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The Battle over Books3

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Re: The Battle over Books3

#91

Post by __loam »

crote wrote: post #53
rhdunn wrote: post #8

I wonder how this affects things like the Oxford English Dictionary, wiktionary, and other corpus-based linguistics, which rely on sample sentences of the word usage in order to determine the context. Because language is an evolving thing, it is almost certain that they have referenced sentences from copyrighted sources. E.g. I'm willing to bet that they have the sentence where Cory Doctorow introduces the term "ensh…

Sample sentences like those in the OED are pretty much the textbook example of fair use. They are obviously transformative (the whole "dictionary" part), copy factual information (use of a word, not what the sentence itself is saying), are not substantial (one sentence out of many thousands), and do not impact the original work's value (nobody would buy a dictionary instead of a novel because it contains a sample phr…

The funniest thing about this whole debacle has been seeing how little tech bros understand fair use.

Re: The Battle over Books3

#92

Post by __loam »

swyx wrote: post #73
astrange wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully. People should really stop using words that make them sound like especially zany comic book characters.

"enshittification" so far is mostly a shibboleth for cranky old guys who only criticize things and don't ahem get in the arena

Interesting way to defend anti consumer behavior by huge corporate interests.

Re: The Battle over Books3

#93

Post by crazygringo »

DanHulton wrote: post #27

Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. It's almost never used to describe an action that's an unadulterated good for society. It's USUALLY used to describe something sketchy at best, or even outright evil, with the justification that only "the bad guys" have access currently, and everything would be better if EVERYONE had access. Look, I get that unethical corporations using…

Funny, my reaction is the total opposite.

Generally speaking, democratizing access is about removing monopoly power that extracts illegitimate rents -- and that tingles in a good way.

Libraries have always been at the forefront of democratizing access, and hasn't that been an unadulterated good? Or whether it's community colleges that democratized access to higher ed, or the deregulation of air travel that democratized air travel through cheaper prices that made it more available to the masses, instead of artificially restricting routes.

I can't think of a single example of "democratizing access" that is "sketchy at best" or "outright evil". They all seem pretty great to me!

But I guess I'm also firmly on the side of AI training here -- I see no reason for additional compensation to authors/artists for training on their data, when anyone can go to a library or museum and then go and create their own works influenced by what they've seen. Who cares if I hire an expensive consultant who's read a lot of books at the library, or a cheap AI who's read a lot of books from Books3? Why would authors/artists deserve extra compensation for the latter but not the former? There's just no clear legal principle behind that.

Re: The Battle over Books3

#94

Post by __loam »

lewhoo wrote: post #33
DanHulton wrote: post #27

Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. It's almost never used to describe an action that's an unadulterated good for society. It's USUALLY used to describe something sketchy at best, or even outright evil, with the justification that only "the bad guys" have access currently, and everything would be better if EVERYONE had access. Look, I get that unethical corporations using…

That's how I see it as well. To democratize art, music etc. now means to remove the skill component with the usage of all the work done so far. No one is actually prevented from pursuing those things and if you don't want your art to become training data you're ruining democratization and are somehow against the will of the people.

The level of disrespect for artists I've seen here and on other forums with regards to this technology has been staggering. The entitlement for work you didn't do is so gross.

Re: The Battle over Books3

#95

Post by __loam »

csh0 wrote: post #42
DanHulton wrote: post #27

Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. It's almost never used to describe an action that's an unadulterated good for society. It's USUALLY used to describe something sketchy at best, or even outright evil, with the justification that only "the bad guys" have access currently, and everything would be better if EVERYONE had access. Look, I get that unethical corporations using…

I always took democratize access to X to mean “I would like to give many people the opportunity to give me lots of money by buying my product.”

