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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

#321

Post by andromeduck »

simonsarris wrote: post #291
zlg_codes wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruling in favor of copyright will call into question search engines and the like as well. Do you think Bing or Google are going to negotiate copying rights with the world's websites? LLMs are proving that intellectual property has a bunch of holes in it. It's been unstable ground to defend since day one. Upon what principle should we believe that one can own an idea and all performances or derivatives of it? Patents…

Search engines are a device for leading you to a source. This is 99% of the time in the copyright holder's interest. LLMs output a mashup of source material without attribution. This is 99% of the time against the copyright holder's interest.

So is everyday conversation.

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

#322

Post by awesomeMilou »

bomewish wrote: post #187
deelly wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least ask before scrapping/reading it.

If it’s on the open internet then why should they have to do that? How is openai training on articles fundamentally different from the wayback machine storing them? They’re just getting stored in a different form.

That's like saying that taking a sample from a song and putting it in a remix is just a different way of storing the original song. If I cut the original song up just right and put enough samples across different songs...

The issue here really lies in "yeah so how actually DOES this make a difference" legally speaking. It just seems unfair that I'm not allowed to copypaste a text verbatim or upload a movie to youtube that I don't own the copyright for, yet OpenAI can happily commercialize on content that has been sorted and rated for quality by someone else.

The question is "are they allowed to do this under the umbrella of current copyright legislation?" and the answer has far reaching implications.

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

#323

Post by singleshot_ »

gamblor956 wrote: post #299
zlg_codes wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruling in favor of copyright will call into question search engines and the like as well. Do you think Bing or Google are going to negotiate copying rights with the world's websites? LLMs are proving that intellectual property has a bunch of holes in it. It's been unstable ground to defend since day one. Upon what principle should we believe that one can own an idea and all performances or derivatives of it? Patents…

Ruling in favor of copyright will call into question search engines and the like as well. No, they won't. Search engines have already fought and won this battle on fair use grounds because they make use of the copyrighted content differently than LLMs do. It's an absolutely fundamental distinction. Patents and trademarks haven't really helped as much as they were expected to. Patents have been a thing for nearly a mi…

I consider the right of publicity to be IP. I base this primarily on Shaw Family Archives, wherein the grantees of IP rights were denied right of publicity because it did not exist as an intellectual property right at the time of Monroe’s death, not because RoP is not intellectual property.

I’m curious if you can set me straight with a citation, or whether you would contest mine.

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

#324

Post by awesomeMilou »

8note wrote: post #317
akolbe wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How does your argument relate to the one of the previous posters? Two rights don't make a wrong, nevermind that some of these sites do actually buy the rights to display the lyrics off of artists songs.

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

#325

Post by 8note »

bandrami wrote: post #94
FormerBandmate wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not derivative though. For derivation you have to literally point to sequences of words in the original that are also in the alleged infringer, and those sequences have to be long or unique enough to not be able to come from somewhere else or just common English usage.

You can make a derivative work by using the character of Harry Potter in your own book.

Fan art and fan fiction are derivative without copying sequences of words

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

#326

Post by lewhoo »

8note wrote: post #318
lewhoo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

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

There may be, because technically copy/pasting SO code is governed by CC BY-SA 4.0 license which requires attribution and things aren't so obvious especially for commercial purpose.

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

#327

Post by 7jjjjjjj »

golem14 wrote: post #303
rich_sasha wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a major qualitative difference between generative AI and search engines. Search engines index the web and point you at other people's work, along the way showing perhaps too much of that content (thus "stealing" users from the target webpage). But they don't reshuffle existing content into something apparently new and original. The "malicious" case for generative AI is that it sucks in copyrighted wo…

... as opposed to a human doing the same thing ? It's hard for me to reconcile that it's somehow OK for a student to write a term paper about something (e.g. "Ulysses"), Wikipedia doing the same thing, but on the other hand, not OK for chatGPT doing it.

Copyright is not a principle or an ideal. It's a pragmatic law designed to achieve specific goals. It can and does make such arbitrary distinctions.

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

#328

Post by tyingq »

simonsarris wrote: post #291
zlg_codes wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ruling in favor of copyright will call into question search engines and the like as well. Do you think Bing or Google are going to negotiate copying rights with the world's websites? LLMs are proving that intellectual property has a bunch of holes in it. It's been unstable ground to defend since day one. Upon what principle should we believe that one can own an idea and all performances or derivatives of it? Patents…

Search engines are a device for leading you to a source. This is 99% of the time in the copyright holder's interest. LLMs output a mashup of source material without attribution. This is 99% of the time against the copyright holder's interest.

Search engines used to be a device for leading you to a source. Most queries worth any money now have zero organic results above the fold. And it's one of many various schemes to keep you on their sites and not to organic search results. There's a plethora of straight ad strategies, widgets for various verticals (retail, travel, etc), "rich snippets", etc.

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

#329

Post by Affric »

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…

chatGPT it’s a terrible (truly, it’s punishing) writer but that should not always be the case.

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

#330

Post by bmitc »

bomewish wrote: post #187
deelly wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or at least ask before scrapping/reading it.

If it’s on the open internet then why should they have to do that? How is openai training on articles fundamentally different from the wayback machine storing them? They’re just getting stored in a different form.

What is the "open internet"?
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