Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

writings.hongminhee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 623 posts

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

#531

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#532

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

ryukoposting wrote: post #470
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Fontana's reasoning holds up. I think it is more like photography. The case law is that a camera can't own a copyright, but a human can, even though all the pixels were produced by the camera with very little involvement at the pixel level by the human.

Actually yes, Fontana's reasoning does hold up, and the USSC seems to agree: https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-de... Prompting generally does not constitute authorship under US law.

That was not what the USSC case was about. It was about assigning copyright to an AI instead of a human.

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

#534

Post by pyrale »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #437
dimitrios1 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager that the vast majority of people commenting here about the pitfalls of AI, especially as it relates to governance and laws, are heavy users of AI, recognize the import and value it brings, and find ways to utilize it more themselves, so not sure using an ad-hominem dismissal of very valid objections are going to be effective. (side bar: the phrase "anti- luddites" is way, way overused, especially here.…

And yet the term luddite seems to fit the anti-ai crowd perfectly. They are largely concerned about employment (and more generally economic stability) and to that end seek measures intended to protect workers. There's also some environmentalist concerns which the term luddite again fits perfectly. You just have to generalize, transferring laterally from economic wellbeing to environmental wellbeing. So I don't think…

> and more generally economic stability

Who doesn't enjoy interesting times™

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

#535

Post by Eridrus »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #456
Eridrus wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of IP is to encourage the creation of new things. Not all protections have to be ones that give total control like copyright. I think it's a mistaken assumption that costs will fall to zero. The low hanging fruit will get picked, and then we'll be doing expensive combined AI/wetlab search for new drugs. If there is any meaningful headroom we will keep doing expensive things to make progress.

> The point of IP is to encourage the creation of new things. Then why are corporations allowed to milk successful works for all eternity? Why do we have Disney monopolizing films made half a century ago? Why do we have Nintendo selling people the exact same Mario ROMs from the 80s every single console generation? They should have like 10 years of copyright so they can turn a profit. Once it expires it's over and the…

There is always drift between intent and implementation, but to be generous here, Disney is generally making new works with their IP and so is Nintendo.

I am somewhat curious what you think shortening the copyright window would do that's so great for the culture though. We already have more than enough IP slop that's just licensed.

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

#536

Post by fc417fc802 »

Xirdus wrote: post #528
Qwertious wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be insane for aerospace software, where you might spend most of that time getting the code certified (required to break the $0 revenue threshold), let alone paying back your costs and then making an actual profit. Meanwhile, there are cases where copyright of more than 2 years is overkill. I don't know what, but it seems like we need some sort of mechanism for variable-length IP duration is needed.

Or maybe it shouldn't take 10+ years to certify aerospace software.

Have you seen the quality of regular software though? And the failure rate of regular physical items? The only reason I trust aircraft is because of the process.

Consider if you will that if some guy were to fly a drone the size of a car that he knocked together in his garage over a residential area people would not accept that. Yet private pilots in cessnas fly over neighborhoods constantly.

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

#537

Post by raggi »

red_admiral wrote: post #511
marcus_holmes wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If the LLM output is already someone else's copyrighted work, the LLM doesn't change that?

If that occurs and it’s a substantial enough body of output that it is itself copyrightable and not covered by fair use. Confluence of those conditions is intentionally rare.

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

#538

Post by giancarlostoro »

dogcomplex wrote: post #383
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…

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…

I would be okay with just keeping it but limiting it severely. If you release music and you can't sell enough albums in 20 years, that's not societies problem. A lot of artists release albums every 1 - 3 years anyway, so they're always selling some records, or were before streaming became the way to "own" music. Most make their money off of concerts anyway.

For movies and shows, charge and increasing fee to renew the copyright. Eventually studios will give up certain movies. The older the movie the more you pay.

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

#539

Post by az226 »

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…

SCOTUS ruled on this already when Google copied Sun’s Java wholesale.

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

#540

Post by mikkupikku »

az226 wrote: post #539
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…

SCOTUS ruled on this already when Google copied Sun’s Java wholesale.

Oracle's Java. Oracle bought Sun, including Java, then started throwing lawsuits over something they didn't even make. IP is absurd.
Post reply on HN