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NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

arstechnica.com

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Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#411

Post by alfiedotwtf »

tzs wrote: post #363
munchinator wrote: post #180

It's interesting to me the ambiguous attitude people have to reproducing news content. Whenever there is a story from NYT on HN (or any other large media outlet), the top comment is almost always a link to an archived version which reproduces the text verbatim. And this seems to be tolerated as the norm. And yet, whenever there is a submission about a book, a TV show, a movie, a video game, an album, a comic book, or…

> I think that's something worth reflecting on, about why we feel it's OK to pirate news articles, but not other IP As you noted it is not the norm to post pirate links here for IP other than news articles, but that doesn't mean that a lot of people think it is not OK to pirate those other forms of IP. In nearly any big discussion that even remotely involves video streaming there will be numerous posts from people ex…

> About the only piracy that is consistently frowned upon here is piracy of open source software. When some company sells an embedded device that uses GPL code without releasing the corresponding source that's viewed as just a little short of a crime against humanity.

Like what you said...

> Information wants to be free

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#412

Post by couchand »

lagniappe wrote: post #398
infecto wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don’t believe that is fully correct. The general policy here is that you cannot link to something that is paywalled unless that site plays the game of allowing crawlers but not actual human eyeballs. In the latter case the link is allowable because there are ways around it that the site owners allow.

I don't recall seeing this policy on HN guidelines.

It's on the FAQ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

> Are paywalls ok?

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#413

Post by tw1984 »

munchinator wrote: post #180

It's interesting to me the ambiguous attitude people have to reproducing news content. Whenever there is a story from NYT on HN (or any other large media outlet), the top comment is almost always a link to an archived version which reproduces the text verbatim. And this seems to be tolerated as the norm. And yet, whenever there is a submission about a book, a TV show, a movie, a video game, an album, a comic book, or…

> why we feel it's OK to pirate news articles, but not other IP.

Because those who own & produce such news articles asked to make them different. People listened and accepted their requests.

When you make a TV show or a video game, you don't get any protection from the Geneva Conventions and a long list of other international treaties for your rights on stuff other than the content you are producing. The same can't be said when you are producing news.

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#414

Post by billywhizz »

munchinator wrote: post #180

It's interesting to me the ambiguous attitude people have to reproducing news content. Whenever there is a story from NYT on HN (or any other large media outlet), the top comment is almost always a link to an archived version which reproduces the text verbatim. And this seems to be tolerated as the norm. And yet, whenever there is a submission about a book, a TV show, a movie, a video game, an album, a comic book, or…

there's quite a big difference between "pirating" digital content and making it available to anyone for free and taking that content and building a for-profit service on top of it, which is what OpenAI are doing, no?

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#415

Post by cmiles74 »

sagarm wrote: post #190
rich_sasha wrote: post #111

If you forget about the LLM aspect, and simply build a product out of (legally) scraped NYT articles, is that fair use? Let's say I host these, offer some indexing on it, and rewrite articles. Something like, summarise all articles on US-UK relationships over past 5 years. I charge money for it, and all I pay NYT is a monthly subscription fee. To keep things simple, let's say I never regurgitate chunks of verbatim NY…

Isn't it totally normal to write articles / blog posts that effectively summarize, and often quote from, news articles?

I think the issue is that they trained ChatGPT on the New York Times' proprietary IP without paying licensing fees and, the Times argues, that is illegal. By way of proof the Times has examples of ChatGPT dumping out articles verbatim.

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#416

Post by ks2048 »

Yizahi wrote: post #278
munchinator wrote: post #180

It's interesting to me the ambiguous attitude people have to reproducing news content. Whenever there is a story from NYT on HN (or any other large media outlet), the top comment is almost always a link to an archived version which reproduces the text verbatim. And this seems to be tolerated as the norm. And yet, whenever there is a submission about a book, a TV show, a movie, a video game, an album, a comic book, or…

Good comment, it was very funny to see how people desperately try to find moral justification for pirating media A but not B. "It's apples to oranges, you see, there are less letters in the NYT article than in the book and they are rendered differently, so it is ok to pirate their work. I did nothing wrong!" :)

It seems pretty natural to me. People generally have less problem with stealing a candy bar than stealing a car. (Consider the cost to produce a NYT article vs the cost to produce a Hollywood movie). I don't think the stealing-vs-pirating analogy is perfect, but it's related.

