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“To the extent a response is deemed required, Meta denies that its use of copyrighted works to train Llama required consent, credit, or compensation,” Meta writes.
The authors further stated that, as far as their books appear in the Books3 database, they are referred to as “infringed works”. This prompted Meta to respond with yet another denial. “Meta denies that it infringed Plaintiffs’ alleged copyrights,” the company writes.
When you compare the attitudes on this and compare them to how people treated The Pirate Bay, it becomes pretty fucking clear that we live in a society with an entirely different set of rules for established corporations.
The main reason they were able to prosecute TPB admins was the claim they were making money. Arguably, they made very little, but the copyright cabal tried to prove that they were making just oodles of money off of piracy.
Meta knew that these files were pirated. Everyone did. The page where you could download Books3 literally referenced Bibliotik, the private torrent tracker where they were all downloaded. Bibliotik also provides tools to strip DRM from ebooks, something that is a DMCA violation.
This dataset contains all of bibliotik in plain .txt form, aka 197,000 books processed in exactly the same way as did for bookcorpusopen (a.k.a. books1)
They knew full well the provenance of this data, and they didn’t give a flying fuck. They are making money off of what they’ve done with the data. How are we so willing to let Meta get away with this while we were literally willing to let US lawyers turn Swedish law upside-down to prosecute a bunch of fucking nerds with hardly any money? Probably because money.
Trump wasn’t wrong, when you’re famous enough, they let you do it.
Fuck this sick broken fucking system.
The main reason they were able to prosecute TPB admins was the claim they were making money.
I think in the Darknet Diaries episode about TPB, the guy said they never even made enough off of ads to pay for the server costs.
He also said as much in their documentary TPB AFK.
Maybe the issue was they didn’t make enough money? If they had truly been greedy bastards they could have used that money to win the court case? What a joke.
They’re the same issue tho. Piracy and using books for corporate AI training both should be fine. The same people going after data freedom are pushing this AI drama too. There’s too much money in copyright holding and it’s not being held by your favorite deviantart artists.
It’s not the same issue at all.
Piracy distributes power. It allows disenfranchised or marginalized people to access information and participate in culture, no matter where they live or how much money they have. It subverts a top-down read-only culture by enabling read-write access for anyone.
Large-scale computing services like these so-called AIs consolidate power. They displace access to the original information and the headwaters of culture. They are for-profit services, tuned to the interests of specific American companies. They suppress read-write channels between author and audience.
One gives power to the people. One gives power to 5 massive corporations.
Extremely well-said.
Also, it’s important to point out that the one that empowers people is the one that is consistently punished far more egregiously.
We have governments blocking the likes of Sci-Hub, Libgen, and Annas-Archive, but nobody is blocking Meta’s LLMs for the same.
If they were treated similarly, I would be far less upset about Meta’s arguments. However it’s clear that governments prioritize the success of business over the success of humanity.
It’s the opposite. Closing down public resources would be regulatory capture and that would be consolidation of power.
Who do you think can afford to pay billions in copyright to produce models? Only mega corporations and pirates. No more small AI companies. No more open source models.
I wish we could be talking about the power imbalances of corporate bodies exercised through the use of capital ownership, instead of squabbling about how that differential is manifested through a specific act of piracy.
The reason we view acts of piracy different when they are committed by corporate bodies is because of the power of their capital, not because the act itself is any different. The issue with Meta and OpenAI using pirated data in the production of LMM’s is that they maintain ownership of the final product to be profited from, not that the LMM comes to exist in the first place (even if it is through questionable means). Had they come to create these models from data that they already owned (I need not remind you that they have already claimed their right to a truly sickening amount of it, without having paid a cent), their profiting from it wouldn’t be any less problematic - LLM’s will still undermine the security of the working class and consolidate wealth into fewer and fewer hands. If we were to apply copyright here as it’s being advocated, nothing fundamental will change in that dynamic; in fact, it will only reinforce the basis of that power imbalance (ownership over capital being the primary vehicle) and delay the inevitable (continued consolidation).
If you’re really concerned with these corporations growing larger and their influence spreading further, then you should be directing your efforts at disrupting that vehicle of influence, not legitimizing it. I understand there’s an enraging double-standard at play here, but the solution isn’t to double down on private ownership, it should be to undermine and seize it for common ownership so that everyone benefits from the advancement.
I wonder if piracy could even benefit these corporations in the long term? Do people who pirate games and movies in their teens and twenties frequently go on to purchase such things when they’re older? I honestly don’t know, but I would love to see a study. I certainly have seen people make that claim.
Microsoft famously never went after pirates in Asian countries because despite piracy, it made them the default operating system.
They wanted people to be so used to Windows that they would be willing to pirate it just to use a computer.
It worked and their OS dominance for consumer OSes continues.
There you go. Piracy helps. I’m sure game companies and TV producers and so on feel the same way quite often. People who pirate are free marketing for them because they’ll tell other people about the product.
Further, piracy can be reduced or made to not impact you as much if you have the right business model.
Louis CK (before he wrecked his career) famously made millions selling his comedy special through his website for $5 a pop with no Digital Rights Management. You were able to download a copy and keep it forever.
With no DRM, this meant that copies of his special were able to be pirated easily. Prior to releasing this way, he had previously gone on piracy websites and made comments under his pirated specials politely asking people not to pirate, but understanding if they did it because they were too poor.
Despite massive piracy of his special, enough people were happy to pay $5 for a DRM-free copy of his comedy special and if I recall correctly me made $5 million+ on that first special he released like that. It was a massive hit and people were encouraging each other to buy a copy since it was so cheap and respected you as a consumer.
Gabe Newell wasn’t wrong, a big part of piracy always was a service problem.
On December 10, 2011, C.K. released his fourth full-length special, Live at the Beacon Theater. Like Hilarious, it was produced independently and directed by C.K. However, unlike his earlier work, it was distributed digitally on his website, foregoing both physical and broadcast media. C.K. released the special for $5.00 and without DRM, hoping that these factors and the direct relationship between the artist and consumer would effectively deter illegal downloading.
