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Copyright reform is necessary for national security

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Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#71

Post by jprete »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50
jprete wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those services could exist today if copyright didn't exist, because streaming services wouldn't be able to compete with free downloads. I think Patreon and Kickstarter are how creative work is funded in that world.

Piracy isn’t a legal problem—it’s a service problem [1]. Netflix, Spotify, and Valve (Steam) didn’t succeed because of copyright enforcement. They won because they made paying for content easier, faster, and better than piracy. Piracy isn’t hard, but these services solved the friction: instant access, high quality, fair pricing, and features that free alternatives couldn’t match. That’s why they still thrive today. […

If it were legal to download movies and music, Netflix and Spotify would absolutely not exist.

Steam is an unusual case, because games are running software and can't be trivially reproduced in their unencoded form. The publishers can include copy protection, network connection requirements, or even run essential parts of game logic on their own servers. So free downloads became a much worse experience over time.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#72

Post by martin-t »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #58
martin-t wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not ridiculous at all. If LLMs (can we please stop calling it AI?) can produce correct factual statements (for example about historical events), then the data is clearly present in the model in some (compressed) form. The only question then is if the models have some kind of additional value ("intelligence") beyond being compressed databases. My take is that either no, or the burden of proof is on those making the cl…

I think you're positing a false binary. * LLM's aren't databases, you can’t query them for exact stored records, and they can’t reconstruct (most of) their training data. * But they also don’t reason or understand exactly like humans do either. They're something else: to wit, Transformer models.

You have a point but

1) I don't think being able to query them and reconstruct input 1:1 are requirements. If i build a shitty db with a buggy query language that retrieves incomplete data and occasionally mixes in data i didn't ask for, then it's still a db, just a shitty one.

If i populate it with copyrighted material and put it online, whether I am gonna get sued is likely based on how shitty it is, if it's good enough that people can get enough value from it that they don't buy the original works, then the original authors are not gonna be pleased.

2) Yes, comparisons to humans are not always useful though I'd say they don't reason or understand at all.

Either way the discussion should be about justice and fairness. The fact is LLMs are trained on data which took human work and effort to create. LLMs would not be possible without this data (or ML companies would train on just the public domain and avoid the risk of a massive lawsuit). The people who created the original training data deserve a fair share of the value produced by using their work.

So the real question to me is how much so they deserve?

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#73

Post by martin-t »

chromanoid wrote: post #59
martin-t wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pay artists to create something AI free / copyleft free I still don't think that's enough to be fair. If their work is used to produce value ad infinitum, them any one-time payment is obviously less than what they deserve. The payment should be fractional compared to the produced value. And that is very hard to do since you don't know how much money somebody made by using the model. > It would effectively exclude t…

I believe you think in too short time frames. In 70 years this becomes a futile discussion. AI is a way to directly benefit from the explosion of free content that the next decades will bring. The only way to counter this in an ethical way, is to establish some kind of enforced liberation for AI models, otherwise as you say, only the rich will profit from this.

It's author's life plus 70 years, if you meant that. And TBH I am mostly interested in the author's life part anyway.

If it was possible to train AI models on just the public domain, them I am sure ML companies would have because it's less effort than lobbying and risking lawsuits (though I am surprised how well creators have accepted that their work is used by others to profit without any compensation, I expected way more outrage).

Virtually all code relevant to training code-completion LLMs is written by people still alive or dead for way less than 70 years. We can try to come up with a better system over the next decades but those people's rights are being violated right now.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#74

Post by Kim_Bruning »

martin-t wrote: post #72
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're positing a false binary. * LLM's aren't databases, you can’t query them for exact stored records, and they can’t reconstruct (most of) their training data. * But they also don’t reason or understand exactly like humans do either. They're something else: to wit, Transformer models.

You have a point but 1) I don't think being able to query them and reconstruct input 1:1 are requirements. If i build a shitty db with a buggy query language that retrieves incomplete data and occasionally mixes in data i didn't ask for, then it's still a db, just a shitty one. If i populate it with copyrighted material and put it online, whether I am gonna get sued is likely based on how shitty it is, if it's good e…

It sounds like you’re sort of starting from the position that AI is inherently unjust and then reasoning backward to justify it. But shouldn’t the argument start with actual harm rather than assumed unfairness?

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#75

Post by martin-t »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #70
martin-t wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am surprised by how quickly I get downvoted to hell any time I try to propose that people should be compensated for their work fairly. And I get replies like the above, full of fallacies, which basically feel like trolling. So first, thank you for a sane reply. Now, it boils down to the typical issue of a current system being bad and clearly not serving its stated purpose so the choice is whether to abolish it or w…

> I fundamentally think if you build on other people's work, they deserve 1) credit 2) compensation according to what percentage of your work is based on theirs. That’s not a naturally occurring principle—it’s a legal and social construct that people have come to see as an inherent entitlement. If the current system isn’t working, maybe that's the actual bit that's broken and needs reform?

What I describe isn't the current system, it's the reform I propose. The current system sadly often is you can't self-publihsh because "lol no marketing" so you sell your rights for a one-time fixed payment and the new owner profits for years or decades.

The new owner is also usually a large company which has fundamentally more bargaining power than an individual so even if you get a propertional payment, the ratio of effort to reward of the company vs individual is unfair (if you put a 1000 man-days of work into your game and Steam takes 5%, do you think it's actually putting 50 man-days of work into selling it?).

