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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

#341

Post by breakingcups »

gruez wrote: post #321
FireBeyond wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. They claimed they made efforts to minimize seeding, but minimal is not none, as you say.

You can make a patched torrent client that never uploads any pieces to peers. It'd definitely be within Meta's capability to do so. The real problem is that unlike typical torrenting lawusits, they weren't caught red-handed in the act, and would therefore be hard to go after them. This might seem unfair, but it's not any different than you openly posting on Reddit that you torrent, but it'd be tough for rights holder…

> Previously, a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, had testified that Meta allegedly modified torrenting settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur," which seems to support authors' claims that some seeding occurred. And an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang appeared to show that Meta allegedly tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to "avoid" the "risk" of anyone "tracing back the seeder/downloader" from Facebook servers. Once this information came to light, authors asked the court for a chance to depose Meta executives again, alleging that new facts "contradict prior deposition testimony."

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

#342

Post by LexiMax »

ronsor wrote: post #97
renewiltord wrote: post #79

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

AI has made people lose their minds and principles. It's fascinating to observe. In the meantime, I will continue to dislike copyright regardless of the parties involved.

I think most people have lost their minds over the hypocrisy. For decades people have been raked over the coals for piracy, but now suddenly piracy is okay if your name is Facebook and you're building an AI model.

Either force AI companies to compensate the artists they're being "inspired" by, or let people torrent a copywashed Toy Story 5.

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

#343

Post by toast0 »

stevenAthompson wrote: post #326
toast0 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(in the US) Mechanical licenses are compulsory; you don't need permission, you can just follow the forms and pay the fees set by the Copyright Royalty Board (appointed by the Librarian of Congress). You can ask the rightsholder to negotiate a lower fee, but there's no need for consent of the rightsholder if you notify as required (within 30 days of recording and before distribution) and pay the set fees.

Thanks for clarifying. Sometimes I forget that HN has a lot experts floating around who take things in a very literal and legalistic way. I was speaking in more general terms, and missed that you were being very precise with your language. Compulsory licenses are interesting aren't they? It just feels wrong. If Metallica doesn't want me to butcher their songs, why should the be forced to allow it?

They are very interesting. IMHO, it's a nice compromise between making sure the artists are paid for their work, and giving them complete control over their work. Licensing for radio-style play is also compulsory, and terrestrial radio used to not even have to pay the recording artists (I think this changed?), but did have to track and pay to ASCAP.

As a consumer, it would amazing if there were compulsory licenses for film and tv; then we wouldn't have to subscribe to 70 different services to get to the things we want to see. And there would likely be services that spring up to redistribute media where the rightsholders aren't able to or don't care to; it might be pulled from VHS that fans recorded off of TV in the old days, but at least it'd be something.

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

#344

Post by const_cast »

gruez wrote: post #329
empath75 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No -- the controversy is also over whether distributing the weights and software is a copyright violation. I believe that is. The copyrighted material is present in the software in some form, even if the process for regenerating it is quite convoluted.

It's not as clear-cut as you think. The courts have held that both google thumbnails and google books are fair use, even though they're far closer to verbatim copies than an AI model.

The reason those are allowed is because they don't compete with the source material. A thumbnail of a movie is never a substitute for a movie.

LLMs seek to be a for-profit replacement for a variety of paid sources. They say "hey, you can get the same thing as Service X for less money with us!"

That's a problem, regardless of how you go about it. It's probably fine if I watch a movie with my friends, who cares. But distributing it over the internet for free is a different issue.

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

#345

Post by Suppafly »

const_cast wrote: post #337
Suppafly wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fatal flaw in your reasoning: machines aren't humans. I don't see how that affects the argument. The machines are being used by humans. Your argument then boils down to the idea that you can do something manually but it becomes illegal if you use a tool to do it efficiently.

It's not about the tool, how you use it, or even how it works. It's about the end result. I can go through and manually compress "Revenge of the Sith" and then post it online. Or, I can use a compression program like handbrake. Regardless, it is copyright infringement. Can AI reproduce almost* the same things that exist in it's training data? Sometimes, so sometimes it's copyright infringement. Doesn't help that it's…

>Sometimes, so sometimes it's copyright infringement.

So in those cases, the original authors might have a case. Generally you don't see these LLM doing that though.

>Doesn't help that it's explicitly for-profit and seeks to obsolesce and siphon value from it's training material.

Doesn't hurt either. That's a reason to be butthurt, but that's not a legal argument.

