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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

#201

Post by azemetre »

pc86 wrote: post #178
therouwboat wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI is so important, maybe it should be owned by the government and free to use for all citizens.

Name two non-military things that the government owns and aren't complete dumpster fires that barely do the thing they're supposed to do. Even (especially?) the military is a dumpster fire but it's at least very good at doing what it exists to do.

Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security are all three programs that have massive approval from US citizens.

Even saying the military is a dumpster fire isn't accurate. The military has led trillions of dollars worth of extraction for the wealthy and elite across the globe.

In no sane world can you say that the ability to protect GLOBAL shipping lanes as a failure. That one service alone has probably paid for itself thousands of times.

We aren't even talking about things like public education (high school education use to be privatized and something only the elites enjoyed 100 years ago; yes public high school education isn't even 100 years old) or libraries or public parks.

---

I really don't understand this "gobermint iz bad" meme you see in tech circles.

I get more out of my taxes compared to equivalent corporate bills that it's laughable.

Government is comprised of people and the last 50 years has been the government mostly giving money and establishing programs to the small cohorts that have been hoarding all the wealth. Somehow this is never an issue with the government however.

Also never understand the arguments from these types either because if you think the government is bad then you should want it to be better. Better mostly meaning having more money to redistribute and more personal to run programs, but it's never about these things. It's always attacking the government to make it worse at the expense of the people.

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

#202

Post by megamix »

HenryBemis wrote: post #7
megamix wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Tyrants & Kings were forced on us and we could only remove with at the cost of blood. Politicians, they try to crack as fewer eggs as possible, telling us they are our friends, and we believe them. Now then.. some do more good than bad, some do more bad than good. But on the other hand something that is _good for me_ is _bad for you_ and vice versa. Politicians are just the means to move the needle juuuuuuust a littl…

Tell that to Snowden.

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

#203

Post by 93po »

flats wrote: post #69
whamlastxmas wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the concept of owning an idea is really gross. Copyright means I can’t write about whatever I want in my own home even if I never distribute it or no one ever sees it. I’m breaking the law by privately writing Harry Potter fanfic in my journal or whatever. Copyright is supposed to be about encouraging intangibles, and the reality is that it only massively stifles it

I don’t believe this is true? I’m pretty sure that you’re prohibited from making money from that fan fiction, not from writing it at all. So I don’t understand the claim that copyright “massively stifles” creativity. There are of course examples of people not being able to make money on specific “ideas” because of copyright laws, but that doesn’t seem to me to be “massively stifling” creativity itself, especially giv…

Copyright isn't about distribution, it's about creation. In reality the chances of getting in trouble is basically zero if you don't distribute it - who would know? But technically any creation, even in private, is violating copyright. Doesn't matter if you make money or put it on the internet.

There is fair use, but fair is an affirmative defense to infringing copyright. By claiming fair use you are simultaneously admitting infringement. The idea that you have to defend your own private expression of ideas based on other ideas is still wrong in my view.

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

#204

Post by oooyay »

jowea wrote: post #190
oooyay wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well hell, by that logic average citizens should be able to launder corporate intellectual property because China will never follow suit in adhering to intellectual property law. I'm game if you are.

Isn't that sort of logic precisely why China doesn't adhere to IP law?

Yes, I was being a bit facetious. It was snark intended to point out that corporations don't get to have their cake and eat it too. Either everything is free and there are no boundaries or we live by our own principles.

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

#205

Post by zem »

pc86 wrote: post #178
therouwboat wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AI is so important, maybe it should be owned by the government and free to use for all citizens.

Name two non-military things that the government owns and aren't complete dumpster fires that barely do the thing they're supposed to do. Even (especially?) the military is a dumpster fire but it's at least very good at doing what it exists to do.

post office and USDA (pre trump regime slash-and-burn of course)

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

#206

Post by Zambyte »

pitaj wrote: post #137
dmonitor wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need some mechanism in place to prevent any joe schmoe from spinning up FreeSteam and rehosting the whole thing.

There can be many incentives for people to use official sources: early access, easy updates, live events, etc

"Early access" doesn't work in this context, but yes for the other means.

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

#207

Post by Bjorkbat »

jhaile wrote: post #159

One aspect that I feel is ignored by the comments here is the geo-political forces at work. If the US takes the position that LLMs can't use copyrighted work or has to compensate all copyright holders – other countries (e.g. China) will not follow suit. This will mean that US LLM companies will either fall behind or be too expensive. Which means China and other countries will probably surge ahead in AI, at least in t…

I broadly agree in that sure, unfettered access to copyrighted material will AI more capable, but more capable of what exactly?

For national security reasons I'm perfectly fine with giving LLMs unfettered access to various academic publications, scientific and technical information, that sort of thing. I'm a little more on the fence about proprietary code, but I have a hard time believing there isn't enough code out there already for LLMs to ingest.

Otherwise though, what is an LLM with unfettered access to copyrighted material better at vs one that merely has unfettered access to scientific / technical information + licensed copyrighted material? I would suppose that besides maybe being a more creative writer, the other LLM is far more capable of reproducing copyrighted works.

In effect, the other LLM is a more capable plagiarism machine compared to the other, and not necessarily more intelligent, and otherwise doesn't really add any more value. What do we have to gain from condoning it?

I think the argument I'm making is a little easier to see in the case of image and video models. The model that has unfettered access to copyrighted material is more capable, sure, but more capable of what? Capable of making images? Capable of reproducing Mario and Luigi in an infinite number of funny scenarios? What do we have to gain from that? What reason do we have for not banning such models outright? Not like we're really missing out on any critical security or economic advantages here.

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

#208

Post by wvenable »

renewiltord wrote: post #79

I wonder when general internet sentiment moved from pro-piracy to IP maximalism. Fascinating shift.

There's now an entire generation now that believes "Intellectual Property" is a real thing.

Instead of the understanding that copyrights and patents are temporary state-granted monopolies meant to benefit society they are instead framed as real perpetual property rights. This framing fuels support for draconian laws and obscures the real purpose of these laws: to promote innovation and knowledge sharing and not to create eternal corporate fiefdoms.

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

#209

Post by jasonlotito »

datavirtue wrote: post #163
jasonlotito wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I don't understand how people jump to "Copyright Violation" for the fact of reading. The article specificaly talks about the creation and distribution of a work. Creation and distribution of a work alone is not a copyright violation. However, if you take in input from something you don't own, and genAI outputs something, it could be considered a copyright violation. Let's make this clear; genAI is not a copyrig…

"However, gen AI becomes an issue when you are using as your source stuff you don't have the copyright or license to." Absolute horse shit. I can start a 1-900 answer line and use any reference I want to answer your question.

> Absolute horse shit.

I agree, what followed was.

> I can start a 1-900 answer line and use any reference I want to answer your question

Yeah, that's not what we are talking about. If you think it was, you should probably do some more research on the topic.

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

#210

Post by Workaccount2 »

gitremote wrote: post #134
Workaccount2 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment is about training models, not model inference. Most artists can readily violate copyright, that doesn't me we block them from seeing copyright.

The judgement was about model inference, not training.

>"But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content"

This can only be referring to training, the models themselves are a rounding error in size compared to their training sets.

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