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Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

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Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#31

Post by lopis »

subscribed wrote: post #19
stego-tech wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "harm" as defined by copyright law is strictly limited to loss of sales due to breach of that copyright; it makes no allowment (that I know of) to livelihoods lost by the theft of the work indefinitely, as AI boosters suggest their tools can do (replace people). The way this court case is going, it's an uphill battle for the plaintiffs to prove concrete harm in that very narrow context, when the r…

Your friend might want to check Perplexity.

While Perplexity is able to show sources for the information it shows, the language part, and the body of text upon which it was trained, is a black box, and sources are not given, nor typically desirable as a user.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#32

Post by kranke155 »

bgwalter wrote: post #25
ndiddy wrote: post #5

The title for this submission is somewhat misleading. The judge didn't make any sort of ruling, this is just reporting on a pretrial hearing. He also doesn't seem convinced as to how relevant downloading books from LibGen is to the case: > At times, it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose, with [Judge] Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created s…

The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. They just got high penalties for infringers almost by default. Now that big capital wants to steal from individuals, big capital wins again. (Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.)

Copyright was invented (in its modern form) by corporations. It will be uninvented if need be for corporations.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#33

Post by anshumankmr »

bgwalter wrote: post #25
ndiddy wrote: post #5

The title for this submission is somewhat misleading. The judge didn't make any sort of ruling, this is just reporting on a pretrial hearing. He also doesn't seem convinced as to how relevant downloading books from LibGen is to the case: > At times, it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose, with [Judge] Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created s…

The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. They just got high penalties for infringers almost by default. Now that big capital wants to steal from individuals, big capital wins again. (Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.)

Interesting figure that guy.

Here's this: >Boies also was on the Theranos board of directors,[2][74] raising questions about conflicts of interest.[75] Boies agreed to be paid for his firm's work in Theranos stock, which he expected to grow dramatically in value.[75][3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Boies

That was one of the decisions of all time.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#34

Post by Filligree »

apercu wrote: post #30
TimPC wrote: post #3

I think the headline is a bit misleading. Mets did pirate the works but may be entitled to use them under fair use. It seems like the authors are setting up for failure by making the case about whether the AI generation hinders the market for books. AI book writing is such a tiny segment what these models do that if needed Meta would simply introduce guard rails to prevent copying the style of an author and continue…

> but may be entitled to use them under fair use. Why? Was it legal for me to download copyrighted songs from Limewire as "fair use" ? Because a few people were made examples of. I'm a musician, so 80% of the music I listen to is for learning so it's fair use, right? ;)

> I'm a musician, so 80% of the music I listen to is for learning so it's fair use, right? ;)

I would be happy with that outcome. I’m a fanfiction writer, and a lot of the stories I read are very much for learning. ;-)

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#35

Post by nadermx »

bgwalter wrote: post #25
ndiddy wrote: post #5

The title for this submission is somewhat misleading. The judge didn't make any sort of ruling, this is just reporting on a pretrial hearing. He also doesn't seem convinced as to how relevant downloading books from LibGen is to the case: > At times, it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose, with [Judge] Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created s…

The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. They just got high penalties for infringers almost by default. Now that big capital wants to steal from individuals, big capital wins again. (Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.)

Copyright infringement is not stealing[0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowling_v._United_States_(19...

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#36

Post by bgwalter »

tedivm wrote: post #9
stego-tech wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that "harm" as defined by copyright law is strictly limited to loss of sales due to breach of that copyright; it makes no allowment (that I know of) to livelihoods lost by the theft of the work indefinitely, as AI boosters suggest their tools can do (replace people). The way this court case is going, it's an uphill battle for the plaintiffs to prove concrete harm in that very narrow context, when the r…

Github does give free copilot access to open source developers it considers important enough (which is a pretty low bar). While not the same as actually paying, it's the only example I can think of where the company that used people's copyrighted material actually gave something back to those people.

They want to track and utilize the new code that those developers are writing. And they want to keep them on GitHub. And they want to claim in potential lawsuits:

"See, those developers themselves have used CoPilot, so they approve the copyright infringement."

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#37

Post by Filligree »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #27
TimPC wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair use allows for certain uses of copyrighted works without a specific license for those works. One of the major criterion is how transformative the work is and an LLM model is very different from the original work so it seems likely that criterion at least is met.

> an LLM model is very different from the original work True, but not the only relevant thing. If the output of the LLM is "not very different from the original work" then the output could be the infringement. Putting a hypercomplex black box between the source work and the plagiarised output does not in itself make it "not infringing". The "LLM output as a service" business is then based on selling something based o…

The output of the LLM is very different from the original, though. It’s hard to look at this and claim it isn’t.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#38

Post by matkoniecz »

internetter wrote: post #13
TimPC wrote: post #3

I think the headline is a bit misleading. Mets did pirate the works but may be entitled to use them under fair use. It seems like the authors are setting up for failure by making the case about whether the AI generation hinders the market for books. AI book writing is such a tiny segment what these models do that if needed Meta would simply introduce guard rails to prevent copying the style of an author and continue…

> Meta did pirate the works but may be entitled to use them under fair use What fair use? Were the books promised to them by god or something?

"fair use" is a specific legal term

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#39

Post by mtlynch »

adingus wrote: post #7

I'm wondering if authors are making the same mistakes that the music industry did with Napster and kazaa. Using AI has led to more book purchases for me. If I discover and enjoy a book via AI I'm more inclined to buy it. The cats out of the bag, so pet him.

Can you share more about how you sample books with AI?
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