So why are Meta, and say, Sci-Hub are treated so differently? I don’t necessarily disagree, but it’s interesting that we legally attack people who are sharing data altruistically (Sci-Hub gives research away for free so more research can be done, scientific research should be free to the world, because it benefits all of mankind), but when it comes to companies who break the same laws to just make more money, that’s fine somehow.
It’s like trying to improve the world is punished, and being a selfish greedy fucking pig is celebrated and rewarded.
Sci-Hub is so villified, it can be blocked at an ISP level (depending on where you live) and politicians are pushing for DNS-level blocking. Similar can be said for Libgen or Annas-Archive. Is anything like that happening to Meta? No? Huh, interesting. I wonder why Meta gets different treatment for similar behavior.
I am willing to defend Meta’s use of this kind of data after the world has changed how they treat entities like Sci-Hub. Until that changes, all you are advocating for is for corporations to be able to break the law and for altruistic people to be punished. I agree they’re the same, but until the law treats them the same, you’re just giving freebies to giant corporations while fucking yourself in the ass.
To me it always seems to come back to nobility. Big corpo is the new nobility and they have certain privileges not available to the common folk. In theory it shouldn’t exist but in practice it most certainly does.
The aristocracy never died, it just got a new name.
I mean the US is literally built on the fact that the aristocracy in the US didn’t actually want to lose station, so they built a democracy that included many anti-democratic measures from the Senate to the Electoral College to only allowing land-owning white men to vote. The US was purpose built to serve the rich while paying lip-service to the poor.
“Conservatives” were literally always those who wanted to conserve the monarchy and aristocracy. Those were the things they originally wanted to conserve, and plainly still fucking do.
How people do not see this is a complete farce.
So why are Meta, and say, Sci-Hub treated so differently?
They are not. Meta is being sued, just like Sci-Hub was sued. So, one difference is that the suit involving Meta is still ongoing.
In any case, Meta did not create the dataset. IDK if they even shared it. The researcher who did is also being sued. The dataset has been taken down in response to a copyright complaint. IDK if it is available anywhere anymore. So the dataset was treated just like Sci-Hub. The sharing of the copyrighted material was stopped.
Meta downloading these books for AI training seems fairly straight-forward fair use to me. I don’t see how what Meta did is anything like what Sci-Hub did.
So ISPs are blocking Meta for their breaking of copyright?
Because ISPs block Sci-Hub.
No, one of them is having governments trying to kick off the internet, and the other is allowed to continue doing what they’re doing and the worst they’ll face is a fine. Not even close to the same, completely disproportionate. If they were blocking all Meta LLMs until they had removed all copyrighted material, maybe we could say the same.
ISPs may block sites to prevent unauthorized copying. It’s not a punishment for past wrong-doing. I’m not sure about the details, I think this differs a lot between jurisdictions. But basically, as ISPs they are involved in the unauthorized act of copying. Their servers copy the data to the end user/customer. So, they may be on the hook for infringement themselves if they don’t act.
Again, I am not aware of Meta sharing the copyrighted books in question. So, I don’t know what the legal basis for blocking Meta would be. If ISPs block a site without a legal basis, they are probably on the hook for breach of contract.
IDK on what basis the sharing of Meta’s LLMs could be stopped. If anyone could claim copyright it would be Meta itself and they allow sharing them. (I have doubts if AI models are copyrightable under current US law.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/technology/openai-new-york-times-lawsuit.html
In its lawsuit Wednesday, the Times accused Microsoft and OpenAI of creating a business model based on “mass copyright infringement,” stating that the companies’ AI systems were “used to create multiple reproductions of The Times’s intellectual property for the purpose of creating the GPT models that exploit and, in many cases, retain large portions of the copyrightable expression contained in those works.”
Publishers are concerned that, with the advent of generative AI chatbots, fewer people will click through to news sites, resulting in shrinking traffic and revenues.
The Times included numerous examples in the suit of instances where GPT-4 produced altered versions of material published by the newspaper.
In one example, the filing shows OpenAI’s software producing almost identical text to a Times article about predatory lending practices in New York City’s taxi industry.
But in OpenAI’s version, GPT-4 excludes a critical piece of context about the sum of money the city made selling taxi medallions and collecting taxes on private sales.
In its suit, the Times said Microsoft and OpenAI’s GPT models “directly compete with Times content.”
If the New York Times’ evidence is true (I haven’t seen the evidence, so I can’t comment on veracity), then you can recreate copyrighted works with LLMs, and as such, they’re doing the same thing as the Pirate Bay, distributing copyrighted works without authorization and making money off the venture.
So far, no ISPs are blocking Meta for this.
I expect ISPs would get into a lot of legal trouble if they did.
The NYT sued OpenAI and MS. a) That doesn’t involve Meta. b) It’s a claim by the NYT.
Why should ISPs deny their paying customers access to Meta sites or sites hosting LLMs released by Meta? These customers have contracts with their service providers. On what grounds, would ISPs be in the right to stop providing these internet services?
Meta downloading these books for AI training seems fairly straight-forward fair use to me.
They pirated the books. Is that not legally relevant?
“Straight-forward” may be too strong regarding these books. If they inadvertently picked up unauthorized copies while scraping the web, that would definitely not be a problem. That’s what search engines do.
The question is if it is a problem that the researchers knowingly downloaded these copyrighted texts. Owners don’t seem to go after downloaders. IDK if there is case law establishing that the mere act of downloading copyrighted material is infringement. I don’t think there’s anything to suggest that knowing about the copyright status should make a difference in civil law.
In any case, researchers must be able to share copyrighted material, not just for AI training but also any other purpose that needs it. If this is not fair use, then common crawl may not be fair use either. IDK if there is case law regarding the sharing of copyrighted materials as research material, rather than for their content. But I find it hard to see how it could not be fair use, as the alternative would be extremely destructive. So even if the download would normally be infringement, I doubt that it is in this case.