I saw a funny tweet recently from a guy who was spending $187 a month to not learn art. He was subscribed to like 9 different ai subscription services

Re: The Battle over Books3

#96

Post by blibble »

__loam wrote: post #90
blibble wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, the lawyers always clean up the aim would be to make training on copyrighted material legally toxic and render all existing datasets and trained weights unlawful the damages are simply a bonus

Yeah that's the real goal. You can make it impossible for big corporations to use this technology because it paints a huge target on them while ignoring the de facto state of open source models that are impossible to enforce regulation against. Best of both worlds maybe.

exactly

it's like patent trolling, but with no expensive patent required

Re: The Battle over Books3

#97

Post by itsokimbatman »

crazygringo wrote: post #93
DanHulton wrote: post #27

Any time I see the phrase "democratize access," my spidey-sense starts tingling. It's almost never used to describe an action that's an unadulterated good for society. It's USUALLY used to describe something sketchy at best, or even outright evil, with the justification that only "the bad guys" have access currently, and everything would be better if EVERYONE had access. Look, I get that unethical corporations using…

Funny, my reaction is the total opposite. Generally speaking, democratizing access is about removing monopoly power that extracts illegitimate rents -- and that tingles in a good way. Libraries have always been at the forefront of democratizing access, and hasn't that been an unadulterated good? Or whether it's community colleges that democratized access to higher ed, or the deregulation of air travel that democratiz…

I mean that's part of the conversation that needs to be had. I would argue libraries are an unadulterated good, but it is generally considered at best unethical and at worst illegal to re-use content that isn't your own, at least without a proper citation.

Then there's also the issue with things like art, music, and code. Where does the line fall with scraping Github, Soundcloud, DeviantArt, or Instagram and using things like that without permission? Most of the code on Github is open source, but there's a lot of difference between the GPL and BSD licenses.

Re: The Battle over Books3

#98

Post by crazygringo »

itsokimbatman wrote: post #97
crazygringo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, my reaction is the total opposite. Generally speaking, democratizing access is about removing monopoly power that extracts illegitimate rents -- and that tingles in a good way. Libraries have always been at the forefront of democratizing access, and hasn't that been an unadulterated good? Or whether it's community colleges that democratized access to higher ed, or the deregulation of air travel that democratiz…

I mean that's part of the conversation that needs to be had. I would argue libraries are an unadulterated good, but it is generally considered at best unethical and at worst illegal to re-use content that isn't your own, at least without a proper citation. Then there's also the issue with things like art, music, and code. Where does the line fall with scraping Github, Soundcloud, DeviantArt, or Instagram and using th…

> but it is generally considered at best unethical and at worst illegal to re-use content that isn't your own, at least without a proper citation.

No it's not at all, except in extremely limited circumstances.

When George Lucas made Star Wars, did he cite all the Westerns and space opera serials and movies that influenced him? When you give a presentation at work on why you should move to a sharded database, do you cite the history of academic work on sharded databases? When you use Times New Roman in a document, do you cite the British newspaper The Times, or Robert Granjon's prior serif designs from the 1500's?

Of course not.

Legally, you can do whatever you want with ideas and styles and whatnot, which is what AI is about. Legally, you only run into problems when you reproduce sections of copyrighted works verbatim, without a license, in a manner that's not considered fair use. Your answer to "where does the line fall" is quite clear legally -- it's the line demarcated by fair use, which has nothing to do with licenses. AI doesn't change that.

Re: The Battle over Books3

#99

Post by artninja1988 »

__loam wrote: post #91
crote wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sample sentences like those in the OED are pretty much the textbook example of fair use. They are obviously transformative (the whole "dictionary" part), copy factual information (use of a word, not what the sentence itself is saying), are not substantial (one sentence out of many thousands), and do not impact the original work's value (nobody would buy a dictionary instead of a novel because it contains a sample phr…

The funniest thing about this whole debacle has been seeing how little tech bros understand fair use.

A real legal scholar over here. You're not like other guys...

Re: The Battle over Books3

#100

Post by artninja1988 »

__loam wrote: post #95
csh0 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always took democratize access to X to mean “I would like to give many people the opportunity to give me lots of money by buying my product.”

I saw a funny tweet recently from a guy who was spending $187 a month to not learn art. He was subscribed to like 9 different ai subscription services

If we are thinking of the same tweet, it was from an influencer who shows off these different tools on his YouTube channel. So of course he's subscribed to all of them. Quite the disingenuous framing
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