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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

#131

Post by triceratops »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #123
HWR_14 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Of course data is copied during training" is copying. As far as I know, the law is consistent that temporary copies are also covered by the copyright act, and that's how some analogous cases were resolved.

Temporary copies are in the scope of copyright law, yes. But also, you are allowed to make them. Or reading a book via a computer would be illegal.

> But also, you are allowed to make them.

Not of physical media. You're allowed to make archival copies of digital media.

> Or reading a book via a computer would be illegal

No you purchased a license (or your library did, in the case of e-borrowing) to read the book on a computer. That makes it legal.

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

#132

Post by triceratops »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #84
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it have to be verbatim? Seriously, this I don't understand. If I produce a terrible shakycam recording of a film while sitting in a movie theater, it's not a verbatim copy, nor is it even necessarily representative of the original work -- muddied audio, audience sounds, cropped screen, backs of heads -- and yet it would be considered copyright infringement? How many times does one need to compress the JPEG b…

If you read a book and later understand its plot but can only explain it in your own words, did you copy it? The model isn’t storing the book.

You didn't copy it because you're a human. A computer can't "read" without copying. It's how it works.

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

#133

Post by sillysaurusx »

labrador wrote: post #28
Mbwagava wrote: post #8

Whether or not Meta wins this case, I'm never going to support any government that supports both LLMs and IP. Like we have to put up with IP despite having no clear value to a digital society but as soon as it becomes inconvenient it goes out the window? Nah, let's just trash the state and start over. It's going to take centuries to undo the damage wracked by IP-supported private enterprise. And now we also have to p…

I hope you don't think I'm snarky because I'm serious. If you're an American citizen you can homestead in Alaska and cut yourself off from all this if you like. edit: i'm serious. many americans would be much happier taking this option if they knew it existed. i may take it myself

Homesteading is tremendously expensive, unfortunately. Most people can’t.

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

#135

Post by Dylan16807 »

rixthefox wrote: post #86
Lerc wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if Meta did anything illegal in 2. either. I thought the copyright infringement was by the people who provided the copyrighted material when they did not have the rights to do so. I may be wrong on this, but it would seem a reasonable protection for consumers in general. Meta is hardly an average consumer, but I doubt that matters in the case of the law. Having grounds to suspect that the provider did no…

> but it would seem a reasonable protection for consumers in general. The final say may ultimately come from the Cox vs Record Labels case from 2019 that is still working it's way through the appeal courts. If the record labels win their appeal, anyone who helped facilitate the infringement can be brought into a lawsuit. The record labels sued Cox for infringement by it's users. It's not out of the question that any…

So they promise to all their ISPs not to torrent again, and the ISPs keep accepting big piles of money to provide service?

I don't see how that's a threat to Meta.

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

#136

Post by doctorpangloss »

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…

Hacker News readers want simple, first principles answers that fit in a tweet, that require no reading, let alone case law, to understand.

This trial is way beyond the statutes and case law. The judge is doing a job, hard to conceive what the best job would be - I'm not sure Congress even knows what the policy should be or if the public has even the faintest wiff of how things should work.

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

#137

Post by triceratops »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #121
HWR_14 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Of course data is copied during training" is copying. As far as I know, the law is consistent that temporary copies are also covered by the copyright act, and that's how some analogous cases were resolved.

If I buy a book I'm free to print as many copies as I want inside my house It becomes illegal if I try to distribute those copies So the question is, does distributing an AI that has been trained on Harry Potter count as distributing Harry Potter?

This is not correct. It's only true that no one will go to the effort of prosecuting you for keeping photocopies of books in your home. But copyright law doesn't allow you to do it.

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

#138

Post by triceratops »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #88
triceratops wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright is the right to make copies. Why is copying during training is any different from producing copies of training data after training? If we're going that way, let me torrent every movie and TV show ever to "train" myself.

It depends on your license? I mean strictly speaking if you stream a video you purchase legally over say amazon prime, there's lots of "copying" happening at various levels after those bits leave the data center.

> It depends on your license?

Exactly this. Legal copying requires a license.

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

#140

Post by pessimizer »

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…

> “It seems like you’re asking me to speculate that the market for Sarah Silverman’s memoir will be affected,” he told Boies. “It’s not obvious to me that is the case.”

"LLM, please summarize Sarah Silverman's memoir for me."

edit: Reader's Digest would be very surprised to know that they shouldn't have been paying for books.

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