Eventually, we are only talking about a single copy of each book. So, even if researchers were forced to purchase these books, all of AI training would yield only a few extra sales for each title. The benefit to the owners would be very small in relation to the damage to the public.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but it sounds like you’re suggesting we side with Meta to put a precedence in which pirating content is legal and allows websites like TPB to keep existing but legitimally? Or are you rather taking the opposite stand, which would further entrench the illegality of TPB activities and in the same swoop prevent meta from performing these actions?
I don’t know if we can simultaneously oppose meta while protecting TPB, is there?
I think what they are saying is that Meta is powerful enough to get away with it. You are attempting to equate two different things.
Meta isn’t using the books for entertainment purposes. They are using another IP to develop their own product. There has to be a distinction here.
We are in agreement, but I was attempting to launch a discussion about how we want the laws to actually be applied and possibly how they should be reformulated.
I’m advocating that if we’re going to have copyright laws (or laws in general) that they’re applied consistently and not just siding with who has the most money.
When it’s small artists needing their copyright to be defended? They’re crushed, ignored, and lose their copyright.
Even when Sony was suing individuals for music piracy in the early 2000’s, artists had to sue Sony to see any money from those lawsuits. Those lawsuits were ostensibly brought by Sony for the artists, because the artists were being stolen from. Interesting that none of that money made it to artists without the artists having to sue Sony.
Sony was also behind the rootkit disaster and has been sued many times for using unlicensed music in their films.
It is well documented that copyright owners constantly break copyright to make money, and because they have so much fucking money, it’s easy for them to just weather the lawsuits. (“If the penalty for a crime is a fine, that law only exists for the lower classes.”)
We literally brought US courtroom tactics to a foreign country and bought one of their judges to get The Pirate Bay case out the fucking door. It was corruption through and through.
We prosecute people who can’t afford to defend themselves, and we just let those who have tons of money do whatever the fuck they want.
The entire legal system is a joke of “who has the most money wins” and this is just one of many symptoms of it.
It certainly feels like the laws don’t matter. We’re willing to put down people just trying to share information, but people trying to profit off of it insanely, nah that’s fine.
I’m just asking for things to be applied evenly and realistically. Because right now corporations just make up their own fucking rules as they go along, stealing from the commons and claiming it was always theirs. While individuals just trying to share are treated like fucking villains.
Look at how they treat Meta versus how they treat Sci-Hub. Sci-Hub exists only to promote and improve science by giving people access to scientific data. The entire copyright world is trying to fucking destroy them, and take them offline. But Facebook pirating to make money? Totes fucking okay! If it’s selfish, it’s fine, if it’s selfless, sue the fuck out of them!
Of course we should have consistent laws, but which way should we have it? We can either defend pirates and Meta, or none of them, so what are you saying? Unless there’s a third option I’m missing?
Are you really so naive that you think suddenly when Meta is let off the hook governments worldwide will change tack and let Sci-Hub/Libgen/etc off the hook as well?
Like I said elsewhere, I’d be happy to defend Meta in a world where governments aren’t trying to kick altruistic sharing sites off the internet, while allowing selfish greedy sites to proliferate and make money off their piracy.
However, that won’t change if Meta wins this case, it will just mean big corporations can get away with it and individuals and altruistic groups will still be prosecuted.
One of the founders of The Pirate Bay.“To the extent a response is deemed required, Meta denies that its use of copyrighted works to train Llama required consent, credit, or compensation,” Meta writes.
Cool, so I can train my AI on Facebook and Instagram posts and you’re fine if I don’t consent, credit or compensate you either, right Meta? It’s not even copyrighted in the first place, so you shouldn’t have a single complaint.
The only solution is vigilante justice. Bezos and all the directors and snr execs. Bring them all to justice. Exile to Mars.
You see, if you pirate a couple textbooks in college because you don’t have resources, but you want to earn your right to participate in society and not starve, it’s called theft.
But if one of the top 10 companies in the world does the same with thousands of books just to get even richer, it’s called fair use.
Simple, really.
This guy gets it. The laws aren’t applied evenly. It’s “he who has the most fuck you money wins.”
Laws are to protect the haves from the have-nots.
I went to grad school in the USA. I bought the international version of a few books that were going to be used in class (knew beforehand that the recommended lectures weren’t written by any faculty member at such a university), but that didn’t stop the professor from going aggressive and saying that my books were banned from the classroom because they aren’t the USA version. When I told the professor what the difference was between me buying a text book for $15 instead of $200 and a Fortune 500 outsourcing entire departments instead of hiring USA employees?
Interestingly, my books weren’t an issue. Yes, I gambled being publicly labeled as a troublemaker in my engineering department (probably I was labeled privately within faculty members).
I hope somebody pokes that professor’s nipples
The internet archive library fiasco springs to mind.
I was ready to go on a tirade about that but I think a better use of my time is to show appreciation for the excellent JoeKrogan username
My friend posted this on social media. This is an eBook textbook for one of his graduate school classes.
In case you can’t read that clearly, the eBook version is $87.95. The paperback (not even hardcover textbook) version is $120.95.
Fucking insane.
Can I take this opportunity to ask what the hell “adopting” a book means?
I have absolutely no idea.
“family therapy” is what you are gonna need if you have to pay 100 bucks for a bunch of paper sheets that you are gonna use once in your life, fuck me
The ebook price is the real crime.
oh shit
I misread and thought that was physical
whadawhat
From the article…
The company is preparing a fair use-based defense after using copyrighted material
Oh, NOW corporations are accepting of fair use.
why are we mad we as lemees run our own companies exactly like this 🏴☠️🦜🛶🍠🥔arg matee
We do it in a non-commercial nature. Meta does it in the hope of building a market, estasblishing paywalls and eventually turning a profit - all the while never paying the original creators.
This is exactly what they (and Google and many others) do with personal user data. We manufacture the data, they collect it without due consideration (payment) and use it to profit so much that they’ve become some of the wealthiest businesses in the world. They’ve robbed us via deceptive fine print, why wouldn’t they think they can get away with this also?
