Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

finance.yahoo.com

791–800 of 845 posts

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#791

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China practices Rule by law, not Rule of law In practice the US is less different than you imply. For the vast majority of Americans, being sued is a punishment in and of itself due to the prohibitive costs of hiring a lawyer. In the US we have a right to a “speedy” trial but there are many people sitting in jail now because they can’t afford the bail get out. Speedy could mean months. I say this because when we co…

No one has pure rule of law, but at least the USA has it as a goal. The Chinese government has stated explicitly that rule of law isn’t a goal, so it leads to a very different legal system from ours. You have to think much more deeply about the spirit of the law and the flippant intentions of the official class that has all the power (the judicial system isn’t allowed to check official power, or even interpret ambigu…

> The Chinese government has stated explicitly that rule of law isn’t a goal

Can you share where you saw this? I am also not aware of anywhere that the US has stated that rule of law is a goal. What you are referring to is more of a norm or tradition. And norms can and do change over time for better or worse.

You could argue that rule of law follows from the preamble to the constitution but that doesn’t explicitly mention rule of law either. It mentions various values like justice and tranquility.

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#792
post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a common tactic in new fields. Fusion, AI, you name it are all actively lobbying to get new regulation because they are "different", and the individual companies want to ensure that it's them that sets the tone.

Looks the same as taking "rebate for green energy" and then asking to "stop such rebates" a few years later

Exactly. I'm reminded of Gavin Belson saying something along the lines of "I don't want to live in a world where someone makes it a better place to live than we do" in Silicon Valley.

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#793

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "deal with it?" Because to me it looks like they're dealing with it by joining in solidarity with other artists, raising awareness about how this affects them and us and lobbying for regulation they think would improve the situation. I guess you meant they should deal with it by just letting it happen to them quietly and without a fight? Is that how you would deal with your livelihood being preven…

Deal with it as in them accepting there is nothing they can do to stop it. Other countries arent going to follow whatever laws they manage to get in place in the US.

That makes no sense. Even if an individual user is able to use RuGPT to generate infringing content privately, commercial entities would be prohibited from doing so. That is a clear win for "whiney creatives."

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress didn't explicitly disallow it either. That's the whole point of copyright: only the owner of a copyright has the right to make copies. I don't see how it can be more explicit than that. It's a default-deny policy. There is an archival exception for digital media, so obviously Congress is open to granting exceptions for backup purposes. They chose not to include physical media in this exception.

> only the owner of a copyright has the right to make copies. You are conveniently omitting the provisions about fair use, which is strange since you're clearly aware of them. The only things copyright is reasonably unambiguous about are sale and distribution. Even then there's lots of grey areas such as performance rights. You are arguing that something is obviously disallowed but have nothing but your own interpret…

> You are conveniently omitting the provisions about fair use, which is strange since you're clearly aware of them

Fair use didn't come up but I did mention it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43356289. And there's no need for that tone. I'm not a copyright defender.

> That's irrelevant to the current discussion, though I'm fairly certain you realize that.

I said it because it was relevant.

> where is the precedent showing that personal use archival copies of physical goods are not permitted

> Congress declined to weigh in on the matter

There was no "matter" to "weigh in on". The answer to "Can you make a full, complete copy of a copyrighted work without authorization?" has been "Almost always no" from the beginning of copyright. Even the term "fair use" arose in a US legal precedent over a century after the first copyright laws in England. It became an actual part of US copyright law in the 1970s, less than 50 years ago.

"Fair use" is plausible for a library or archive to make full copies, and keep them safe and archived, since that's their job.

Fair use isn't why we have archival rights for electronic media. That right was written into the law after electronic media became a thing.

In my comment above I gave one example why "fair use" wouldn't work for archival copies of physical media made by individuals. An actual lawyer who's paid by the copyright mafia to care about this stuff can surely find more and stronger reasons.

FWIW someone in another comment pointed out Australian copyright law allows making a copy of books, newspapers, and periodicals for personal, domestic use. Which means: a) it can be done and b) even they had to spell it out specifically

> which (as you clearly know) leaves it up to the courts to interpret the existing law.

I don't agree but believe what you like.

