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Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

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Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#271

Post by nashashmi »

codedokode wrote: post #245
nashashmi wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright law does not restrict storing copyright information. It restricts distribution of copyright data without permission. So a computer can store and analyze data but cannot spit it out verbatim. If it spits it out under fair use clause, then it becomes debatable whether the new work is fair use.

Then why folks were arrested for filming in the cinemas? I don't think that's how the law works [1]: > 106. Exclusive rights in copyrighted works > Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: > (1) to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; And later: > 501. Infringement of copyright > (a) Anyone w…

The last excerpt is key: copies are things by which something can be reproduced even with the aid of a machine.

Can you get the LLM to reproduce the work? If yes, that would be a copy.

On the point of what Zuck did, The law states what is prohibited and what exceptions are made against the prohibition, not necessarily what is permitted. If the work cannot be reproduced, then it is not a copy.

As for the cinema part, an argument can be made that the person conspired to reproduce the work. And rule declarations are made that you can’t use video recording device in the theater.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#272

Post by lsaferite »

int_19h wrote: post #190
Filligree wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The output of the LLM is very different from the original, though. It’s hard to look at this and claim it isn’t.

In the general case, yes, but they can verifiably reproduce at least some copyrighted works verbatim, which implies, at the minimum, that their content is stored in model weights in some fashion.

It implies that the token procession probability was unique enough that with a low entropy token stream and the proper starting token stream you could recreate portions of the original content *strictly based on probabilities*.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#273

Post by favorited »

bgwalter wrote: post #25
ndiddy wrote: post #5

The title for this submission is somewhat misleading. The judge didn't make any sort of ruling, this is just reporting on a pretrial hearing. He also doesn't seem convinced as to how relevant downloading books from LibGen is to the case: > At times, it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose, with [Judge] Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created s…

The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. They just got high penalties for infringers almost by default. Now that big capital wants to steal from individuals, big capital wins again. (Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.)

> Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.

He teamed up with opposing counsel from Bush v. Gore, Ted Olson, and the pair of them represented plaintiffs in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the SCOTUS case which overturned Prop 8, California's gay marriage ban.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#274

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

anshumankmr wrote: post #196
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was also the primary villain of John Carreyrou's account of Theranos' rise and fall -- Bad Blood -- as his firm attempted to bully and hound whistleblowers, and intimidate their families with baseless legal threats. Not a very nice or ethical guy.

>also the primary villain Hopefully second to Holmes,eh?

Holmes seemed shady, really careless, and criminally flippant re: shipping medical technologies that never worked. But Boies was an out-and-out scoundrel, a real old-fashioned criminal enforcer type.

I had (and still have, to some extent,) mixed feelings about Holmes. She's like an avatar of SV's "fake it 'til you make it" aspect, taken way too far, to an uncomfortable extreme.

Boies, though? He represents the absolute perversion of the legal profession and the Common Law. In him you see how it is used by the powerful to bludgeon and coerce the weak. The Law as naked and unambiguous Lawful Evil. He's the worse villain of the two. And, aptly, this Mephistopheles is the one still walking free.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#275

Post by const_cast »

flessner wrote: post #59
Workaccount2 wrote: post #50

Let me make a clarifying statement since people confuse (purposely or just out of ignorance) what violating copyright for AI training can refer to: 1. Training AI on freely available copyright - Ambiguous legality, not really tested in court. AI doesn't actually directly copy the material it trains on, so it's not easy to make this ruling. 2. Circumventing payment to obtain copyright material for training - Unambiguo…

If the former ever gets tested in court, it's the end of the road. All major AI companies have trained on copyrighted work, one way or another. What is inspiration? What is imitation? What is plagiarism? The lines aren't clearly drawn for humans... much less for LLMs.

The lines for humans aren't clearly drawn, but they are drawn. The main difference is that humans are humans and LLMs are computer programs.

I see no reason why we should even entertain the idea of extending human rights to computer programs, and so far, nobody has been able to give me any good reasons why.

Furthermore, why are we only entertaining the human rights that can be used for profit-driven purposes? Why do LLMs, for example, not have the right to free speech? Or an attorney? It seems highly unethical to grant these computer programs some protections as if they're humans but not grant them personhood. This is akin to slavery, which is something we actually have to consider. Anthropomorphization is a double-edged sword. We cannot simultaneously consider them human when convenient and then consider them programs when it's not. Or, if we want to do that, we need to form coherent argument to why, how, and when.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#277

Post by EMIRELADERO »

const_cast wrote: post #275
flessner wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the former ever gets tested in court, it's the end of the road. All major AI companies have trained on copyrighted work, one way or another. What is inspiration? What is imitation? What is plagiarism? The lines aren't clearly drawn for humans... much less for LLMs.

The lines for humans aren't clearly drawn, but they are drawn. The main difference is that humans are humans and LLMs are computer programs. I see no reason why we should even entertain the idea of extending human rights to computer programs, and so far, nobody has been able to give me any good reasons why. Furthermore, why are we only entertaining the human rights that can be used for profit-driven purposes? Why do…

You're thinking about it using the wrong framework IMO.

It's not about the program's rights, it's about the human's rights to use the program. Not the machine's right to do something, but the human's right to do something through a machine, or make a machine do something.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#278

Post by vkou »

Sophira wrote: post #256
vkou wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the US decides to unilaterally shut down LLMs, that just means that the rest of the world will route around us. You're talking as if they are some kind of nationalized or publically-owned asset, as opposed to a bunch of for-profit, privately-owned silos.

Local models are a thing, though. You can run DeepSeek on your local computer. Even if ChatGPT, Huggingface, etc. died, we would still have the models and we would still be able to run them.

Local models mitigate many of the ethical concerns, but that's not what the end game is.

The firms pouring trillions of dollars into them want to own their creative output, and charge rent for access to it.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#279

Post by danaris »

kazinator wrote: post #235
danaris wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To make fair use of a book's passage, you have to cite it. That's not true. That's what's required for something not to be plagiarism , not for something not to be copyright infringement . Fair use is not at all the same as academic integrity, and while academic use is one of the fair use exceptions, it's only one. The most you would have to do with any of the other fair use exceptions is credit where you got the m…

If your "fair use" is - of a commercial nature; - plagiarism; - substantially large (e.g. whole work); you're not on good legal footing.

I mean...sure? But that's not what you were saying. You said, as a blanket statement, that fair use requires citing the passage, which is not true.

Fair use and plagiarism are related, but they are two separate things. Especially when talking about the legalities of things, as we are here, it's vital to be clear and accurate about what specific legal issues are under discussion.

Facebook isn't claiming fair use to write academic papers about the books they're taking parts from. They're claiming fair use to feed them into LLM training. If that is a usage that is deemed to fall under fair use, then it won't require specific citation, even if it requires attribution in the more general sense (ie, crediting all the works you fed into your word-chipper), any more than you're required to cite specific passages when you're making a wholesale parody of a copyrighted work (also fair use) or writing a fanfic based on it (also fair use).

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