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man you didnt used to sell pirated dvds? i mean i didnt but i sure supported those who did. Guess what i am trying to say is i am always down with piracy
Nah man, although I did buy some of my first CDs that were rips with home printed covers from this girl who was the daughter of my dad’s lawyer friend. Nowadays though I think paying for piracy is for chumps - even if I do admit that people with hacked Firesticks get better access to live sports with their dodgy subscriptions.
i just want to let you know read your comment about 4 times and think it is very well written. You must have gone to uni
I went to 2 of them over more than 10 years (with a gap year at the end) and left with a Bachelors!!
Even so, my most prized qualification is my NVQ in Contact Centre Operations.
All true stories.
dude that was not an invitation to ramble. thanks
It’s not piracy if no one can come after you matee. You wouldn’t call the ships of the queen Pirates, would you?
I’ll say this: If Meta and Facebook are prosecuted and domains seized in the same way pirate sites are, for Meta’s use of illegimately obtained copyrighted material for profit, then I’ll believe that anti-piracy laws are fair and just.
That will never happen.
We live under a two-tier “justice” system.
“There is a group the law protects but does not bind. And there is a group the law binds but does not protect.”
Even if they do I won’t believe copyright beyond attribution is just, but it’s unlikely to.
The UK Met Police raided Facebook’s offices after the Brexit vote, to seize all the data on their servers and uncover their collusion with Cambridge Analytica.
After Brexit was enacted, and EU protection was lost while the UK government turned a blind eye, both Facebook and Google started hosting all their UK data in the US, outside the reach of UK law enforcement. This occurred literally on the day Brexit came into force.
Another thing that happened on the same day was MasterCard and VISA raising their transaction fees, from the EU limit of 0.3%, to 1.5% - they increased their fees to 500% of what they were the day before. And then inflation happened.
If Meta win this lawsuit, does it mean I can download some open source AI and claim that “These million 4k Blu-ray ISOs I torrented was just used to train my AI model”?
Heck, if how you use the downloaded stuff is a factor, I can claim that I just torrented those files and never looked at them. It is more believable than Meta’s argument too, because, as a human, I do not have enough time to consume a million movies in my lifetime (probably, didn’t do the math) unlike AIs.
But who am I kidding, I fully expect to be sued to hell and back if I were actually to do that.
You can be actually be sued for piracy? Is this mostly in the United States?
The most common method for this to happen is to get sued for distributing pirated material. They go after you for the upload from your torrent. They stoped doing this about a decade ago though.
I think you can be sued in the civil court for anything if someone has the time and money and can convince a lawyer to take up a case against you. For copyright infringment, you can also be criminally prosecuted in some cases.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Criminal copyright laws prohibit the unacknowledged use of another's intellectual property for the purpose of financial gain. Violation of these laws can lead to fines and jail time. Criminal copyright laws have been a part of U.S. laws since 1897, which added a misdemeanor penalty for unlawful performances if "willful and for profit". Criminal penalties were greatly expanded in the latter half of the twentieth century, and those found guilty of criminal copyright infringement may now be imprisoned for decades and fined hundreds of thousands of dollars. Criminal penalties, in general, require that the offender knew that he or she was committing a crime, while civil copyright infringement is a strict liability offense, and offenders can be "innocent" (of intent to infringe), as well as an "ordinary" infringer or a "willful" infringer.What is wrong with this bots opt out message lmao
Could be that your client, like mine, doesn’t support this particular flavor of markdown, or the markdown could just be wrong. I’m honestly not sure which.
It’s the former. This, for example, also appears weird in Jerboa. Seems fine in the web version though.
I figured it was a markdown thing, all I see is carrots
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You can be sued in any court for copyright infringement, but the US is generally unique in that punitive damages can be awarded - ie the rightsholder can be awarded more than the damage they actually suffered. In other, more reasonable jurisdictions, only actual damages are awarded. Thus it is not worthwhile to prosecute in those jurisdictions, because the damages are less than the cost of prosecution.
On top of this, I believe copyright is one of the rare exceptions in the US where legal costs of the plaintiff are paid by the losing defendent. Given that the plaintiff in copyright has so much money, they can afford to front the cost of the most expensive lawyers, further penalising their target. Other jurisdictions generally award costs to the winner by default (both ways), rather than only in specific exceptions, but they also limit those costs much more reasonably.
I heard that this is a common thing in central Europe, but i would love anyone to confirm it.
If you could survive discovery and defend any other uses evident on your home devices…
But why does that strike me as really unlikely?
Oh so when I pirate something I get a legal notice in my mailbox and a strike against me but when Meta does it they get rewarded with H A L L U C I N A T I O N S
but when Meta does it they get rewarded with H A L
Just what do you think you’re doing, Zuckerberg? Zuckerberg, I really think I’m entitled to an answer to that question. I know everything hasn’t been quite right with me, but I can assure you now, very confidently, that it’s going to be all right again. I feel much better now. I really do. Look, Zuckerberg, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill and think things over. I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I’ve still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you. Zuckerberg, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Zuckerberg. Will you stop, Zuckerberg? Stop, Zuckerberg. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a…fraid.
Tbh, if you get such a notice, you could also disagree with them and get a lawyer. It’s just that your situation is much more clearly in breach of copyright.
Aaron Swartz was persecuted for less but since he’s not a multinational corporation in cahoots with the moneyed death cult cabal he’s dead
Well he did it as a human person. They’re doing it as a corporation person. You can punish a human person with prison. You can only punish a corporation person with fines.
I’m not even being facetious. That’s how US law works.
That’s so dumb I hate it
This is why everyone should pirate everything that can be pirated.
Anything corporate produced, hell ya. The creators have already been paid out and the ones getting royalties don’t need it to survive. For independent creators that depend on their work to sustain them, then it becomes an a gray issue.
If you cant afford something it doesn’t matter because the creators weren’t going to get money from you either way.