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

#347

Post by const_cast »

Suppafly wrote: post #345
const_cast wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about the tool, how you use it, or even how it works. It's about the end result. I can go through and manually compress "Revenge of the Sith" and then post it online. Or, I can use a compression program like handbrake. Regardless, it is copyright infringement. Can AI reproduce almost* the same things that exist in it's training data? Sometimes, so sometimes it's copyright infringement. Doesn't help that it's…

>Sometimes, so sometimes it's copyright infringement. So in those cases, the original authors might have a case. Generally you don't see these LLM doing that though. >Doesn't help that it's explicitly for-profit and seeks to obsolesce and siphon value from it's training material. Doesn't hurt either. That's a reason to be butthurt, but that's not a legal argument.

> That's a reason to be butthurt, but that's not a legal argument.

It is a legal argument, fair use specifically takes into account the intention. Just using it for commercial ventures makes the water hotter.

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

#348

Post by gruez »

breakingcups wrote: post #341
gruez wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a patched torrent client that never uploads any pieces to peers. It'd definitely be within Meta's capability to do so. The real problem is that unlike typical torrenting lawusits, they weren't caught red-handed in the act, and would therefore be hard to go after them. This might seem unfair, but it's not any different than you openly posting on Reddit that you torrent, but it'd be tough for rights holder…

> Previously, a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, had testified that Meta allegedly modified torrenting settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur," which seems to support authors' claims that some seeding occurred. And an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang appeared to show that Meta allegedly tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook ser…

>Meta allegedly modified torrenting settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,"

>Meta allegedly tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to "avoid" the "risk" of anyone "tracing back the seeder/downloader" from Facebook servers

Sounds like they used a VPN, set the upload speed to 1kb/s and stopped after the download is done. If the average Joe copied that setup there's 0% chance he'd get sued, so I don't really see a double standard here. If anything, Meta might get additional scrutiny because they're big enough of a target that rights holders will go through the effort of suing them.

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

#349

Post by ben_w »

palmotea wrote: post #323
ben_w wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except in this case, we already have the equivalent of "laws about oxygen consumption": copyright. Copyright laws were themselves created by the printing press making it easy to duplicate works, whereas previously if you half-remembered something that was just "inspiration". But that only gave the impression of helping creative people: today, any new creative person has to compete with the entire reproducible canno…

> Copyright laws were themselves created by the printing press making it easy to duplicate works, whereas previously if you half-remembered something that was just "inspiration". Eh. I don't know the history, but my understanding was they were created because the printing press allowed others to deny the original creators the profits to their work, and direct those profits to others who had no hand in it. After all,…

> A word without copyright is one where some publisher still makes money, but it's a race to the bottom for authors.

This is the case anyway; there are many writers competing for the opportunity to be published, so the publishers have a massive advantage, and it is the technology of printing (and cheap paper) that makes this a one-sided relationship — if every story teller had to be heard in person, with no recordings or reproductions possible, then story tellers would be found in every community, and they would be valued by their community.

> Here's a hole in your thinking: if you like fantasy, would you be content to just re-read Tolkien over and over, forever? Don't you think that'd get boring no matter how good he was?

The examples aren't meant to be exclusive, and Pratchett has a lot of books.

There's far more books on the market right now than a human can read in a lifetime. At some point, we may have already passed it, there will be far more good books on the market than a human can read in a lifetime, at which point it's not quality, it's fashion.

> And empirically, "new creative [people]" manage to complete with Pratchett or Tolkien all the time, as new fantasy works are still being published and read.

At some point, there will be more books at least as good as Pratchett, Tolkien, Le Guin, McCaffrey, Martin, Heinlein, Niven etc. in each genre, than anyone can read.

> Do you remember that "Game of Thrones" was a mass cultural phenomenon not too long ago?

Published: August 1, 1996 — concurrently with Pratchett.

Better example would have been The Expanse — worth noting that SciFi has a natural advantage over (high) fantasy or romance, as the nature of speculative science fiction means it keeps considering futures that are rendered as obsolete as the worn-down buttons on the calculator that Hari Seldon was rumoured to keep under his pillow.

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

#350

Post by gruez »

const_cast wrote: post #344
gruez wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as clear-cut as you think. The courts have held that both google thumbnails and google books are fair use, even though they're far closer to verbatim copies than an AI model.

The reason those are allowed is because they don't compete with the source material. A thumbnail of a movie is never a substitute for a movie. LLMs seek to be a for-profit replacement for a variety of paid sources. They say "hey, you can get the same thing as Service X for less money with us!" That's a problem, regardless of how you go about it. It's probably fine if I watch a movie with my friends, who cares. But di…

>The reason those are allowed is because they don't compete with the source material. A thumbnail of a movie is never a substitute for a movie.

>LLMs seek to be a for-profit replacement for a variety of paid sources. They say "hey, you can get the same thing as Service X for less money with us!"

What's an LLM supposed to be a substitute for? Are people using them to generate entire books or news articles, rather than buying a book or an issue of the new york times? Same goes for movies. No one is substituting marvel movies with sora video.

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