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Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

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Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#411

Post by grensley »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #409
dogcomplex wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be removing IP law entirely, not strengthening it to cover entire classes of problem even when implemented entirely differently. Same for anyone trying to claim "colorful monster creatures" as innately Pokemon IP. Just because someone climbed a mountain first doesn't mean they own it forever. Nobody should be honouring any of these claims. Nor should we be treating AI models themselves as respected IP. They…

Good news! LLM output cannot be copyrighted. Everything that an LLM produces is automatically, irrevocably, in the public domain.

Same as it ever was: Either trade secrets or license files that are treated as suggestions.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#412

Post by duskdozer »

joshjob42 wrote: post #351

"If you distribute modified code, or offer it as a networked service, you must make the source available under the same terms. This is not a restriction on sharing. It is a condition placed on sharing: if you share, you must share in kind." -- This is, on any plain reading, a restriction on sharing. "You can share only under these conditions" is plainly more restrictive than "sure do whatever you want". You can argue…

It's just considering "sharing" or "freedom" out an extra step. "Total freedom" results in freedom for those who can protect it and no freedom for those who can't.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#413

Post by duskdozer »

ball_of_lint wrote: post #324

Would software be more or less free in a world without copyright? I argue more free. EULAs and restrictions on how+for what software can be used, like DRM, typically use copyright as their legal backing. GPL licenses turn that on it's head but that doesn't redeem the original, flawed, law. This seems to follow the letter but not the spirit of the license. If this does pass legal muster, we can do the same to whatever…

It will be disproportionately hard to do it to proprietary software though. The imbalance of power is sort of what the GPL was there for

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#414

Post by bandrami »

nkmnz wrote: post #271
palmotea wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So: once it's not "hard" any more, does IP even make sense at all? Why grant monopoly rights to something that required little to no investment in the first place? Even with vestigial IP law - let's say, patents: it just becomes and input parameter that the AI needs to work around the patents like any other constraints. I think it still does: IIRC, the current legal situation is AI-output does not qualify for IP pr…

> AI-output does not qualify for IP protections I beg to differ. AI-output did not entitle the person creating the prompt for IP protections, so far – but my objection is not directed towards the "so far", but towards your omission of "the person creating the prompt", because if an AI outputs copyrighted material from the training data, that material is still copyrighted. AI is not a magical copyright removal machine…

I'm afraid as of last week this is now as settled as it gets in US law: the output of LLMs is not per se copyrightable, though arrangements and modifications of it can be. It's like a producer who made a song entirely with public domain audio samples: he can't then demand the compulsory license when someone resamples that song.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#415

Post by LelouBil »

zmmmmm wrote: post #162

The really interesting question to me is if this transcends copyright and unravels the whole concept of intellectual property. Because all of it is premised on an assumption that creativity is "hard". But LLMs are not just writing software, they are rapidly being engineered to operate completely generally as knowledge creation engines: solving math proofs, designing drugs, etc. So: once it's not "hard" any more, does…

This is similar :

https://www.vice.com/en/article/musicians-algorithmically-ge...

Two musicians generated every possible melody within an octave, and published them as creative Commons Zero.

I never heard about this again though.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#416

Post by bandrami »

DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #367
eru wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's different kinds of intellectual property. Copyright might rest on 'creativity is hard'. But patents and trademarks do not.

Trademarks don't, patents do. Different kind of creativity but still.

"What happens when an LLM outputs a patented algorithm?" remains a huge land mine out there, particularly since patent infringement does not require intent or even knowledge, and these models have trained on every patent ever granted.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#417

Post by duskdozer »

ajross wrote: post #323

This take, which I've seen in a few different places now, seems 100% bonkers. A world where anyone can cheaply reimplement anyone else's software and use it on hardware of their own choosing in their own designs and for their own purposes is a free software utopia . This isn't a problem, this is the goal. GNU was born when RMS couldn't use a printer the way he wanted because of an unmodifiable proprietary driver. Tha…

It's not going to be like that for proprietary software. All this future ends with is "totally free" software that companies will leech off of in their "totally locked down" software. I guarantee you that people wouldn't have had this reaction if someone had instead replicated Windows from leaked source. Well, other than Microsoft owners/employees.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#418

Post by bandrami »

eru wrote: post #399
DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trademarks don't, patents do. Different kind of creativity but still.

Patents do to a small extent, maybe. But eg medical patents are a lot about protecting all the 'sweat' you put in, not so much the creativity.

You don't need a realization to receive a patent, just the drawing.

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#419

Post by lurk2 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #409
dogcomplex wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should be removing IP law entirely, not strengthening it to cover entire classes of problem even when implemented entirely differently. Same for anyone trying to claim "colorful monster creatures" as innately Pokemon IP. Just because someone climbed a mountain first doesn't mean they own it forever. Nobody should be honouring any of these claims. Nor should we be treating AI models themselves as respected IP. They…

Good news! LLM output cannot be copyrighted. Everything that an LLM produces is automatically, irrevocably, in the public domain.

What if you used the LLM to generate works that were already copyrighted?

Re: Is legal the same as legitimate: AI reimplementation and the erosion of copyleft

#420

Post by thayne »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #279

> If source code can now be generated from a specification, the specification is where the essential intellectual content of a GPL project resides. Our foreparents fought for the right to implement works-a-like to corporate software packages, even if the so-called owners did not like it. We're ready to throw it all away, and let intellectual property owners get so much more control. The implications will not end up b…

Yeah, I really don't think we want APIs to be protected by IP. But in this case it isn't just the API, there were also tests involved. I think you could make a pretty strong argument that if you used a test suite to get an agent to implement some code, the code is a derivative product of the test code.
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