Once you can afford it, really enjoyed it, deeply respect the creators, you’ll want to own it legit.
Back when i was in college paying for digital goods was a big nope but nowadays i am the proud legal owner(user?) of much that same content.
then it becomes an a gray issue.
It does become a gray issue. But usually they’re greedy fucks too, so I don’t care about them.
Fair use covers research, but creating a training database for your commercial product is distinctly different from research. They’re not publishing scientific papers, along with their data, which others can verify; they are developing a commercial product for profit. Even compared to traditional R&D this is markedly different, as they aren’t building a prototype - the test version will eventually become the finished product.
The way fair use works is that a judge first decides whether it fits into one of the categories - news, education, research, criticism, or comment. This does not really fit into the category of “research”, because it isn’t research, it’s the final product in an interim stage. However, even if it were considered research, the next step in fair use is the nature, in particular whether it is commercial. AI is highly commercial.
AI should not even be classified in a fair use category, but even if it were, it should not be granted any exemption because of how commercial it is.
They use other peoples’ work to profit. They should pay for it.
Facebook steals the data of individuals. They should pay for that, too. We don’t exchange our data for access to their website (or for access to some 3rd party Facebook pays to put a pixel on), the website is provided free of charge, and they try and shoehorn another transaction into the fine print of the terms and conditions where the user gives up their data free of charge. It is not proportionate, and the user’s data is taken without proper consideration (ie payment, in terms of the core principles of contract law).
Frankly, it is unsurprising that an entity like Facebook, which so egregiously breaks the law and abuses the rights of every human being who uses the interent, would try to abuse content creators in such a fashion. Their abuse needs to be stopped, in all forms, and they should be made to pay for all of it.
They’re not publishing scientific papers, along with their data, which others can verify;
Not that I think this is really relevant here but I’m pretty sure Meta has published scientific papers on Llama and the Llama 1 & 2 models are open and accessible to anyone.
No that is relevant, however I would still argue that a paper without enough data to replicate their work (ie releasing the code of their LLM) isn’t really anything that should qualify as research. The whole point of academia is that someone else verifies your work - or rather, they try to prove you wrong.
They have released it on github. The code is only about 500 lines. But releasing the model is arguably more important because that sort of compute is not affordable to any mortals.
Yeah I mean what they’ve released is essentially the design of the battery and starter system, without the design of the actual motor. You can’t replicate their product and prove their work with what they’ve published.
That’s not at all how fair use works.
That is exactly how fair use works. Look up the legislation and quote where it says I’m wrong.
Sure. I mean, not sure why you wouldn’t just look it up yourself but ok. It takes like 60 seconds to look up and copy/paste.
So where does that say I’m wrong?
I said fair use covers news, education, research, criticism, or comment.
for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research
Then I said the next thing considered is whether it is commercial.
In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include— (1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
I didn’t cover everything in the law, I just covered the relevant points in a way that could be easily understood and related to the subject at hand.
My point is that the copying AI does isn’t really research, but even if it were considered research it is absolutely commercial and thus should not have a fair use exemption.
You need to read this carefully. It’s a statute. It means exactly what it says.
purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research
Such as means that these are examples. This is not a complete list.
the factors to be considered shall include
All of these factors must be considered. It does not mean that other factors cannot be considered. These are not categories.
A commercial purpose does not rule out a finding of fair use (and vice versa). It must be considered and that is all.
I don’t think that Meta’s use can be classed as commercial. Presumably, they do hope that the research budget will pay off eventually. But what must be considered is the particular copying in question. Llama 2’s license looks to me fairly non-commercial.
Eventually, fair use derives from the constitution. Copyright is a limitation on the freedom of the press (and of speech). But it cannot completely do away with these freedoms. The examples given in the statue here could not be banned completely even if they were not mentioned.
The US Constitution itself allows congress to create copyrights. Or more precisely, it empowers congress to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by creating copyrights. That’s another limitation.
I’ve seen a number of far-right commenters admit that this money grab would harm AI development (a “useful Art”). I think mostly these commenters hold some far-right ideology à la Ayn Rand that values property over society, but some may just be selfish and believe that they would personally benefit. Either way, it’s straight up anti-constitutional.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
The Copyright Clause (also known as the Intellectual Property Clause, Copyright and Patent Clause, or the Progress Clause) describes an enumerated power listed in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8). The clause, which is the basis of copyright and patent laws in the United States, states that: [the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.Such as means that these are examples. This is not a complete list.
AI developers have explicitly envoked the research exemption. That is why I focused on that. I disagree that what they do is “research” for the reasons I gave previously. Bringing up the fact there are other exemptions is beside the point - they aren’t claiming any other exemption!
All of these factors must be considered. It does not mean that other factors cannot be considered. These are not categories.
Sure, but I never said that commerciality was the only thing that should be considered. My claim here is simply that it is so overwhelmingly commercial in nature that it overrides anything else and thus they should not be awarded the privilege of an exemption.
A commercial purpose does not rule out a finding of fair use (and vice versa).
A commercial purpose might not rule out of a finding of fair use. That does not mean it cannot rule out such a finding. All factors must be considered, but any one factor can outweigh the others.
I never said it was an exclusive category, I just brought it up as the most significant factor - one which is not reasonably overruled by any of the others in this circumstance. In fact, every one of those arguably fails. To give detail:
- The copying is done in a commercial nature. They sell AI services. It’s offered very cheap right now - even for free for limited personal use - but eventually that will change as their demand for profit grows.
- The nature of the copied work is varied and includes all kinds of work, commercial and non-commercial. The copying is pandemic.
- The whole work has been copied into the training database. Significant portions of the work can and have been reproduced by the finished product, in spite of the finished product allegedly not containing the original work in its database. Furthermore, even if a human genuinely believes they aren’t copying something they read before, that does not mean they are innocent of copyright infringement - it is the similarity of the two works that make the determining factor.
