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The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

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Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#731

Post by b112 »

b112 wrote: post #602
hibikir wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to Aaron Swartz was terrible. I find that what he was doing was outright good. IMO the right reading isn't to make sure anyone doing something similar faces the same way, but to make the information far more free, whether it's a corporation using it or not. I don't want them to steamroll everyone equally here, but to not steamroll anyone.

I don't want them to steamroll everyone equally here, but to not steamroll anyone. I think you're nissing the point, and putting cart before horse. If you ensure that corporations are treated as stringently as people are sometimes, the reverse is true. And that means your goal will presumably be obtained, as the corporate might, becomes the little guy's win. All with no unjust treatment.

Huh. I see downvotes. I am mystified, for if people and corporations are both treated stringently under the law, corporations will fight to have overly restrictive laws knocked down.

I envision pitting corporate body against corporate body, when one corporatism lobbies, works to (for example) extend copyrights, others will work to weaken copyright.

That doesn't happen as vigilantly currently, because there is no corporate incentive. They play the old, ask for forgiveness, rather than permission angle.

Anyhow. I just prefer to set my enemies against my enemies. More fun.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#732

Post by ngetchell »

kevincox wrote: post #536
ngetchell wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"probably the single most important development in human history" is the kind of hyperbole you'd only find here. Better than medicine, agriculture, electrification, or music? That point of view simply does not jive with what I see so far from AI. It has had little impact beyond filling the internet with low-effort content. I feel like the crypto evangelists never got off the hype train. They just picked a new destina…

I think you are looking at current AI product rather than the underlying technology. It's like saying that the wheel is a useless invention because it has only been used for unicycles so far. I'm sure that AI will have huge impacts in medicine (assisting diagnosis from medical tests) and agriculture (identifying issues with areas of crops, scanning for diseases and increasing automation of food processing) as well as…

Aren't those examples better handled by an if statement than a unaccountable computer? Someone that can be sued for negligence seems to be better at making decisions than hallucinating computers.

I don't see why it follows that the NYT should be sacrificed so some rich people in silicon valley can teach their LLM on the cheap.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#733

Post by graphe »

kbos87 wrote: post #708
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world you’re hoping for will put all AI tech only within the hands of the established top 10 media entities, who traditionally have never compensated fairly anyway. Sorry but if that’s the alternative to some writers feeling slighted, I’ll choose for the writers to be sad and the tech to be free.

“Feeling slighted” is a gross understatement of how a lack of compensation flowing to creators has shaped the internet and the wider world over the past 25 years. If we have a problem with the way top media companies compensate their creators, that is a separate issue - not a justification for layering another issue on top.

YouTube had made way more content creators wealthy than the NYT. Writers are not going to be paid more after this ruling either way.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#734

Post by HDThoreaun »

insanitybit wrote: post #510
HDThoreaun wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if NYT goes under a dozen similar outlets can replace them overnight Not when there’s no money in journalism because the generative AIs immediately steal all content. If nyt goes under no one will be willing to start a news business as everyone will see it’s a money loser.

How does AI compete with journalism? AI doesn't do investigative reporting, AI can't even observe the world or send out reporters. Which part of journalism is AI going to impact most? Opinion pieces that contain no new information? Summarizing past events?

AI certainly isn’t a replacement for journalism, but that doesn’t mean journalism will continue to exist if no one pays for it. If everyone gets their news from chatGPT or the like there will be no investigative reporting. We’re already beginning to see this with most people reading the google/Facebook blurbs instead of clicking the link and giving ad money let alone paying.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#735

Post by Jensson »

MeImCounting wrote: post #635
cjbprime wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPT4 is absolutely capable of providing links to sources and citations. Do you mean in the Browsing Mode or something? I don't think it is naturally capable of that, both because it is performing lossy compression, and because in many cases it simply won't know where the text that was fed to it during training came from.

[flagged]

It should link to one of the articles about TCP it used as a reference to write that info blurb, not the TCP spec.

The problem is that those links doesn't link to where it got that text, it links to whatever that text linked to. Saying it is giving links is like saying that when I copy paste an article with links I am providing links to the source. No I am not, I am plagiarizing including plagiarizing those links.

