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The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

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Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#191

Post by conartist6 »

colechristensen wrote: post #60
maxloh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my understanding, if the material is publicly available or obtained legally (i.e., not pirated), then training a model with it falls under fair use, at least in the US and some other jurisdictions. If the training is established as fair use, the underlying license doesn't really matter. The term you added would likely be void or deemed unenforceable if someone ever brought it to a court.

I wouldn't say this is settled law, but it looks like this is one of the likely outcomes. It might not be possible to write a license to prevent training.

Isn't the court fight on fair use failing pretty hard on the prong that flooding the market with cheap copies eliminates the market for the original work?

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#192

Post by voidfunc »

tpmoney wrote: post #163
basilgohar wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't even remotely a sensible analogy. Equating copyright violation with stealing physical property is an extremely failed metaphor.

One of the craziest experiences in this "post AI" world is to see how quickly a lot of people in the "information wants to be free" or "hell yes I would download a car" crowds pivoted to "stop downloading my car, just because its on a public and openly available website doesn't make it free"

"Rules for thee, but not for me"

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#193

Post by cardanome »

myrmidon wrote: post #33

I honestly think that the most extreme take that " any output of an LLM falls under all the copyright of all its training data" is not really defensible, especially when contrasted with human learning, and would be curious to hear conflicting opinions. My view is that copyright in general is a pretty abstract and artificial concept; thus corresponding regulation needs to justifiy itself by being useful , i.e. encoura…

> I view AI overlap under the same lense-- if current copyright rules would lead to undesirable outcomes (by making all AI training or use illegal/infeasible) then law/interpretation simply has to be changed

Not sure about undesirable, I so wish we could just ban all generative AI.

I feel profound sadness of having lost the world we had before generative AI became widespread. I really loved programming and seeing my trade devalued with vibe coding is just heart breaking. We will see mass unemployment, deep fakes, more AI induced psychosis, a devaluing of human art. I hate this new world.

It would be the morally correct thing to bann generative AI as it only benefits corporations and doesn't improve the life of the people but makes it worse.

The training of the big LLMs has been criminal. Whether we talk about GPL licensed code or the millions of artist that never released their work under a specific license and would never haven consented to it being used for training.

I still think states will allow it and legalize the crime because they believe that AI offer competitive advantages and they will fear "falling behind". Plus military use.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#194

Post by conartist6 »

justin_murray wrote: post #72
gus_massa wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's fair use, but everyone on Earth disagree with me. So even with the standard default licence that prohibits absolutely everything, the humanity-1 consider it fair use.

Honest question: why don’t you think it is fair use? I can see how it pushes the boundary, but I can’t lay out logic that it’s not. The code has been publish for the public to see. I’m always allowed to read it, remember it, tell my friends about it. Certainly, this is what the author hoped I would do. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have kept it to themselves? These agents are just doing a more sophisticated, faster versio…

The fair use prong that's problematic is that the fair use can't decimate the value of the original work. It's the difference between me imitating your art style for a personal project and me making 1,000,000 copies of your art so that your art isn't worth much anymore. One is a fair use, the other is exploitative extraction

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#195

Post by themafia »

Orygin wrote: post #74

Great article but I don't really agree with their take on GPL regarding this paragraph: > The spirit of the GPL is to promote the free sharing and development of software [...] the reality is that they are proceeding in a different vector from the direction of code sharing idealized by GPL. If only the theory of GPL propagation to models walks alone, in reality, only data exclusion and closing off to avoid litigation…

> The virality is a byproduct to ensure the software is not stolen from their users.

If Microsoft misappropriates GPL code how exactly is that "stealing" from me, the user, of that code? I'm not deprived in any way, the author is, so I can't make sense of your premise here.

> Freedom of software means nothing.

Software is information. Does "freedom of information" mean nothing? I think you're narrowing concepts here into something not particularly useful or reflective of reality.

> Users get the freedom to enjoy the software how they like.

The freedom is to modify the code for my own purposes. This is not at all required to plainly "enjoy" the software. I instead "enjoy a particular benefit."

> Why would my software which only contains a single function not be fair use?

Because fair use implies educational, informational, or transformational outputs. Your software is none of those things.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#196

Post by em-bee »

raincole wrote: post #160
LtWorf wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need it to be infecting the rest like GPL does.

You probably misunderstood how "infection" of GPL works. (which is very common) If your close-sourced project uses some GPL code, it doesn't automatically put your whole project in public domain or under GPL. It just means you're infringing the right of the code author and they can sue you (for money and stopping using their code, not for making your whole project GPL). In the simplest terms, GPL is: if codebase.is_g…

It just means you're infringing the right of the code author and they can sue you (for money and stopping using their code, not for making your whole project GPL).

they can sue you and settle for whatever you will accept that makes them happy.

if you lose then the alternative to not making your code GPL is to make your code disappear, that is you are no longer allowed to sell your product.

consequently, if AI code is subject to the GPL then the rest of the codebase is too, or the alternative would be that the could not be distributed.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#197

Post by themafia »

conartist6 wrote: post #190
phplovesong wrote: post #25

We need a new license that forbids all training. That is the only way to stop big corporations from doing this.

Why forbid it when you could do exactly what this post suggests: go explicit and say that by including this copyrighted material in AI training you consent to release of the model. And you clarify that the terms are contractual, and that training the model on data represents implicit acceptance of the terms.

Taken to an extreme:

"Why forbid selling drugs when you can just put a warning label on them? And you could clarify that an overdose is lethal."

It doesn't solve any problems and just pushes enforcement actions into a hopelessly diffuse space. Meanwhile the cartel continues to profit and small time users are temporarily incarcerated.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#198

Post by em-bee »

quotemstr wrote: post #147
bwfan123 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometime, LLMs actually generate copyright headers as well in their output - lol - like in this PR which was the subject of a recent HN post [1] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369/files#diff-062dbbe... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039274

So what? I can probably produce parts of the header from memory. Doesn't mean my brain is GPLed.

not your brain, but the code you produce if it includes portions of GPL code that you remembered.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#199

Post by belorn »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #188
belorn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The safeguards will prevent the AI from reproducing the proprietary drivers for the IBM-whatever printer, and it will not provide code that breaks the DRM that exist to prevent third-party drivers from working with the printer. There will however be no such safeguards or filters to prevent IBM to write a proprietary driver for their next printer, using existing GPL drivers as a building block. Code will only ever go…

Then we'd better stop fighting against AI, and start fighting against so-called "safeguards."

I wish you luck. The music industry basically won their fight in forcing safeguards against AI music. The film industry are gaining laws regulating AI film actors. The code generating AI are only training on freely accessible code and not proprietary code. There is multiple laws being made against AI porn all over the world (or possible already on the books).

What we should fight is Rules For Thee but Not for Me.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#200

Post by gspr »

quotemstr wrote: post #147
bwfan123 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometime, LLMs actually generate copyright headers as well in their output - lol - like in this PR which was the subject of a recent HN post [1] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/14369/files#diff-062dbbe... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46039274

So what? I can probably produce parts of the header from memory. Doesn't mean my brain is GPLed.

> So what? I can probably produce parts of the header from memory. Doesn't mean my brain is GPLed.

Your brain is part of you. Some might say it is your very essence. You are human. Humans have inalienable rights that sometimes trump those enshrined by copyright. One such right is the right to remember things you've read. LLMs are not human, and thus don't enjoy such rights.

Moreover, your brain is not distributed to other people. It's more like a storage medium than a distribution. There is a lot less furore about LLMs that are just storage mediums, and where they themselves or their outputs are not distributed. They're obviously not very useful.

So your analogy is poor.

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