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Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

wired.com

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

#321

Post by dragonwriter »

stevenAthompson wrote: post #179
xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it have to be verbatim? Seriously, this I don't understand. If I produce a terrible shakycam recording of a film while sitting in a movie theater, it's not a verbatim copy, nor is it even necessarily representative of the original work -- muddied audio, audience sounds, cropped screen, backs of heads -- and yet it would be considered copyright infringement? How many times does one need to compress the JPEG b…

The purpose of copyright is it progress the arts and sciences. Not to guarantee profit. Guaranteeing profit is just the way we encourage people to progress the arts and sciences. That is why so called derivative works are allowed (and even encouraged). If copyrighted material is ingested, modified or enhanced to add value, and then regurgitated that is legal, whereas copying it without adding value is not legal. If d…

> That is why so called derivative works are allowed (and even encouraged).

Derivative works are not "allowed (and even encouraged)" without a license from the copyright holder. Creating a derivative work is an exclusive right of the copyright holder just like making verbatim copies and requires a license for anyone else, unless an exception to copyright protection (like fair use) applies.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/106

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

#322

Post by aydyn »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #319
Majromax wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The argument for 'fair use' in DVD copying/sharing is much weaker since the thing being shared in that case is a verbatim, digital copy of the work. 'Format shifting' is a tenuous argument, and it's pretty easily limited to making (and not distributing) per…

> For AI training, a central argument is that training is transformative This doesn't actually matter though does it? They still had access to a copy of the data in the first place to train the AI on Since they likely did not pay a license to have access to the books they trained the AI on, then they violated copyright The same way it would be violating copyright for a university student to pirate a textbook and lear…

It matters because that is what the plaintiffs are arguing - that the use of copyright material for AI training is not fair use. They are not solely arguing that meta engaged in copyright infringement through piracy.

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

#323

Post by PeterStuer »

I get both sides of this debate.

However, claiming llama is not a 'substantial transformation' of the information used to build it seems untennable.

The complaint feels to me more like the paint factory claiming rights to the paintings you created with it's paint, rather than a classic pirate DVD copier that just resells copies.

Maybe a midway could be some Google Books like solution where you can still find anything but where the output is restricted to just substantial fragments and not complete verbatim chapters?

I do not believe people use llama to 'read published books on the cheap'.

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

#324

Post by librarymuch »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #319
Majromax wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The argument for 'fair use' in DVD copying/sharing is much weaker since the thing being shared in that case is a verbatim, digital copy of the work. 'Format shifting' is a tenuous argument, and it's pretty easily limited to making (and not distributing) per…

> For AI training, a central argument is that training is transformative This doesn't actually matter though does it? They still had access to a copy of the data in the first place to train the AI on Since they likely did not pay a license to have access to the books they trained the AI on, then they violated copyright The same way it would be violating copyright for a university student to pirate a textbook and lear…

One could argue a student going to a library and reading a book is analogous and legal.

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

#325

Post by dragonwriter »

librarymuch wrote: post #324
bluefirebrand wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For AI training, a central argument is that training is transformative This doesn't actually matter though does it? They still had access to a copy of the data in the first place to train the AI on Since they likely did not pay a license to have access to the books they trained the AI on, then they violated copyright The same way it would be violating copyright for a university student to pirate a textbook and lear…

One could argue a student going to a library and reading a book is analogous and legal.

Information contained in subjective mental experience is not a medium which can qualify as a copy (infringing or otherwise) in copyright law, whereas data recorded in digital media such as computer memory is, so they are not similar circumstances with regard to copyright law, however analogous you might feel they are from some other perspective.

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

#326

Post by votepaunchy »

dragonwriter wrote: post #325
librarymuch wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue a student going to a library and reading a book is analogous and legal.

Information contained in subjective mental experience is not a medium which can qualify as a copy (infringing or otherwise) in copyright law, whereas data recorded in digital media such as computer memory is , so they are not similar circumstances with regard to copyright law, however analogous you might feel they are from some other perspective.

What if there was a camera watching the student read in the library, such that the words could be seen?

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

#327

Post by MonkeyClub »

dragonwriter wrote: post #325
librarymuch wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue a student going to a library and reading a book is analogous and legal.

Information contained in subjective mental experience is not a medium which can qualify as a copy (infringing or otherwise) in copyright law, whereas data recorded in digital media such as computer memory is , so they are not similar circumstances with regard to copyright law, however analogous you might feel they are from some other perspective.

> whereas data recorded in digital media such as computer memory is

Exactly.

Plus, Thomson Reuters recently won a case regarding using copyrighted material for AI training:

https://www.wired.com/story/thomson-reuters-ai-copyright-law...

> Thomson Reuters has won the first major AI copyright case in the United States. In 2020, the media and technology conglomerate filed an unprecedented AI copyright lawsuit against the legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled in Thomson Reuters’ favor, finding that the company’s copyright was indeed infringed by Ross Intelligence’s actions.

Though a cynical way to read this would be that the larger corporation won against the smaller, so the actual precedent here is Meta winning.

But as others have noted in these comments, even that has a silver lining: should Meta win, then everyone can pirate books to read, right? /s

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

#328

Post by Ukv »

const_cast wrote: post #292
EMIRELADERO wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, because the entire argument hinges on the fact that LLMs learn, which is like humans learning, so it's transformative. That only works if you consider learning or transformation to be something that does not rely on the human spirit. Which, actually, most people do not believe. And it's pretty difficult to argue - we don't even know how learning works for people. A lot of people just jump to LLMs learning like it…

> That only works if you consider learning or transformation to be something that does not rely on the human spirit.

Even changes made using simple non-ML algorithms can be transformative according to fair use doctrine, like the thumbnailing of images done by search engines. It's not meant in some spiritual sense.

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

#329

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #319
Majromax wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. The argument for 'fair use' in DVD copying/sharing is much weaker since the thing being shared in that case is a verbatim, digital copy of the work. 'Format shifting' is a tenuous argument, and it's pretty easily limited to making (and not distributing) per…

> For AI training, a central argument is that training is transformative This doesn't actually matter though does it? They still had access to a copy of the data in the first place to train the AI on Since they likely did not pay a license to have access to the books they trained the AI on, then they violated copyright The same way it would be violating copyright for a university student to pirate a textbook and lear…

> The same way it would be violating copyright for a university student to pirate a textbook and learn from it

Presumably, there would be no requirement for the student to learn from it - making the unauthorised copy would be itself an infringement.

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

#330

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

dragonwriter wrote: post #301
bgwalter wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

> The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. Did any of the defendants raise a fair use defense based on a transformative use that they were making of the downloaded copies? If not, you are in the domain of "unlike legal situations lead to unlike decisions" which is not exactly surprising.

IIRC format shifting was argued to be part of fair use. I would think that taking an audio CD and ripping it into MP3 would be transformative, but I don't think the law would agree.
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