because humans are capable of the same behaviors.

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