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Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

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Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#301

Post by qwytw »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #277
lmm wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are going to use someone else's work in order to make something that you are going to profit off of, I believe that original author should be compensated. And should also be able to decide they don't want their work used in that way. > Note that I'm not talking about what existing copyright law says; I'm talking about how I believe we should be regulating this new facet of the industry. Is it really new? Hum…

> Humans have always learnt by studying what's out there already. Our whole culture is built on what's been done and published before Are you implying that educators should not be compensated or credited? Because that is not how it works in the real world.

> Because that is not how it works in the real world.

Unless you're satirizing it or making fun of it in some other way. Then it's fair use..

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#302

Post by jonathanstrange »

sdiupIGPWEfh wrote: post #212
icehawk wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got 94 direct matches, which is 94 instances where copyright infringement could be argued.

Could be argued, sure. If you have to already have access to the copyrighted images to find them in the model, the argument seems weak. A sufficiently advanced model could, in theory, generate any image. You could then, again in theory, find an embedding for any image. Does said model then infringe on all copyrighted images? A program that creates Fourier epicycle drawings could be given input that causes trademarked…

> If you have to already have access to the copyrighted images to find them in the model, the argument seems weak.

That makes no sense. The copyright holder has access to their own inventions, of course. That's the standard in any copyright claim.

> A sufficiently advanced model could, in theory, generate any image. You could then, again in theory, find an embedding for any image. Does said model then infringe on all copyrighted images?

Without the slightest doubt. You're already violating copyright if you sing a faulty and badly played version of a pop song in a street cafe without paying a license fee.

> you could extract any image in the binary expansion of Pi and share it by "just" providing an index and length

The method of storing the information is pretty much irrelevant to copyright. Your link argument has been tried by pirates and it's not working too well, although it depends on the country and legislation.

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#303

Post by yazaddaruvala »

kelnos wrote: post #138
fnordpiglet wrote: post #19

I think this should generally be true. The aggregation performed by model training is highly lossy and the model itself is a derived work at worst and is certainly fair use. It may produce stuff that violates copyright, but the way you use or distribute the product of the model that can violate copyright. Making it write code that’s a clone of copyright code or making it make pictures with copy right imagery in it or…

> The aggregation performed by model training is highly lossy and the model itself is a derived work at worst and is certainly fair use. Lossy or not, the training data provides value . If all the various someones had not spent time making all the stuff that ends up as training data, then the model it trains would not exist. If you are going to use someone else's work in order to make something that you are going to…

> the training data provides value.

Copyright law doesn't protect "any provided value". Fair use specifically allows content creators to use copyright.

This can be for the purposes of parody, it can also be for the purposes of "reaction videos" or "commentary". The original content creators are NOT compensated for the value they helped create in a "reaction video".

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/youtuber-court-b...

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#304

Post by yazaddaruvala »

lmm wrote: post #224
kelnos wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A human can see a advertisement for a Marvel movie and then reproduce the Marvel logo. Redistributing (and possibly actually doing that reproduction) that logo is a copyright violation, but the learning process isn't. I don't think that's correct. That might be trademark infringement, if the logo is a registered trademark, but "seeing something and then drawing it" is in general not copyright infringement.

Drawing a copy of a copyrighted picture from memory, and then distributing that copy, would certainly normally be copyright infringement. (A logo may not be enough of a creative work to be copyrightable, but I assume that's not what you're getting at).

> Drawing a copy of a copyrighted picture from memory, and then distributing that copy, would certainly normally be copyright infringement.

In US law, there is a nuance between Copyright and Trademark.

> Drawing a copy of a copyrighted picture from memory, and then distributing that copy

Would not necessarily be copyright infringement (it depends on a judge). For example, why Taylor Swift is able to re-record her music (the copyright is owned by a recording studio), as is, and can distribute the new version as "Taylor's Version" because she owns the copyright on the new version.

> (A logo may not be enough of a creative work to be copyrightable, but I assume that's not what you're getting at).

A logo is actually MORE protectable, through Trademark. Trademark is significantly MORE protected than Copyright.

In your example, if someone draws from memory a logo, they actually own the copyright, but it is still Trademark infringement and the trademark owner will be protected.

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#305

Post by yazaddaruvala »

lmm wrote: post #272
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> When training a model you are deriving a function that takes some input and produces an output. The issue with copyright and licensing here is that a copy is made and reproduced numerous times when training. >How's that any different from what happens inside a human's brain when learning? I don't know, nor does anyone else. So let me ask you - how is that the same as what happens inside a human's brain when learni…

> I don't know, nor does anyone else. We don't know the details. But it's pretty implausible that the process of learning wouldn't involve the brain having some representation of the thing it's learning, or wouldn't involve repeatedly "copying" that representation. Every way we know of processing data works like that. (OK, there are theoretical notions of reversible computation - but it's more complex and less effect…

> But it's pretty implausible that the process of learning wouldn't involve the brain having some representation of the thing it's learning, or wouldn't involve repeatedly "copying" that representation.