As for naturally occurring principles... there are some, ehm, methods of negotiating, which you could consider natural but the state you live in would generally not approve.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#76

Post by martin-t »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #74
martin-t wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a point but 1) I don't think being able to query them and reconstruct input 1:1 are requirements. If i build a shitty db with a buggy query language that retrieves incomplete data and occasionally mixes in data i didn't ask for, then it's still a db, just a shitty one. If i populate it with copyrighted material and put it online, whether I am gonna get sued is likely based on how shitty it is, if it's good e…

It sounds like you’re sort of starting from the position that AI is inherently unjust and then reasoning backward to justify it. But shouldn’t the argument start with actual harm rather than assumed unfairness?

I wouldn't say that.

My point is that any situation where person A puts in a certain amount of work (normalized by skill, competence, etc.), person B uses person A's work, puts in some work of his own but less than A, then gets more reward than A, is fundamentally unfair.

LLMs are this, just at a massive scale.

But to be honest, this is where the discussion went only after thinking about it for a while. My real starting point was that when I publish my code under AGPL, I do it because I want anyone who builds on top of it to also have to release their code so users have the freedom to modify it.

LLMs are used to launder my code, deprive me of credit and deprive users of their rights.

Can we agree this is harm?

I also believe than unfairness is fundamentally the same as harm, just framed a bit differently.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#77

Post by Kim_Bruning »

jprete wrote: post #71
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy isn’t a legal problem—it’s a service problem [1]. Netflix, Spotify, and Valve (Steam) didn’t succeed because of copyright enforcement. They won because they made paying for content easier, faster, and better than piracy. Piracy isn’t hard, but these services solved the friction: instant access, high quality, fair pricing, and features that free alternatives couldn’t match. That’s why they still thrive today. […

If it were legal to download movies and music, Netflix and Spotify would absolutely not exist. Steam is an unusual case, because games are running software and can't be trivially reproduced in their unencoded form. The publishers can include copy protection, network connection requirements, or even run essential parts of game logic on their own servers. So free downloads became a much worse experience over time.

> If it were legal to download movies and music, Netflix and Spotify would absolutely not exist.

I question this statement. First two hits:

* https://getd.libs.uga.edu/pdfs/welter_brennan_s_201212_ma.pd... Adding a movie to Netflix reduces piracy directly

* https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v209y2023icp334-347.htm... Removing movies from Netflix increases piracy.

There's plenty more where that came from. Netflix actually reduces piracy. Not the other way around.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#78

Post by martin-t »

chromanoid wrote: post #69
martin-t wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) For starters, ML companies clearly go through enormous amounts of money, the rich people in control of them very obviously get compensated quite generously, if you're into euphemisms, which the people who built the "training data" (= their copyrighted works) get nothing. 2) It's not just ML companies but anyone using their products. A while ago everyone was upset that chatGPT regurgitated fast inverse square root…

Algorithms should not be subject to copyright IMO. If you publish code, AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement. In case of art, copyright is enforceable anyway, at least not in any different form than before AI. Yes, current AIs just remix their training data in a rather direct way. But in the end how different is that to how humans create? I would suggest we should embrace this new way of creatin…

> AFAIK under EU law only blatant copies are an infringement

Laws generally don't encode what is right but a compromise between the state's interests, lobbyists and the general population making enough ruckus if too unsatisfied.

> But in the end how different is that to how humans create?

1) Scale. Some strategies that are socially acceptable when done by individuals but not when done at a massive scale. For example because individuals have very limited time and can invest very limited effort. Looking at a website is perfectly OK. Making thousands of requests a second might be considered an attack. Human memory is limited. Similar principles apply to humans looking at code.

2) Source of data. Much of human "input" is viewing the real world (not copyrighted material) through their senses. Much of learning is from teachers or documentation, both of which voluntarily give me information.

I don't know about you but when I wanna know how to use a particular function, I don't go looking through random GH repos to see how other people use it, I go to the docs.

> finding laws to empower all creators and not only those who were hired by deep pockets

That is not even the only issue. When I publish something under AGPL, my users have the right to modify the code, even if my code gets to them through some third party. LLMs allow laundering code and taking that right from (my) users.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#79

Post by Kim_Bruning »

martin-t wrote: post #76
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you’re sort of starting from the position that AI is inherently unjust and then reasoning backward to justify it. But shouldn’t the argument start with actual harm rather than assumed unfairness?

I wouldn't say that. My point is that any situation where person A puts in a certain amount of work (normalized by skill, competence, etc.), person B uses person A's work, puts in some work of his own but less than A, then gets more reward than A, is fundamentally unfair. LLMs are this, just at a massive scale. But to be honest, this is where the discussion went only after thinking about it for a while. My real start…

> LLMs are used to launder my code,

> deprive me of credit

> and deprive users of their rights.

> Can we agree this is harm?

I might consider it if any of those claims were true.

I think the opposite is true -- especially with Open-Weight models which expand user freedoms rather than restricting them. I wonder if we can get the FSF to come up with GPL compatible Open-Weight licenses.

At this point in time I'm not entirely convinced they even need to. But if future lawsuits turn out that way, it might solve issues with some models.

Re: Copyright reform is necessary for national security

#80

Post by ranger_danger »

martin-t wrote: post #62
ranger_danger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I looked at a painting before making my own similar one, did I break copyright?

I am writing a master's thesis and notice somebody has written one containing a chapter than I also need to write. I copy paste the chapter but replace every word with a synonym. Did I break copyright? Did I commit plagiarism?

Exactly. I think the answer is always "it depends" and usually boils down to a judge's opinion on just how obvious of a copy it is.
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