So, it has read some TCP tutorials and wrote that blurb based on those. Don't you think it is fair that it links one of those to give credit? LLMs aren't capable of writing tutorials based on specs, they write tutorials based on tutorials it has seen, it should link to those.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#736

Post by graphe »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #509
theGnuMe wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s likely fair use.

It's likely not. Search for "the four factors of fair use". While I think OpenAI will have decent arguments for 3 of the factors, they'll get killed on the fourth factor, "the effect of the use on the potential market", which is what this lawsuit is really about. If your "fair use" substantially negatively affects the market for the original source material, which I think is fairly clear in this case, the courts wont…

Nobody is gonna cancel their NYT subscription for chatGPT 4.0. OpenAI will win.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#737

Post by slyall »

flextheruler wrote: post #720
hhsectech wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not for or against anything at this point until someone gets their balls out and clearly defines what copyright infringement means in this context. If you give a bunch of books to a kid all by the same author and then pay that kid to write a book in a similar style and then I go on to sell that book...have I somehow infringed copyright? The kids book at best is likely to be a very convincing facsimile of the orig…

I think you’re skipping over the problem. In your example you owned the work you gave to the person to create derivatives of. In a more accurate example you would be stealing those books and then giving them to someone else to create derivatives.

How about if I borrowed them from the library and gave them to the kid to read?

How about if I got the kid to read the books on a public website where the author made the books available for free?

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#738

Post by graphe »

tremon wrote: post #678
buckyfull wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t view LLMs as a fad. It’s like drummers and drum machines. Machines and drummers co-exist really well. I think drum machines, among other things, made drummers better.

It mainly made mediocre drummers sound better to the untrained ear.

I agree. Hitting perfect notes constantly with little or no variation is pretty hard for a person to do. Now anything "live" or proof of humanity is better sounding since it's not as sterile.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#739

Post by trogdor »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #526
trogdor wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why isn't robots.txt enough to enforce copyright You actually need a lot more than that. Most significantly, you need to have registered the work with the Copyright Office. “No civil action for infringement of the copyright in any United States work shall be instituted until ... registration of the copyright claim has been made in accordance with this title.” 17 USC §411(a).

But the thing is, you can only bring the civil action forward after registering your claim but you need not register the claim before the infringement occurs. Copyright is granted to the creator upon creation.

That is incorrect.

If the work is unpublished for the purposes of the Copyright Act, you do have to register (or preregister) the work prior to the infringement. 17 USC § 412(1).

If the work is published, you still have to register it within the earlier of (a) three months after the first publication of the work or (b) one month after the copyright owner learns of the infringement.

See below for the actual text of the law.

Publication, for the purposes of the Copyright Act, generally means transferring or offering a copy of the work for sale or rental. But there are many cases where it’s not clear whether a work has or has not been published — most notably when a work is posted online and can be downloaded, but has not been explicitly offered for sale.

Also, the Supreme Court recently ruled that the mere filing of an application for registration is insufficient to file suit. The Register of Copyrights has to actually grant your application. The registration process typically takes many months, though you can pay $800 for expedited processing, if you need it.

~~~

Here is the relevant portion of the Copyright Act:

In any action under this title, other than an action brought for a violation of the rights of the author under section 106A(a), an action for infringement of the copyright of a work that has been preregistered under section 408(f) before the commencement of the infringement and that has an effective date of registration not later than the earlier of 3 months after the first publication of the work or 1 month after the copyright owner has learned of the infringement, or an action instituted under section 411(c), no award of statutory damages or of attorney’s fees, as provided by sections 504 and 505, shall be made for—

(1) any infringement of copyright in an unpublished work commenced before the effective date of its registration; or

(2) any infringement of copyright commenced after first publication of the work and before the effective date of its registration, unless such registration is made within three months after the first publication of the work.

Re: The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement

#740

Post by slyall »

aantix wrote: post #531
jquery wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are not databases. There is no "citation" associated with a specific query, any more than you can cite the source of the comment you just made.

That's fine. Solve it a different way. OpenAI doesn't just get to steal work and then say "sorry, not possible" and shrug it off. The NYTimes should be suing.

You sound like one of those government people who demand encryption that has government backdoors but is perfect safe from attackers.

When told it is impossible they go "Geek Harder then Nerd" like demanding it will make it happen.

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