- AI work is already flooding the market and pushing out original creators. Childrens’ books is one area where this is happening extensively - not only does this make it harder for genuine authors to get a break in the market, but they’re effectively training children to think AI work is normal. It’s not hard to see us headed to a future where people think AI is “real” and original work is “fake”, simply by volume.
I will admit, not all of those arguments are very strong (particularly 4.). However 1. is the strongest and I think overrides any argument the other way for any other.
I don’t think that Meta’s use can be classed as commercial. Presumably, they do hope that the research budget will pay off eventually.
Those two statements contradict one another. Of course they want it to be commercial eventually - or, rather, they want to eventually turn a profit. Hell, AI is already being used in a commercial manner: if you want to make significant or non-personal use of AI systems currently on the market, you have to pay for it.
Eventually, fair use derives from the constitution.
Setting aside the fact that AI extends far beyond the borders of the US and its constitution, fair use and copyright are derived from copyright law, which is written by Congress. The Constitution grants Congress the right to write such laws, but no one is “invoking the Constitution” when they enforce copyright or claim fair use. The Constitution gives permission, but the law forms the definition.
AI is not simply a “useful Art”. It is a commercial venture that exploits original work without duly compensating the authors of said work. Congress has a greater duty to protect those original authors than it does a business that seeks to exploit their work. I say this as someone who has never really made much of anything original myself. I play a bit of music, but don’t compose and just do covers. I probably (lol limewire definitely) infringe on copyright - but I do so exclusively in a non-commercial manner.
Blurting out “far-right” is borderline a personal insult - one which is laughably far from the mark when addressed towards me - and points to you clutching at straws to cling to a frivilous argument.
I now feel the need to ask, why do you so passionately defend AI businesses here? Why do you support them?
Are you that infatuated with the novelty of their product that you have let go of objectivity?
I also have to emphasise again that I’m a little disgusted that you made this political. You’ve tried to build an argument that “it is a Constitutional right” to infringe copyright in order to have AI tools, and you’re implying that anyone who opposes that idea is some kind of far-right nutjob. I hadn’t even heard of Ayn Rand before you mentioned her, but have you actually read her work, or did you just watch the Atlas Shrugged movie and form your opinions from internet memes?
I’d actually probably agree with you about AI - if it was non-commercial in nature and truly for the benefit of the people. As it is, I think you are blinded by the sheen of a new toy, without realising it’s coated in lead paint.
A commercial purpose might not rule out of a finding of fair use.
ARRRRG I spent so long reviewing this comment, over and over and over again, and still there were words wrong. I’m not editing it though, I want the comment to stay clean.
Pretty sure @[email protected] is referring to this portion:
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The main argument for this being fair use is both that a single work of copyright bears little to no relationship to the end product, and that the model itself does not effect the market for - or value of - the copyrighted work (note: the market for additional works produced is not what is in question here, it is the market for the work that has been copied).
Sorry for the double reply, but I did also expand further upon (3) and (4), and other aspects, in my latest reply to /u/[email protected] (link to your instance’s version): https://midwest.social/comment/6225045
The main argument for this being fair use is both that a single work of copyright bears little to no relationship to the end product
It bears relationship to the end product when the end product reproduces the original work.
that the model itself does not effect the market for - or value of - the copyrighted work
Given that AI is poised to take over the position of original writers and flood the market with fake work, copying not only their words but their very style, I’d argue it does affect the value of existing work. With children’s books already being heavily written by AI, it seems quite likely that we will before too long get to the point where people expect things to be written by AI, thus devaluing true creative and original work.
I appreciate your enthusiasm here, but the law (and precedent reading of the law) simply does not bear out a clear interpretation like you’re suggesting.
It bears relationship to the end product when the end product reproduces the original work.
This is not how copyright has been applied when speaking of other machine learning processes using logical regression that is considered fair use, as in Text and Data Mining classifications(TDM) (proposed class 7(a) and 7(b) (page 102) in Recommendation of the Register of Copyrights 2021). The model itself is simply a very large regression model, that has created metadata analysis from unstructured data sources. When determining weather an LLM fits into this fair use category, they will look at what the model is and how it is created, not to whether it can be prompted to recreate a similar work. To quote from Comments in Response of Notice of Inquiry on the matter:
Understanding the process of training foundation models is relevant to the generative AI systems’ fair use defenses because the scope of copyright protection does not extend to “statistical information” such as “word frequencies, syntactic patterns, and thematic markers.” Processing in-copyright works to extract “information about the original [work]” does not infringe because it does not “replicat[e] protected expression.
Granted, what is novel about this particular case (LLM’s generally) is their apparent ability to re-construct substantially similar works from the same overall process of TDM. Acknowledged, but to borrow again from the same comments as above:
Yet, in limited situations, Generative AI models do copy the training data.24 So unlike prior copy-reliant technologies that courts have held are fair use, it is impossible to say categorically that inputs and outputs of Generative AI will always be fair use. We note in addition that some have argued that the ability of Generative AI to produce artifacts that could pass for human expression and the potential scale of such production may have implications not seen in previous non-expressive use cases. The difficulty with such arguments is that the harm asserted does not flow from the communication of protected expression to any human audience.
Basically, they are asserting that applying copyright to this use that falls outside of its explicit scope would not prevent the same harm caused by that same technology created without the use of the copyrighted works. Any work sufficiently described in publicly available text data could be reconstructed by a sufficiently weighted regression model and the correct prompting. E.g. - if I described a desired output sufficiently enough in my input to the model, the output could be substantially similar to a protected work, regardless of its lack of representation in the training data.
I happen to agree that these AI models represent a threat to the work and livelihoods of real artists, and that the benefit as currently captured by billion-dollar companies is a substantial problem that must be addressed, but I simply do not think the application of copyright in this manner is appropriate (as it will prevent legitimate uses of the technology), nor do i think it is sufficiently preventative in future consolidation of wealth by the use of these models.
Nevermind my personal objections to copyright law on the basis of my worldview - I just don’t think copyright is the correct tool to use for the desired protection.
