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Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

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Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#11

Post by openrisk »

"Digital societies with a poor rule of law and institutions that exploit the population do not generate growth or change for the better"

Excerpt from the announcement of the 2044 Nobel prize in economics.

It echoes the earlier arguments of the 2024 prize to Acemoglu, Johnson, Robinson about the economic fate of colonies and an even earlier thesis by Hernando de Soto about the role of property rights in wealth formation.

Exploiting legal loopholes to transfer wealth with immunity has been the central profit mechanism of many recent tech business models, whether that was the gig economy, adtech or now "AI".

The tragedy is that stock markets as currently organized (besides being famously amoral) have no sense of long term value. This creates a positive feedback loop where tech business models that gnaw at the pre-digital institutional wealth foundations are empowered to do so even more.

Yet those economists are not wrong. In historical timescales the digital transition will see massive redistribution of wealth to nations that can actually create strong digital institutions and legal protections.

This is, incidentally, why the EU and its enthusiastic rule making might be onto something, even if its currently lethargic tech industry does not help validate the alternative vision.

Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#12

Post by NitpickLawyer »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #7

Which country has the most favorable 'fair use' laws, and why wouldn't big companies train their models there?

IIRC Japan has had at least one court ruling that training on copyrighted data is fair use (or a version thereof).

Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#13

Post by profmonocle »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #7

Which country has the most favorable 'fair use' laws, and why wouldn't big companies train their models there?

Would that matter if the company wants to do business in countries with more restrictive laws?

I.E. if I wrote my own spin-off of a popular book series, which was somehow considered fair use in country A, but considered infringing in country B, the publisher could get it removed from stores in country B.

By the same logic, if AI training is ruled as copyright infringement in the US, it won't matter if the company trains their model somewhere else - if they open a US division to sell service using that model, they'd get sued.

Granted I'm not an IP lawyer and AI IP law is in its infancy - maybe I'm missing something?

Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#14

Post by profmonocle »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #4
gruez wrote: post #2

IANAL, but this seems kind of pointless? Either AI training is copyright infringement or it's not. A tiny disclaimer isn't going to affect that. The AI companies contend that it's fair use, which would probably override any fine print on the inside cover.

> The AI companies contend that it's fair use Do they? "Fair Use" is an affirmative defense, so the only time we're going to get into that is in a court case, where it'll be tested through legal means. I would say it's even more nuanced: if LLM training involves merely reading a dataset, but it is not strictly necessary to copy , or even store it verbatim to be useful, then does it even fall under copyright protectio…

> if LLM training involves merely reading a dataset, but it is not strictly necessary to copy, or even store it verbatim to be useful, then does it even fall under copyright protection at all?

Copyright includes the creation of derivative works, not just literally copying the source material.

For instance, imagine I read a novel, then I decide to write my own, unauthorized sequel to it. It's not a literal "copy" of the original material - it's my own original text, but obviously a derivative work of the original material. Under copyright law, that would be infringement - I would be sued if I tried to sell that. (Yes, that means fanfiction is infringing, but most rights holders have wisely decided to look the other way on that, as long as it's non-commercial.)

This is what people who claim AI is infringing are worried about. Not that the AI has a literal copy of the source material in its training data, but that the training data can be used to produce a derivative work.

I could write a (crappy) fanfic of the Lord of the Rings without directly referencing the books/movies. And that doesn't mean I have a complete copy of the books/movies in my head - that isn't how memory works. Until now, creating a derivative work without directly using the source material was something only humans could do. This is completely uncharted legal territory.

Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#15

Post by NeoTar »

CaptainFever wrote: post #5

If it's fair use in the US, it doesn't matter how many "X is prohibited because of copyright" clauses they add, AI training is allowed. For EU TDM, this opt out probably works to disallow commercial entities from using it for training, but not researchers. For SG TDM, this opt out can be ignored. All legally-acquired material can be used for AI training purposes, period. Disclaimer: IANAL.

SG = Singapore, TDM = Text Data Mining?

Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#18

Post by xnorswap »

It's hard to understand the position of AI companies, when their AIs can be prompted to reproduce copyrighted works verbatim, e.g.

https://imgur.com/a/XBO2B7V

You can argue that a game that old ought not to be still in copyright, and I'd support that position.

But it is in copyright, and I'd rather a world where we curtail copyright terms but enforce them fairly rather than a world in which we stifle culture by automated means of suppressing "DMCA" violations on some platforms while large platform owners invest in AI which trample over the notion of copyright.

Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#19

Post by paganel »

portaouflop wrote: post #16

Penguin Random House is a predatory corrupt business that the world would be much better off without. If AI means businesses like this shut down I need more „AI“

Honest question, what's "predatory corrupt" about their business? I have some of their paperbacks on my bookshelves and they've been a pretty decent value for money thing.

Re: Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

#20

Post by portaouflop »

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #17
portaouflop wrote: post #16

Penguin Random House is a predatory corrupt business that the world would be much better off without. If AI means businesses like this shut down I need more „AI“

Two wrongs don’t make a right.

Anything that Penguin Random House perceives as a threat is good and right for me.
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