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Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

wired.com

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

#241

Post by shrubhub »

ekidd wrote: post #77
flessner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the former ever gets tested in court, it's the end of the road. All major AI companies have trained on copyrighted work, one way or another. What is inspiration? What is imitation? What is plagiarism? The lines aren't clearly drawn for humans... much less for LLMs.

> If the former ever gets tested in court, it's the end of the road. All major AI companies have trained on copyrighted work, one way or another. I can absolutely guarantee you that neither DeepSeek nor Alibaba's highly talented Qwen group will care even a little bit, in the long run. Not if there's value to be had in AI. (And I can tell you down to the dollar what LLMs can save in certain business use cases.) If the…

What's the point of being proud of one system of government if you're willing to relinquish it in the face of adversary?

Shouldn't they have to follow the law?

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

#242

Post by Workaccount2 »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #219
Workaccount2 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are in no way compression algorithms. They can be modeled like that in the same way you can model humans as lossy compression algorithms. You would never use a human to backup your financial reports, but the human might be able to give a good overview. You would never use an LLM to backup your financial reports, but they might be able to give a good overview. AI training data is disposable. There is nothing that…

> They are in no way compression algorithms. I'm sorry, but this a fundamentally incorrect view of machine learning (including, but not limited to transformers). From an information theoretic perspective the two are essentially identical with the exception that standard compression algorithms do not have a proper "loss" function other than just trying to minimize reconstruction loss with the resulting compression siz…

>They can be modeled like that in the same way you can model humans as lossy compression algorithms

Humans are totally capable of data compression. This will just devolved into a semantics game of what a data compressor is.

LLMs were not developed to be, do not function as, and are not use as data compression utilities. Please, come knocking when a service provider exists that will use LLM's to compactly store your company data.

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

#243

Post by moregrist »

throwaway290 wrote: post #213
stevenAthompson wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of copyright is it progress the arts and sciences. Not to guarantee profit. Guaranteeing profit is just the way we encourage people to progress the arts and sciences. That is why so called derivative works are allowed (and even encouraged). If copyrighted material is ingested, modified or enhanced to add value, and then regurgitated that is legal, whereas copying it without adding value is not legal. If d…

Derivative works are not generally allowed in many jurisdictions. Try releasing a cover song without clearing it first etc. Even using a recognizable sample will bite you Derivative works are tolerated in some cases like some manga or fanfics but it is a gray area and whenever the author or publisher wants to pursue it it is their full right to do it. Many do pursue it (You can get inspired by something, and this is…

> Try releasing a cover song without clearing it first etc. Even using a recognizable sample will bite you

So… it’s complicated. This is one of the weird areas where music copyright and other copyright seem to differ in the US.

In the US the situation is complex and there are a lot of weird special interests [0], but generally a composer/author of a song has the right to decide who first records and releases the song, but after the first recording covers require a mechanical license, which is compulsory (ie: the author cannot object).

In music there are _a lot_ of special cases and different rights are decided with different kinds of licenses, some of which are compulsory. I think it’s an area that doesn’t make for good analogies with copyright in other media.

0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_license

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

#244

Post by ivell »

__loam wrote: post #221
spwa4 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's COPYright. It has to be very close to the original to be covered by copyright. Hence the name.

They copied the work when they made the training set.

My understanding is copyright is about distribution rights and not making a copy. Seeding falls under distribution.

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

#245

Post by codedokode »

nashashmi wrote: post #197
triceratops wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI doesn't actually directly copy the material it trains on Of course it does. Large models are trained on gigantic clusters. How can you train without copying the material to machines in the cluster?

Copyright law does not restrict storing copyright information. It restricts distribution of copyright data without permission. So a computer can store and analyze data but cannot spit it out verbatim. If it spits it out under fair use clause, then it becomes debatable whether the new work is fair use.

Then why folks were arrested for filming in the cinemas? I don't think that's how the law works [1]:

> 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works

> Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following:

> (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords;

And later:

> 501. Infringement of copyright

> (a) Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner as provided by sections 106 through 122 or of the author as provided in section 106A(a), ..., is an infringer of the copyright or right of the author, as the case may be.

To me it seems clear that Zuckerberg violated author's exclusive right to reproduce copyrighted works. The law doesn't say it is ok to do if nobody knows about it.

For curious, what is considered a "copy":

> “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 device. The term “copies” includes the material object, other than a phonorecord, in which the work is first fixed.

So an SSD with LLM weights should also be considered a "copy" if from them the work can be "reproduced".

[1] https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106

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

#246

Post by triceratops »

ivell wrote: post #244
__loam wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They copied the work when they made the training set.

My understanding is copyright is about distribution rights and not making a copy. Seeding falls under distribution.

Your understanding is incorrect.

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

#247

Post by triceratops »

spwa4 wrote: post #214
triceratops wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by being shown an excerpt [of copyrighted material] How is this done? Are bits not written into RAM or disk? Are they not sent between machines in a training cluster? That's copying. > it is seemingly not far removed from how humans consume content Except that humans don't make full copies to RAM, or disk or paper.

> Except that humans don't make full copies to RAM, or disk or paper. Images on your retina form exact copies. They are scanned and translated into impulses that are then sent to a first set of "neural columns" - that's an exact copy. This is then connected to the visual cortex by the two most high bandwidth links in the human body ("the optical nerve", there's 2 of them of course, always wondered why everybody insis…

> that's an exact copy.

Not for the purposes of copyright law.

> is that humans don't have separate RAM [or disk]

And that turns out to be incredibly important. Humans can't create a lasting, shareable copy of a copyrighted work by consuming it.

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

#248

Post by triceratops »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #207
triceratops wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> by being shown an excerpt [of copyrighted material] How is this done? Are bits not written into RAM or disk? Are they not sent between machines in a training cluster? That's copying. > it is seemingly not far removed from how humans consume content Except that humans don't make full copies to RAM, or disk or paper.

The is a bar of usage built into the law, otherwise everyone who reads this wired article is violating copyright by making a full copy to their computer. Generally making non-lasting copies is fine, otherwise the internet wouldn't work. AI doesn't need lasting copies to train, however I don't know what the actual implementation is. But if it's ruled that they can only use copyrighted data if it's not stored for more…

> otherwise everyone who reads this wired article is violating copyright by making a full copy to their computer

Wired explicitly sent that article to their computer for the purposes of reading it so it's not a copyright violation.

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

#249

Post by martin8412 »

ta1243 wrote: post #85
matkoniecz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"fair use" is a specific legal term

In a specific legal jurisdiction. The Berne convention mentions "fair practice", and puts the responsibility on the individual countries.

I wonder what will happen when inevitably someone sues one of the AI companies for copyright infringement in a different country, because fair use is to my knowledge an entirely American concept.

Where’s the threshold for forcing AI companies to retrain models without specific copyrighted works in them?

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

#250

Post by triceratops »

stevenAthompson wrote: post #212
leovander wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have been bankrupted for doing exactly this. Only if they seeded the data and some other entity downloaded it, i.e. they hosted the data. In a previous article I believe it was called out that Meta was being a leecher (not seeding back what they downloaded). It's the hosting that gets you, not the act of downloading it.

I would like to expand on this, since it seems to be a common misunderstanding. Lets imagine a hypothetical situation where one friend loans a book to another, who then makes a copy of it. The lender owns the book, and it is within his rights to loan it to whoever he wants. That is legal. Making this illegal would end libraries. The borrower is well within his rights to accept the book, and as the current owner he is…

Do you have any case law (other than Tivo or VHS time-shifting) that relates directly to books?
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