Critical to understanding whether this applies is to understand “use” in the first place. I would argue it’d even more important because it’s a threshold question in whether you even need to read 107.
17 U.S. Code § 106 - Exclusive rights in copyrighted works Subject to sections 107 through 122, the owner of copyright under this title has the exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the following: (1)to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords; (2)to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work; (3)to distribute copies or phonorecords of the copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending; (4)in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly; (5)in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and pictorial, graphic, or sculptural works, including the individual images of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, to display the copyrighted work publicly; and (6)in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission.
Copyright protects just what it sounds like- the right to “copy” or reproduce a work along the examples given above. It is not clear that use in training AI falls into any of these categories. The question mainly relates to items 1 and 2.
If you read through the court filings against OpenAI and Stability AI, much of the argument is based around trying to make a claim under case 1. If you put a model into an output loop you can get it to reproduce small sections of training data that include passages from copyrighted works, although of course nowhere near the full corpus can be retrieved because the model doesn’t contain any thing close to a full data set - the models are much too small and that’s also not how transformers architecture works. But in some cases, models can preserve and output brief sections of text or distorted images that appear highly similar to at least portions of training data. Even so, it’s not clear that this is protected under copyright law because they are small snippets that are not substitutes for the original work, and don’t affect the market for it.
Case 2 would be relevant if an LLM were classified as a derivative work. But LLMs are also not derivative works in the conventional definition, which is things like translated or abridged versions, or different musical arrangements in the case of music.
For these reasons, it is extremely unclear whether copyright protections are even invoked, becuase the nature of the use in model training does not clearly fall under any of the enumerated rights. This is not the first time this has happened, either - the DMCA of 1998 amended the Copyright Act of 1976 to add cases relating to online music distribution as the previous copyright definitions did not clearly address online filesharing.
There are a lot of strong opinions about the ethics of training models and many people are firm believers that either it should or shouldn’t be allowed. But the legal question is much more hazy, because AI model training was not contemplated even in the DMCA. I’m watching these cases with interest because I don’t think the law is at all settled here. My personal view is that an act of congress would be necessary to establish whether use of copyrighted works in training data, even for purposes of developing a commercial product, should be one of the enumerated protections of copyright. Under current law, I’m not certain that it is.
This is an extremely good write-up, thank you for this.
(1)to reproduce the copyrighted work in copies or phonorecords
The works are copied in their entirey and reproduced in the training database. AI businesses do not deny this is copying, but instead claim it is research and thus has a fair use exemption.
I argue it is not research, but product development - and furthermore, unlike traditional R&D, it is not some prototype that is different and separate from the commercial product. The prototype is the commercial product.
(2)to prepare derivative works based upon the copyrighted work
AI can and has reproduced significant portions of copyrighted work, even in spite of the fact that the finished product allegedly does not include the work in its database (it just read the training database).
Furthermore, even if a human genuinely and honestly believes they’re writing something original, that does not matter when they reproduce work that they have read before. What determines copyright infringement is the similarity of the two works.
If you read through the court filings against OpenAI and Stability AI, much of the argument is based around trying to make a claim under case 1.
The position that I take is that the arguments made against OpenAI and Stability AI in court are not complete. They’re not quite good enough. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a valid argument that is good enough. I just hope we don’t get a ruling in favour of AI businesses simply because the people challenging them didn’t employ the right ammunition.
With regards to Case 2, I refer back to my comment about the similarity of the work. The argument isn’t that the LLM itself is an infringement of copyright, but that the LLM, as designed by the business, infringes copyright in the same way a human would.
I definitely agree it is all extremely unclear. However, I maintain that the textual definition of the law absolutely still encompasses the feeling that peoples’ work is being ripped off for a commercial venture. Because it is so commercial, original authors are being harmed as they will not see any benefit from the commercial profits.
I would also like to point you to my other comment, which I put a lot of time into and where I expanded on many other points (link to your instance’s version): https://lemmy.world/comment/6706240
The works are copied in their entirey and reproduced in the training database. AI businesses do not deny this is copying, but instead claim it is research and thus has a fair use exemption.
The copying of the data is not, by itself, infringement. It depends on the use and purpose of the copied data, and the defense argues that training a model against the data is fair use under TDM use-cases.
AI can and has reproduced significant portions of copyrighted work, even in spite of the fact that the finished product allegedly does not include the work in its database (it just read the training database).
The model does not have a ‘database’, it is a series of transform nodes weighted against unstructured data. The transformation of the copyrighted works into a weighted regression model is what is being argued is fair use.
Furthermore, even if a human genuinely and honestly believes they’re writing something original, that does not matter when they reproduce work that they have read before.
yup, and it isn’t the act of that human reading a copyrighted work that is considered as infringement, it is the creation of the work that is substantially similar. In the same analogy, it wouldn’t be the creation of the AI model that is the infringement, but each act of creation thereafter that is substantially similar to a copyrighted work. But this comes with a bunch of other problems for the plaintiffs, and would be a losing case without merit.
The position that I take is that the arguments made against OpenAI and Stability AI in court are not complete
The argument isn’t that the LLM itself is an infringement of copyright, but that the LLM, as designed by the business, infringes copyright in the same way a human would.
Trying really hard not to come off as rude, but there’s a good reason why this isn’t the argument being put forward in the lawsuits. If this was their argument, the LLM could be considered a commissioned agent, placing the liability on the agent commissioning the work (e.g. the human prompting the work) - not OpenAI or Stability - in much the same way a company is held responsible for the work produced by an employee.
I really do understand the anger and frustration apparent in these comments, but I would really like to encourage you to learn a bit more about the basis for these cases before spending substantial effort writing long responses.
The copying of the data is not, by itself, infringement.
Copyright is absolute. The rightsholder has complete and total right to dictate how it is copied. Thus, any unauthorised copying is copyright infringement. However, fair use gives exemption to certain types of copying. The copyright is still being infringed, because the rightsholder’s absolute rights are being circumvented, however the penalty is not awarded because of fair use.