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#417

Post by tucnak »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #73
tucnak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why someone work with full time writing articles should give the work for free They are not giving it out "for free", in fact they're being paid by their employer to write these articles. Moreover, the writers themselves stand noth' to gain from their past writings financially as they don't belong to the ownership structure of the business.

Their ability to make money in the future is directly tied to their employers' ability to make money with their content. This is a closed financial loop. If OpenAI or any other AI company wants in, they should pay a licensing fee or get the laws changed, not just assume that they can take what they want and pretend like there are no negative consequences for the creator or the rights-holder.

>This is a closed financial loop.

This is a badly-formulated conjecture, or worse, ultimately selective reading of "social credit" which only purpose is serving your argument; it has nothing to do with economics. I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced.

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#418

Post by habosa »

People who think the examples the lawsuit are “fair use” need to consider what that would mean. We’re basically going to let a few companies consolidate all the value on the Internet into their black boxes with basically no rules … that seems very dangerous to me.

I hope a court establishes some rules of engagement here, even if it’s not this case.

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#419

Post by mat0 »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #371

The NYT is preparing for a tsunami by building a sandcastle. Big picture, this suit won’t matter, for so many reasons. To enumerate a few: 1. Next gen LLMs will be trained exclusively on “synthetic”/public data. GPT-4V can easily whitewash its entire copyrighted training corpus to be unrecognizably distinct (say reworded by 40%, authors/sources stripped, etc). Ergo there will be no copyright material for GPT-5 to reg…

I'm sorry but this is such a bad take. Nice appeal to consequences. In my view, the New York Times is entirely justified in pursuing legal action. They invested time and effort in creating content, only to have it used without permission for monetary gain. A clear violation.

Analyzing the factors involved for a "fair use" consideration:

Purpose and Character of the Use: While the argument for transformation might hold in the future as you point out, the current dispute revolves around verbatim use. So clearly not transformative. Also commercial use is more difficult to be ruled fair use.

Nature of the Copyrighted Work: Using works that are more factual may be more likely to be considered fair use, but I would argue that NYT articles are as creative as factual.

Amount and Substantiality of the Portion Used: In this case, the entirety of the articles was used, leaving no room for a claim of using an insignificant portion.

Effect on the Market Value: NYT isn't getting any money from this, and it's clearly not helping their market value if people are checking on ChatGPT instead of reading a NYT article.

IANAL, but in my opinion NYT is well within its rights to pursue legal action. Progress is inevitable, but as humans, we must actively shape and guide it. Otherwise it cannot be called progress. In this context, legal action serves as a necessary means for individuals and organizations to assert their rights and influence its course.

Re: NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

#420

Post by phpisthebest »

gnz11 wrote: post #410
phpisthebest wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Largely because "news" aka facts is not and should not be copyrightable, so while the style, and exact format of the article may be copyrightable, the facts contained within are not. This makes a news story copyright murky in the eyes of wider society unlike a clearly 100% creative work like a TV Show or Movie. Further the news themselves self cannibalize, how many stories are just rewrites of stories from other outl…

Creative works like books, TV shows and movies contain facts too.

None of which are copyrightable and infact has been the subject of DMCA abuse like when a Movie uses NASA footage and claims copyright on YouTube videos with the same footage.

Copyright is a complex subject, and not as vast as many believe, at the same time ironically it is more vast than i believe it should be. copyright should be much more limiting than it is. Which is at odds with people that believe copyright should be maximized.

Keeping in mind commercial success of a work, author or company is not why copyright exists. For the US, the only reason copyright can exist in our framework of law (i.e the constitution) is for the promotion of the useful sciences. No other purpose for copyright would be constitutional under the US Constitution

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