I think you can easily make a stronger statement:

We do know that art students spend many hours literally tracing other images in order to learn to draw. We do know that repetition is how the brain improves over time.

"Learn to draw better by copying." - https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/illustration/discover/le...

Based on that, seems pretty clear to me that the other commenters here would agree (regardless what the brain does internally) that at a minimum, art students are violating copyright many, many, times in order to learn.

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#306

Post by wnkrshm »

AlexandrB wrote: post #256
surgical_fire wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I disagree. Copyright laws are mostly bullshit anyway, and only tend to favor capital holders, who tend to buy up all the copyright they need. I would gladly see copyright rendered useless. The peasantry hardly benefits from it anyway.

I don't think you understand what's being proposed here. I expect that, as today, the AI output will absolutely be copyrighted and strictly protected against any attempt to copy it by others. However these protections won't apply to the inputs a company will use to train the AI. ...and oh yeah, if the Sam Altmans of the world get their way you'll need a license from the government to run your own AI model. We might g…

Large IP holders could eventually just copyright every image that can exist if AI output is copyrightable - large IP holders can divide claims to the entirety of human illustrative output within a few years, without any significant white spots left. They sample the space, the company automatically publishes to their own platform and done.

Which claim is then violated is up to models again that classify and where it's a toss-up, companies will find a negotiated licensing price. A license for the models has to be paid by the competitor anyways, because they'll need to use it to classify their own creation against it to tell whether they're infringing.

That goes well with GPT6 running the legal show automatically.

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#307

Post by dale_glass »

kelnos wrote: post #138
fnordpiglet wrote: post #19

I think this should generally be true. The aggregation performed by model training is highly lossy and the model itself is a derived work at worst and is certainly fair use. It may produce stuff that violates copyright, but the way you use or distribute the product of the model that can violate copyright. Making it write code that’s a clone of copyright code or making it make pictures with copy right imagery in it or…

> The aggregation performed by model training is highly lossy and the model itself is a derived work at worst and is certainly fair use. Lossy or not, the training data provides value . If all the various someones had not spent time making all the stuff that ends up as training data, then the model it trains would not exist. If you are going to use someone else's work in order to make something that you are going to…

> If you are going to use someone else's work in order to make something that you are going to profit off of, I believe that original author should be compensated. And should also be able to decide they don't want their work used in that way.

You're posting on HN. Are you expecting a check from YCombinator?

> Regardless, copyright is about distribution. If the a model trained on copyrighted material is considered a copy or derived work of the original work, then distributing that model is, in fact, copyright infringement (absent a successful fair use defense). I'm not saying that's the case, or how a court would look at it, but that's something to consider.

The government is what ultimately decides what copyright means. And if the court wouldn't look at it that way, then it's not "in fact copyright infringement".

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#308

Post by anshorei »

MercurialBlue wrote: post #228
roughly wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering why this argument's not been sitting with me, and I think it's for the same reason that the courts have ruled that the FBI needed a warrant to put a tracker on someone's car, as opposed to following someone - the scale of action enabled is the differentiator. A student learning from other artists is still limited in their output to human-scale - they must physically create the new thing. An AI mod…

I do agree with you, but honestly I don't even think that's the biggest problem with these arguments. I'm just sitting here wondering why it is even relevant whether the "AI" is "copying", "learning", "thinking", or whatever, why is any of that important? Does AI have human rights? Well, perhaps in a couple hundred years, if humanity manages not to self-extinguish by then. It's not like you can sue AI if you think it…

> these multi-billionaire corporations are taking everyone's honest work, putting it into a computer, and selling the output

And then there's the tens of thousands of people training models and making them freely available to everyone. What I fear most is that regulations introduced "to stop" the multi-billionaire corporations will in fact make sure they're the only ones with the resources to comply with the regulations.

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#309

Post by mjburgess »

I now routinely introduce this technology as "copyright laundering" and the hype put out by start-up boards and VCs as a ploy to disguise this fact. The "AI threat" is smoke-and-mirrors to dress up what's happening.

I derive a huge amount of value from chatgpt because I can copy/paste without any IP impact. I could always have done this: from github, from ebooks, from many sources.

Now I can benefits from the labour of many for free -- their copyrights laundered through a thin statistical trick.

As with crypto (, pyramid schemes, etc.) the big "philosophical pitch" becomes a disguise for a brutal material reality.

Midjourney, ChatGPT, etc. are doing automatically what would be illegal by-hand.

Re: Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

#310

Post by walthamstow »

nologic01 wrote: post #286

This article is an example of emerging AI-bro tactics that completely mirrors crypto-bro tactics: they pick any piece of news and reinterpret it to fit an agenda. While the article is in English, the link to source is in Japanese. The only external source I found suggests the discussion is about promoting open data and open science from research institutions [1] [1] https://asianews.network/japan-to-promote-use-of-ge…

Not just crypto bros, this kind of thing is rife in politics too. Brexit is full of it. People pick one article about one minor thing in one niche area of the economy and use it to 'prove' their entire agenda.
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