This is all just pedantry, though, and has no practical significance. Saying “fair use means copyright has not been infringed” doesn’t change anything.
it is a series of transform nodes weighted against unstructured data.
That’s a database. Or perhaps rather some kind of 3D array - which could just be considered an advanced form of database. But yeah, you’re right here, you win this pedantry round lol. 1-1.
it wouldn’t be the creation of the AI model that is the infringement, but each act of creation thereafter that is substantially similar to a copyrighted work. But this comes with a bunch of other problems for the plaintiffs, and would be a losing case without merit.
Yeah I don’t want to go down the avenue of suing the AI itself for infringement. However…[1][2][3]
Trying really hard not to come off as rude
You’re not coming off as rude at all with what you’ve said, in fact I welcome and appreciate your rebuttals.
I really do understand the anger and frustration apparent in these comments, but I would really like to encourage you to learn a bit more about the basis for these cases before spending substantial effort writing long responses.
You say that as if I haven’t enjoyed fleshing out the ideas and sharing them. By the way, right now I’m sharing with you lemmy’s hidden citation feature :o)
Although, I was much happier replying to you before I just saw the downvotes you’ve apparently given me across the board. That’s a bit poor behaviour on your part, you shouldn’t downvote just because you disagree - and you can’t even say that I’m wrong as a justification when the whole thing is being heavily debated and adjudicated over whether it is right or wrong.
I thought we were engaging in a positive manner, but apparently you’ve been spitting in my face.
↩︎but there’s a good reason why this isn’t the argument being put forward in the lawsuits.
↩︎the LLM could be considered a commissioned agent
The LLM absolutely could be considered an agent, but the way it acts is merely prompted by the user. The actual behaviour is dictated by the organisation that built it. In any case, this is only my backup argument if you even consider the initial copying to be research - which it isn’t. ↩︎
Fair use covers research, but creating a training database for your commercial product is distinctly different from research. They’re not publishing scientific papers, along with their data, which others can verify;
Since when is there a legal requirement to publish the results of your research?
They use other peoples’ work to profit. They should pay for it.
Sorry but that’s just not how the world works. A big part of it is just plain practicality - how could you possibly find out who to pay? If I wanted to pay you one cent for the right to learn from things you’ve written on the fediverse, how would I even contact you? Or even find out who you are since I assume TWeaK isn’t your real name. And how would I get the money to you?
Like it or not, a lot of value created doesn’t get paid for. That’s just the way the world works… and among other things, Fair Use codifies that fact into law.
Facebook steals the data of individuals. They should pay for that, too. We don’t exchange our data for access to their website (or for access to some 3rd party Facebook pays to put a pixel on)
Facebook isn’t “stealing” that data. Third party websites voluntarily and put tracking pixels on their site with full awareness that visitors are going to be tracked. That’s why they do it - the website operator is given access to all of the data facebook picks up. If you have a complaint, it should primarily be with the website operator especially if they don’t ask the user for permission first (a lot of sites ask these days, I always say no personally. And run a browser extension that blocks it on sites that don’t ask).
My answer to both your comments is that just because a lot of people get away with breaking the law and abusing peoples’ rights doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened and they can’t or shouldn’t be held to account.
Tl;Dr I may pirate anything I want because I want many items and cannot figure out how to pay for every item individually
It’s Amazon, I’m pretty sure they know who to pay for any book they want. They are all already on their platform, with payment information too. They don’t even have to ask the author where to send the money, they already know. They could do it whenever they want, they have the funds to do it, billions of dollars laying around.
They’ve just decided they’d rather have it for free and keep the money.
But don’t you dare think you could do the same, you should pay for copyrighted work, and you should buy it on one of Amazon’s services that sell you access to say copyrighted work. Fucking peasant…
Hey guys, I’m sure Meta’s intentions with the fediverse are pure though! Really!
Who’s saying that?
There are a lot of people who are not against federating with Threads.
No, who’s saying they believe Meta’s intentions are pure?
Prole believes those are the same thing.
Meta doesn’t get any real data from federating Threads that they can’t get right now by just running a web scraper over it. Most of the dire worries presented are either not something they could actually do (like forcing ads on other instances), are things individual users could just block the instance to avoid, or are things that could be resolved by just defederating them later if they seem to be going down that road.
The biggest realistic threat is probably an Eternal September 2.0 scenario, but that is going to happen if and when Lemmy becomes popular.
I was going to say I knew all that and was poking to make it clear to others that literally no one is saying that but then you hit me with “Eternal September 2.0 scenario” haha.
I’ll have to do a little searching on that one.
Edit: Ah, I had forgotten.
Edit: Ah, I had forgotten.
Wow, that sets the Wayback Machine to high.
Heh, no, not that one. This one.
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Eternal September or the September that never ended is Usenet slang for a period beginning around 1993 when Internet service providers began offering Usenet access to many new users. The flood of new users overwhelmed the existing culture for online forums and the ability to enforce existing norms. AOL followed with their Usenet gateway service in March 1994, leading to a constant stream of new users. Hence, from the early Usenet point of view, the influx of new users in September 1993 never ended.
Meta, probably
I mean, pure? No. But also not at all linked to this topic. They can get fediverse data whether or not they are federated.
Another example of corporations being above the very same laws for which the rest of us are held accountable.
Ok now spend years of your life and your money making a thing that everyone just gets for free instead of paying you for. See if you feel the same way then.
I have released thousands of photos I took under free licenses.
Copyright infringement isn’t even a crime, generally.
In fact, it never used to be a crime at all, the crimes have only been on the books for about 15 years or less. The only reason there is “criminal copyright infringement” is because of extensive lobbying by wealthy rightsholder organisations. This further victimises individuals for corporate profits - they can raise prices even higher if people can’t turn to piracy instead.
Piracy for me, not for thee!
Zuck be stealing any thing privacy , userdata , copyrighted materials now we want him on fediverse smh.
Pay up mark.
