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> Though I think that training data is totally a violation of copyright, OpenAI really needs to win. I’d argue that that’s not really how the law is supposed to work.
Well, the objection to current copyright laws is that those laws are not how copyright ought to work.
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If learning from a purchased, copyrighted work is illegal, colleges are in real trouble. Textbook publishers will be thrilled though: this book is $200 to read, but you need an additional license to learn anything from it.
Learning and then reproducing parts of a work already is illegal, depending on context. Also, “learning” here isn’t the same thing as what college students do. For one thing, you can’t copy-paste a college student’s whole brain. You can’t own and sell their brains (well, ah, you know what I mean—not the organ trade). For another… it’s simply not the same thing. It might be, we suppose, similar to some parts of how hu…
Copyright protection does not extend to ideas, procedures, processes, systems, methods of operation, concepts, principles, or discoveries. Copyright protects only the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
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The piracy argument can be fixed by OpenAI buying one copy of each work. The overall question of whether they're allowed to train on copyrighted material without permission seems much larger and more interesting.
May not be that easy. It may be the case we'll find that (in much the way as tech has made popular ironically) authors/IP creators aren't willing to sell "machine training rights" to their work. A concept that could find itself magicked into existence by artists/publishers.
They have absolutely no say in how I use the book they sold to me. Only if I reproduce that book, the actual physical reproduced work is of concern to copyright law, nothing else (my use of the book I bought from you is of no concern).
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What if I merely demonstrate knowledge that means I've memorized the book? For example, being able to answer yes/no questions about what's on a particular page? The point I'm trying to make here is that in this situation I have a representation of the entire book in my brain. Haven't I copied it into my neurons?
If we're technical, there is a substantial legal difference between your brain and an AI system, because the criteria for what counts as a copy is defined (in US) as "“Copies” are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or…
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Yes, but unless you change names it would be a trademark violation.
Normally that's the case even though at least one of those books was taken down based on (rather dubious imo) violation of rights on derivative works. It was never a verbatim rewrite nor a trademark violation. The Dutch court even proceeded to make a list of similar ideas between two books which I think is explicitly disallowed under the US version of the copyright law. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter
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If we're technical, there is a substantial legal difference between your brain and an AI system, because the criteria for what counts as a copy is defined (in US) as "“Copies” are material objects, other than phonorecords, in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or…
I don't see why brains don't satisfy the legal definition, if I have truly memorized the book, unless you are trying to claim that brains aren't material objects. Encoding a book by tattooing it on my back would count, wouldn't it? Or by encoding it in DNA and injecting it into some of my cells. Why would using the brain be different?
Tatooing on your back or a fixed encoding would IMHO indeed probably count as fixed in a tangible medium, but that's not really relevant. And there is some argumentation about why using the brain is different (e.g. that it does't permit the unchanged reproduction of the information stored, memories tend to be fleeting and incomplete), but again, that's not relevant and any flaws in that argument don't really matter.
The key point is that the argument is settled. It doesn't matter what argument you or I could make about whether using the brain is different or the same, no one cares about that argument, we have no right to re-try that question, because this discussion has been heard by the relevant courts, and it is over - it's now part of settled law, and it doesn't matter if you now figure out a better argument or the original argumentation was shoddy, the discussion is finished, and your opponent effectively has the right to demand that the judge ignores your argument and instead apply the existing case law.
As it has been legally "accepted" in precedent that memories do not count as fixed on a tangible medium, then that sticks, that effectively becomes part the legal definition of what "fixed on a tangible medium" axiomatically means. Any appeal to biology/physics/whatever is pretty much irrelevant - if future science comes up with incontrovertible evidence that indeed memories store a fixed, durable, unchanged copy and are literal equivalent of tatooing a copy on your back, that doesn't matter, all it means that the colloquial understanding of "fixed on a durable medium" (which then would include memories) has diverged from the legal definition of "fixed on a durable medium", which does not.
If you want to apply logic, in this context "memories don't count as fixed on a durable medium" is an axiom - changing it is possible by passing new law, but not purely by some arguments that it should be treated differently; a key common law principle is that we assume that the earlier cases have been correctly decided and don't re-litigate that with new arguments.
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What if I merely demonstrate knowledge that means I've memorized the book? For example, being able to answer yes/no questions about what's on a particular page? The point I'm trying to make here is that in this situation I have a representation of the entire book in my brain. Haven't I copied it into my neurons?
Do you profit from people testing your ability to memorise the book and give them the ability to substantially recreate the original work and act in competition to the original author?
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"1) no similarities have ever been demonstrated between large language models and human cognition" This is false. The LLM's entire purpose is to mimic cognition. You could argue that the operation differs in important ways - of course. But the similarity of output is literally the entire point. "2) even if they were somehow proven to be the same" I didn't suggest they need to be the same, proven or otherwise. I think…
>This is false. The LLM's entire purpose is to mimic cognition. Purpose and mechanism are not the same thing. "Similarity of output" does not make it equivalent. >I didn't suggest they need to be the same, proven or otherwise. I think you're not understanding. The point is that the function is similar. Sure, go ahead and ignore all but half a sentence and then accuse me of missing the point. >False as a matter of law…
No one said they were. You may want to revisit my original observation.
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May not be that easy. It may be the case we'll find that (in much the way as tech has made popular ironically) authors/IP creators aren't willing to sell "machine training rights" to their work. A concept that could find itself magicked into existence by artists/publishers.
Legally if they sell it, they no longer own it and can't determine how it is used. If they license it, that's a different story (they can make a claim of how I breached terms of use, still no copyright issue though). They have absolutely no say in how I use the book they sold to me. Only if I reproduce that book, the actual physical reproduced work is of concern to copyright law, nothing else (my use of the book I bo…
I find it naive to simply assume that publishers won't play tit-for-tat with those that are trying to indirectly monetize their output. I had hope that a return to First Sale sanity may win the day, but as of late I have a dread we're briskly walking down the path where no one is going to be "selling" in the conventional sense anymore. Not with the stakes at hand.
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You forgot the last point, which is that creators who don't want their work used in the training data for these megacorp LLMs without permission will get what they want.
And we won't have open models.