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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

#401

Post by koboll »

jpollock wrote: post #374
koboll wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the copy is authorized, unless the work is being pirated. When an artist displays their work on DeviantArt or Artstation or whatever, they are allowing the general public to load it into memory. It's part of the license agreement they sign when they sign up for these services.

The copy isn't authorized, the copy is allowed under Fair Use. There's a huge difference between the two.

Wrong.

Fair Use applies to instances that would otherwise be copyright violations, i.e. unauthorized distribution.

When you sign up for a social media site you EXPLICITLY grant the site the rights to distribute it. You have expressly permitted it. It's a big difference!

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

#402

Post by Mordisquitos »

henearkr wrote: post #399
Mordisquitos wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say I want to write a screenplay and produce the resulting film, for profit, but I am literally unable to have any ideas whatsoever unless I base them on book that I read. With this in mind, and with this sole motivation, I buy and read the whole collection of Brandon Sanderson's novels and create a screenplay based exclusively on their content, for I have no ideas nor experiences of my own. I already paid when I bou…

Anything you create comes from what you've seen, from what you've experienced. That's a dead-end to start having to pay each and every one of the original sources of the components of your mind each time they are used to create!

So I understand you are arguing that derived works should not be subject to royalties, i.e. I should be able to produce a film based entirely on the work of a living author without restriction or the need to pay any royalties.

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

#403

Post by tankgrrl »

Hate to be the pill here, but that is the only story on the entire Internet making this claim. ACM also linked to it and linked to https://go2senkyo.com/seijika/122181/posts/685617 But that also is not what this (blog) says. This blogger does have an opinion on Nagoka's thoughts, but he is not reporting on official policy

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

#404

Post by MattRix »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #227
MattRix wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reciting part is illegal, but as long as it is trained not to recite things in full (or to whatever limit the law determines), then it should be fine.

Try publishing Harry Potter but changing all the proper nouns and use synonyms for all the adjectives. It's gonna be copyright infringement. You can even cut a few scenes and make up a few scenes entirely, too. You're still getting busted.

Yes, that’s why I am saying they will have to ensure the LLM doesn’t do that.

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

#405

Post by fennecfoxy »

nl wrote: post #89
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…

I strongly agree with this. There's a distinction between "learning from" and "copying". "Learning from" is a transformative process that distills from the observation. This distillation can be as simple as indexing for a search engine, or as complex as a deep neural network. Simply because a neural network can create something that is a copyright violation doesn't mean the training process itself it. A human can see…

Yup, exactly.

I'm sure Google represents strings of text from pages in some internal format, but relatively verbatim. Even represented verbatim, because their output is a search result and not an article that uses the copyrighted text verbatim there's no copyright violation.

And models don't even use data verbatim, if they do they're bad models/overfitted. People are making all sorts of arguments but they seem to boil down to "it's fine if humans do it but if a machine does then it's copyright violation".

People often disregard the fact that copyright law is woefully outdated (an absolute joke in itself, which can't be used to defend anything since Disney shoved it's whole fist up copyright law's...) and should really be extended for the modern world. Why can't we handle copyright for ML models? Why can't animals have copyright? It's extremely trivial to handle these cases, the point of copyright is usage and agency comes into play.

If people want to be biased against machines, then fine. Be racist to machines, maybe in 2100 or so those people will get their comeuppance. But if an ML model isn't allowed to learn from something and use that knowledge without reproducing verbatim, then why is predictive text in phone keyboards allowed?

Everyone out here acting like they're from the Corporation Rim.

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

#406

Post by ChuckkH »

BrandonLive wrote: post #370
basisword wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Is it really new? Humans have always learnt by studying what's out there already. "Humans" being the important word here. I don't understand why people keep trying to compare training a model to humans learning through reading etc. They are very different things. Learning done by machines at enormous scale and done to benefit private companies financially is not the same as humans learning.

How is it meaningfully different with respect to this question? If I go to a museum and look at a bunch of modern paintings, then go home and paint something new but “in the style of”, this is well-established as within my rights, regardless of how any of the painters whose work I studied and was inspired by might feel. If I take a notebook and write down some notes about the themes and stylistic attributes of what I…

The law most definitely distinguishes between the rights of a human and the rights of a software program running on a computer.

