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OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

reuters.com

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Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#161

Post by rpdillon »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #156
rpdillon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a point that I don't see discussed enough. I think anthropic decided to purchase books in bulk, tear them apart to scan them, and then destroy those copies. And that's the only source of copyrighted material I've ever heard of that is actually legal to use for training LLMs. Most LLMs were trained on vast troves of pirated copyrighted material. Folks point this out, but they don't ever talk about what the alt…

I don’t follow. You’re punishing the publishing industry by punishing authors?

I'm saying that LLMs are worthwhile useful tools, and that I'm glad that we built them, and that the publishing industry, which holds the copyright on the material that we would use to train the LLMs, have had no hand in developing them, have done no research, and have actively tried to fight the process at every turn. I have no sympathy for them.

The authors have been abused by the publishing industry for many decades. I think they're just caught in the middle, because they were never going to get a payday, whether from AI or selling books. I think the percentage of authors that are commercially successful is sub 1%.

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#162

Post by visarga »

rpdillon wrote: post #154
admaiora wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's a question of do we accept breaking law for the possibility to have the greatest technological advancement of the 21st century. In my opinion, legal system has become a blocker for a lot of innovation, not only in AI but elsewhere as well.

This is a point that I don't see discussed enough. I think anthropic decided to purchase books in bulk, tear them apart to scan them, and then destroy those copies. And that's the only source of copyrighted material I've ever heard of that is actually legal to use for training LLMs. Most LLMs were trained on vast troves of pirated copyrighted material. Folks point this out, but they don't ever talk about what the alt…

> So, other companies innovated over the copyright holder's objections, and now we have to sort it out in the courts.

I think they try to expand copyright from "protected expression" to "protected patterns and abstractions", or in other words "infringement without substantial similarity". Otherwise why would they sue AI companies? It makes no sense:

1. If I wanted a specific author, I would get the original works, it is easy. Even if I am cheap it is still much easier to pirate than use generative models. In fact AI is the worst infringement tool ever invented - it almost never reproduces faithfully, it is slow and expensive to use. Much more expensive than copying which is free, instant and makes perfect replicas.

2. If I wanted AI, it means I did not want the original, I wanted something Else. So why sue people who don't want the originals? The only reason to use AI is when you want to steer the process to generate something personalized. It is not to replace the original authors, if that is what I needed no amount of AI would be able to compare to the originals. If you look carefully almost all AI outputs get published in closed chat rooms, with a small fraction being shared online, and even then not in the same venues as the original authors. So the market substitution logic is flimsy.

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#163

Post by rpdillon »

Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote: post #152
rpdillon wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The content industries should have been the ones to invent LLMs, but their head is so stuck in the past and in regressive thinking about how they protect their revenue streams that they're incapable of innovating. Publishing houses should have been the ones to have researchers looking into how to computationally leverage their enormous corpus of data. But instead, they put zero dollars into actual research and develo…

“The content industries.” Why would people invest in destroying what they love?

There is no destruction.

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#164

Post by briandear »

EnPissant wrote: post #138
EdgeExplorer wrote: post #103

The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?

This is a tough one for the HN crowd. It's like that man not sure which button to push meme. 1) RIAA is evil for enforcing copyrights on lyrics? 2) OpenAI is evil for training on lyrics?

Very true. Just the other day, another “copyright is bad” post on the front page. Today its copyright is good because otherwise people might get some use of material in LLMs.

Considering this is hacker news, it seems to be such an odd dichotomy. Sometimes it feels like anti-hacker news. The halcyon days of 2010 after long gone. Now we need to apparently be angry at all tech.

LLMs are amazing and I wish they could train on anything and everything. LLMs are the smartphone to the fax machines of Google search.

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#165

Post by gruez »

rpdillon wrote: post #148
EdgeExplorer wrote: post #103

The obsession with protecting access to lyrics is one of the strangest long-running legal battles to me. I will skip tracks on Spotify sometimes specifically because there are no lyrics available. Easy access to lyrics is practically an advertisement for the music. Why do record companies not want lyrics freely available? In most cases, it means they aren't available at all. How is that a good business decision?

