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US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

theregister.com

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Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#101

Post by int_19h »

jobigoud wrote: post #92
kmeisthax wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't going to legalize, say, publishing Mario fangames or whatever. They're just going to make copyright allow AI training, because AI is what the owner class wants. That's not democratizing IP, that's just prejudicial (dis)enforcement against the creative class.

Millions of pages of fan fic based on existing IP have been written. There is a point where it doesn't really make sense trying to go after individuals especially if they make no money out of it. If we enter a world where anyone can create a new Mario game and there are thousands of them released on the public web it would be impossible for the rights holders to do anything, and it would be a PR bad move to go after…

Imagine a world where all models capable of creating a new Mario game from scratch are only available through cloud providers which must implement mandatory filters such that asking "write me a Mario clone" (or anything functionally equivalent) gets you a lecture on don't-copy-that-floppy.

Bad PR? The entire copyright enforcement industry has had bad PR pretty much since easy copying enabled grassroots piracy - i.e. since before computers even. It never stopped them. What are you going to do about it? Vote? But all the mainstream parties are onboard with the copyright lobby.

Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#103

Post by MyOutfitIsVague »

GuB-42 wrote: post #47
brador wrote: post #17

Lifetime for human copyright, 20 years for corporate copyright. That’s the golden zone.

The issue with lifetime (vs something like lifetime + X years) is that of inheritance. Assuming you agree with the idea of inheritance, which is another topic, then it is unfair to deny inheritance of intellectual property. For example if your father has built a house, it will be yours when he dies, it won't become a public house. So why would a book your father wrote just before he died become public domain the mome…

The issue with that is that inheritance only makes sense for tangible, scarce resources. Having copyright isn't easily analogous to ownership of a physical object, because an object is something you have and if somebody else has it, you can not have and use it.

Copyright is about control. If you know a song and you sing it to yourself, somebody overhears it and starts humming it, they have not deprived you of the ability to still know and sing that song. You can make economic arguments, of deprived profit and financial incentives, and that's fine; I'm not arguing against copyright here (I am not a fan of copyright, it's just not my point at the moment), I'm just saying that inheritance does not naturally apply to copyright, because data and ideas are not scarce, finite goods. They are goods that feasibly everybody in the world can inherit rapidly without lessening the amount that any individual person gets.

If real goods could be freely and easily copied the way data can, we might be having some very interesting debates about the logic and morality of inheriting your parents' house and depriving other people of having a copy.

Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#104

Post by regularjack »

mattxxx wrote: post #51

Well, firing someone for this is super weird. It seems like an attempt to censor an interpretation of the law that: 1. Criticizes a highly useful technology 2. Matches a potentially-outdated, strict interpretation of copyright law My opinion: I think using copyrighted data to train models for sure seems classically illegal. Despite that, Humans can read a book, get inspiration, and write a new book and not be litigat…

Then they need to be changed for everyone and not just AI companies, but we all know that ain't happening.

Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#105

Post by Workaccount2 »

I have yet to see someone explain in detail how transformer model training works (showing they understand the technical nitty gritty and the overall architecture of transformers) and also layout a case for why it is clearly a violation of copyright.

You can find lots of people talking about training, and you can find lots (way more) of people talking about AI training being a violation of copyright, but you can't find anyone talking about both.

Edit: Let me just clarify that I am talking about training, not inference (output).

Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#107

Post by hatenberg »

Big Tech: We shouldn’t pay, each individual piece of content is worth basically nothing.

Also Big Tech: We added 300.000.000 users worth of GTM because we trained in the 10 specific anime movies of Studio Ghibli and are selling their style.

Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#108

Post by anhner »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #105

I have yet to see someone explain in detail how transformer model training works (showing they understand the technical nitty gritty and the overall architecture of transformers) and also layout a case for why it is clearly a violation of copyright. You can find lots of people talking about training, and you can find lots (way more) of people talking about AI training being a violation of copyright, but you can't fin…

because people who understand how training works also understand that it's not a violation of copyright...

Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#109

Post by autobodie »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #105

I have yet to see someone explain in detail how transformer model training works (showing they understand the technical nitty gritty and the overall architecture of transformers) and also layout a case for why it is clearly a violation of copyright. You can find lots of people talking about training, and you can find lots (way more) of people talking about AI training being a violation of copyright, but you can't fin…

I have yet to see someone explain in detail how writing the same words as another person works (showing they understand the technical nitty gritty and the overall architecture of the human mind) and also layout a case for why it is clearly a violation of copyright. You can find lots of people talking about reading, and you can find lots (way more) of people talking about plagarism being a violation of copyright, but you can't find anyone talking about both.

Re: US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

#110

Post by jsiepkes »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #105

I have yet to see someone explain in detail how transformer model training works (showing they understand the technical nitty gritty and the overall architecture of transformers) and also layout a case for why it is clearly a violation of copyright. You can find lots of people talking about training, and you can find lots (way more) of people talking about AI training being a violation of copyright, but you can't fin…

This isn't about training AI on a book, but AI companies never paying for the book at all. As in: They "downloaded the e-book from a warez site" and then used it for training.
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