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It absolutely is fair use to copy a book for your personal archives. There's no legal precedent for this. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43356042 > the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work A copyright holder's lawyer would argue that having and using a photocopy of a book keeps the original from wearing out. This directly affects the potential market for the wor…

You’re now arguing the assumption without a precedent you don’t have the right to do something. That’s not how the law works. If you believe that the courts would laugh at a publisher trying to bring suit against you for doing this, then you believe you have the right to do it. Such a case would not require a year or a ton of money to defend. In fact, the potential damages would be so small that you could sensibly do…

> You’re now arguing the assumption without a precedent you don’t have the right to do something. That’s not how the law works.

I mean copyright law has always been "You can't make full copies for any reason (almost)". And you were the one saying "it absolutely is fair use [to make full personal copies]", which is quite a strong statement to make in the absence of a precedence.

An archive could argue fair use to make full copies of physical works, because that's their role, and by keeping the copies locked away they don't harm the market for the works. These fair use factors don't apply to individuals. But IANAL and maybe that's wrong, who knows? I do know if it comes up the copyright mafia will fight it tooth and nail, and I'd put my money on them winning.

> the potential damages would be so small that you could sensibly do it in small claims court

The publisher would sue the infringer in small claims court? This seems very unlikely since the publisher would prefer to scare or bankrupt you into submission.

Or would the defendant have the lawsuit moved to small claims court? Are defendants allowed to do this?

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was responding to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43356240 which said it "absolutely is fair use". > The other commenters arguments...seem more convincing Because you (and I) want it to be fair use. But as I already said in my comment, it potentially fails one leg of fair use. Keeping your purchased physical copy of the book pristine and untouched while you read the photocopy allows you to later, after destroy…

Multiple times in this thread you make the very confident assertion that this is not allowed, and that it is only allowed for electronic media. That is your opinion, which is fine. The argument that it is fair use is also an opinion. Until it becomes settled law with precedent, every argument about it will just opinion on what the text of the law means. But you are denigrating the other opinions while upholding your…

Copyright is a restriction on making unauthorized, full copies under almost all circumstances. Default deny. There's only one documented exception on the books right now which is electronic media. None of these are opinions.

The idea that photocopying a book for archival purposes is potentially fair use is an untested opinion. I'm not denigrating that opinion. I just think it's likely to fail as an legal argument in the unlikely event that it comes up. I'm not a copyright apologist.

I myself believed the "fair use for archival"/"format shifting" thing applied to all works for most of my life. I only learned there was no law or precedent like 10 days ago.

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And time spent dealing with laws and regulations may decrease efficiency, leading to increased power consumption, resulting in greater water usage in datacenters for cooling and more greenhouse gas emissions. They don't care about that if they get a regulatory moat around them.

There’s only so much of that you can do without it becoming a problem you have to deal with. There is a limited supply of water in any area of the earth.

Maybe buying up all the water rights so nobody can use it to cool their own server farm is the literal moat that would serve them best.

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#798

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But who should pay? The model developers? Training models is a cost center. And what about open source AI, should we legislate it out of existence? How about the AI providers? they operate on thin margins, and make just cents a million tokens. If one provider is too expensive, users quickly switch. Maybe the users? Users derive the lion share of benefits from AI. But those benefits are hard to quantize. Maybe a blank…

>> The real enemy of any artist is the long tail of works, sometimes spanning decades, that they have to compete against. Had to check this wasn’t sama. You seriously believe the real enemy of artists is other artists? Not the guys making billions and trying to convince us “the computers are just reading it like a human”?

Are you implying AI is causing more competition than other creatives, and the billion choices the public has?

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#799

the GOP: "states' rights! states' rights!!" also the GOP: "not those rights! only the rights we want to share"

What's this in reference to?

This is OpenAI asking, not the GOP. There's no GOP policy mentioned. From the article:

> The Trump administration has generally signaled its intention to take a hands-off approach to regulating the technology.

Re: OpenAI asks White House for relief from state AI rules

#800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I download a book without paying for it, and print copies of it? Stash copies in my bathroom, the gym, my office, my bedroom etc. to basically have a copy on hand to study from whenever I have some free time? What about movies and music?

Yes, you're allowed to make personal copies of copyright works that you own. IANAL, but my understanding is that if you're using them for yourself, and you're not prevented from doing so by some sort of EULA or DRM, there's nothing in copyright law preventing you from e.g. photocopying a book and keeping a copy at home, as long as you don't distribute it. The test case here has always been CDs—you're allowed to make…

I'm moving goal-post here since it was not OpenAI (as far as we know): Where Meta training on torrented data fits into this?
Post reply on HN