The content industries should have been the ones to invent LLMs, but their head is so stuck in the past and in regressive thinking about how they protect their revenue streams that they're incapable of innovating. Publishing houses should have been the ones to have researchers looking into how to computationally leverage their enormous corpus of data. But instead, they put zero dollars into actual research and develo…

That's always been the case, eg. how they were latecomers to streaming.

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#167

Post by gruez »

briandear wrote: post #164
EnPissant wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a tough one for the HN crowd. It's like that man not sure which button to push meme. 1) RIAA is evil for enforcing copyrights on lyrics? 2) OpenAI is evil for training on lyrics?

Very true. Just the other day, another “copyright is bad” post on the front page. Today its copyright is good because otherwise people might get some use of material in LLMs. Considering this is hacker news, it seems to be such an odd dichotomy. Sometimes it feels like anti-hacker news. The halcyon days of 2010 after long gone. Now we need to apparently be angry at all tech. LLMs are amazing and I wish they could tra…

Sounds like it was never about copyright as a principle, only symbolic politics (ie. copyrights benefit megacorps? copyright needs to be weaker! copyright hurts megacorps? copyright needs to be stronger!)

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#168

Post by griffzhowl »

mjr00 wrote: post #137
griffzhowl wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think having the lyrics reproducible in text form isn't the problem. Many sites have been doing that for decades and as far as I know record companies haven't gone after them. But these days with generative AI, they can take lyrics and just make a new song with them, and you can probably see why artists and record companies would want to stop that. Plus, from TFA, "GEMA hoped discussions could now take place with O…

I didn't downvote, but > I think having the lyrics reproducible in text form isn't the problem. Many sites have been doing that for decades and as far as I know record companies haven't gone after them. Reproducing lyrics in text form is, in fact, a problem, independent of AI. The music industry has historically been aggressively litigious in going after websites which post unlicensed song lyrics[0]. There are many a…

Thanks. Maybe that misconception was the problem. Taking a hammering in downvotes, lol

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#169

Post by sidewndr46 »

rpdillon wrote: post #154
admaiora wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's a question of do we accept breaking law for the possibility to have the greatest technological advancement of the 21st century. In my opinion, legal system has become a blocker for a lot of innovation, not only in AI but elsewhere as well.

This is a point that I don't see discussed enough. I think anthropic decided to purchase books in bulk, tear them apart to scan them, and then destroy those copies. And that's the only source of copyrighted material I've ever heard of that is actually legal to use for training LLMs. Most LLMs were trained on vast troves of pirated copyrighted material. Folks point this out, but they don't ever talk about what the alt…

You're using the phrase "actually legal" when the ruling in fact meant it wasn't piracy after the change. Training on the shredded books was not piracy. Training on the books they downloaded was piracy. That is where the damages come from.

Nothing in the ruling says it is legal to start outputting and selling content based off the results of that training process.

Re: OpenAI may not use lyrics without license, German court rules

#170

Post by Workaccount2 »

miltonlost wrote: post #112
loudmax wrote: post #68

Simon Willison had an analysis of Claude's system prompt back in May. One of the things that stood out was the effort they put in to avoiding copyright infringement: https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/25/claude-4-system-prompt... Everyone knows that these LLMs were trained on copyrighted material, and as a next-token prediction model, LLMs are strongly inclined to reproduce text they were trained on.

All AI companies know they're breaking the law. They all have prompts effectively saying "Don't show that we broke the law!". That we continue to have tech companies consistently breaking the law and nothing happens is an indictment of our current economy.

Training on copyright is not illegal. Even in the lawsuit against anthropic it was found to be fair use.

Pirating material is a violation of copyright, which some labs have done, but that has nothing to do with training AI and everything to do with piracy.

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