AI does not read, look at or listen to anything. It runs algorithms on binary data. An AI developer who uses millions of files to program their AI system also does not read, look at or listen to all of that stuff. They copy it. That is the part explicitly covered by international copyright law. It is not possible to use some file to "train" a ML model except by copying that file. That's just a fact. It wasn't the computer that went out and read or looked at the work. It was a human who took a binary copy of it, ran some algorithms on it without even looking at it, and published/sold/gave access to the software.

AI software is a work by an author; not an author.

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

#407

Post by ChuckkH »

lmm wrote: post #229
kelnos wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. > 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."

Neither an AI model nor an AI developer who programs that model are actually studying "what's out there already". One is copying files, and the other is running algorithms on copied files. And then the first one is raking in $$$ while bankrupting the authors of those files. That's illegal in the US, UK, EU and under the terms of the Berne Convention.

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

#408

Post by ChuckkH »

phire wrote: post #290
kelnos wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Lossy or not, the training data provides value. If we ignore the issue of machine learning for now; It's not the job of copyright to prevent people extracting value from a copyrighted work. If it was, then it would be possible for copyright holders to launch lawsuits that block entities from using the knowledge that was published in copyrighted reference material. Or the rights holder of a cookbook would be able to…

Copyright law (EU, US, UK, international under the Berne Convention) covers reproduction, distribution and exhibition. That's exactly what those FBI warnings on VHS movies used to say. Distribution and exhibition are prohibited along with reproduction.

In all the cases I mentioned, the only legal way to make any exception to that is if the copying does not harm the interests of the author or reduce the market value of the work. These are the actual laws.

"training a machine learning model is roughly equivalent to a human brain consuming copyrighted works"

A few clear differences: 1. The person "training" a machine learning model doesn't even need to view the work. They copy a file. They do not study or learn from it. 2. A human brain doesn't rely on a 100% verbatim digital copy of the work. To the extent that a brain "makes a copy" of what it observes, it is impossible for it not to. 3. Copyright law (almost everywhere) explicitly applies to making digital copies of binary files of a work (without which it is not possible to "train" a model using the work). Nowhere does it ever apply to a human brain when a person looks at the work.

Not all the things you mentioned are considered "reproduction". A cover of a song is a derivative work, and requires compensation. Showing a movie is exhibition, and is explicitly addressed in copyright laws. These things are not just considered "some form of reproduction".

The laws actually exist and are easy to find and read.

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

#409

Post by account42 »

BrandonLive wrote: post #370
basisword wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Is it really new? Humans have always learnt by studying what's out there already. "Humans" being the important word here. I don't understand why people keep trying to compare training a model to humans learning through reading etc. They are very different things. Learning done by machines at enormous scale and done to benefit private companies financially is not the same as humans learning.

How is it meaningfully different with respect to this question? If I go to a museum and look at a bunch of modern paintings, then go home and paint something new but “in the style of”, this is well-established as within my rights, regardless of how any of the painters whose work I studied and was inspired by might feel. If I take a notebook and write down some notes about the themes and stylistic attributes of what I…

> How is it meaningfully different with respect to this question?

Humans can't be owned by corporations for one.

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

#410

Post by teddyh »

lmm wrote: post #397
basisword wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Is it really new? Humans have always learnt by studying what's out there already. "Humans" being the important word here. I don't understand why people keep trying to compare training a model to humans learning through reading etc. They are very different things. Learning done by machines at enormous scale and done to benefit private companies financially is not the same as humans learning.

The differences don't seem salient though. Doing a legal thing faster doesn't generally make it any less legal; doing it for profit changes the legal regime somewhat but not in ways that seem relevant to what's being claimed.

> Doing a legal thing faster doesn't generally make it any less legal

“But officer, it is legal to drive just slightly slower than I was going!”

Simply put: You are wrong. The law makes arbitrary distinctions all the time, for practical reasons.

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