If you think this will turn the tide I both envy how un- jaded you are and worry that you really aren’t paying attention.
The headline isn’t correct. This ruling is about a specific element of Fair Use, not a blanket declaration that copyrighted data cannot be used to train models as the headline suggests.
Fair Use requires some conditions be met. The one that wasn’t met here was that the work you’re creating can’t compete with the copyright owner.
From the Reuters article:
“Ross took the headnotes to make it easier to develop a competing legal research tool,” the judge said. “So Ross’s use is not transformative.”
In other cases, for example the Author’s Guild lawsuit against Meta/Anthropic/etc courts have ruled that using books to train LLMs is fair use because LLMs and books don’t compete.
They were required to pay for the books, but not prevented by copyright from using them to train a model.
There’s nothing novel happening in this case from a legal perspective. Maybe this is the first case where the defendant didn’t clear the elements of fair use but those elements predate AI by decades and have been uses in thousands of cases.
If this could be upheld (though unfortunately it won’t) then it could completely end the generation of new models and the companies that make them. The models that are already out would never go away and might as well be available for people to run locally but if they want new ones it should be done for the collective good with oversight. I.e. state run.
But again, just wishful thinking on my part.
In fact, as Copyright Lately‘s Aaron Moss points out, even the AI industry called the latest ruling a win, with tech industry group Chamber of Progress senior director of AI Adam Eisgrau tweeting that the ruling “implicitly confirms that highly transformative gen AI training to produce a hugely multi-purpose model with substantial public benefit is likely fair use!”
“We stole even more, so that makes it legal!”
So it is still legal for me to pirate anything I want as long as i train a small ass AI model on the side with it?
Remember to clone a repo for an AI for plausible deniability.
When ask why your consuming the copyrighted material simply say you’re in the quality control phase.
This would be a separate issue from piracy
This is more about what you can DO with something you legally purchased. Think film rights. If you want to use a song in your movie, you can’t just go to Tower Records and buy the CD. Buying the CD gives you a right to listen to that CD, but it does not give you the right to use it in your movie.
Likewise, this court argues, having legal access to a work does not give you the right to feed it into an LLM as training data.
It’s a bit like the Muppet Show. The Muppet Show was a bunch of puppets singing along with musical pop stars of the day. But because the show was produced before VHS and DVD were a thing, none of the artists had given permission for them to re-release the show on DVD. So re-releasing the Muppet Show was a tedious process of negotiation with every rights holder.
But I absolutely hear you and am currently training a small LLM on my favorite TV, movies, and music. Have I started the actual training yet? No. I don’t see the need until I’ve filled up this 15TB HDD with training data so I can do it all in one pass.
Likewise, this court argues, having legal access to a work does not give you the right to feed it into an LLM as training data.
Seems more narrow than that. If your “AI” just copies the input almost verbatim, then it’s not “transformative”.
Unfortunately they still seem to regard the big players’ consumption as “transformative” enough to not count.
As much as I hate AI, current copyright laws are out of control and are extended well beyond what they should be used for.
I agree, but I fucking hate that it’s AI that’s breaking the concept. First of all, it’s not like it’s a righteous fight, whoever wins, we all lose. Second, as much as I think copywrite is abused like hell, I still think the idea, one closer to the original, has merit and does provide crucial protections for individuals.
Sadly the fucking plagiarism machine and the anti-human dirtbags running it have found the absolute worst possible way to break the system. Ultimately resulting in nothing for us plebes that copywrite should protect and all the benefits that the shit copywrite coroporate power grab produced for them.
AI is way more out of control than copyright.
There’s simply no way to justify what the AI compies have been doing. As that one Microsoft exec said, it’s the “largest theft of labor” in modern history
Wouldn’t be funny if disneys fuckery did in AI?
I mean Disney’s lawyer game is top notch. I would love to see the mouse vs AI battle.
I hate them too but AI is more of a threat to all of us. Any chance at stopping the madness is good enough for me.
As long as we live under capitalism, copyright protects small artists, writers, and creators as much as it protects large shitty corporations who weaponize it.
I’d love to be rid of all intellectual property, but we have a lot to fix before that can become reality without punishing people who rely on it.
I’m down with some huge reforms though.
No, not at all. Do you have any idea of how expensive it is to bring a lawsuit? What you are saying about protecting small artists is pure propaganda. Furthermore, this only matters for commercial artist as copyright is never used in 99.999% of real life cases
We will never move forward as long as we allow all of our modern culture and technology to be locked up by corporations through imaginary property rights.
It also costs money to register a copyright. And if it’s not registered when the copyright infringement happens, statutory damages don’t apply and you need to prove actual damages instead.
Its actually mainly used to bully small creators so they can have precedent to go after larger ones.
Still doesn’t prevent data mining of forums for, “training.” Still doesn’t give people who’s contributed on forums a check for being of value to big tech. If they cared at all they’d be paying us money to train AI until it’s established. Google is offering points for data rather than money (https://deviceusagestudy.google/signup/invitecode) I only know that because I got a flier in the mail which means they’re desperate to get people to sign up.
So they take one extra step. Create a forum. Have a different company mine all the data and repost it to the forum. Then the AI company can mine the forum.
A rule like “forums are ok” is a goatse-sized gaping loophole.
Let them fight
I want both sides to lose and for it to really hurt.
It would be best if they destroyed each other, but perhaps that’s overly optimistic
>“How influential the latest appeals court ruling will be is debatable. The court found that Ross had effectively copy-pasted Thomson Reuters’ “headnotes,” or brief editorial summaries of legal issues, verbatim for its legal search engine, a practice that isn’t difficult to separate from fair use.”
>“In fact, as Copyright Lately‘s Aaron Moss points out, even the AI industry called the latest ruling a win, with tech industry group Chamber of Progress senior director of AI Adam Eisgrau tweeting that the ruling “implicitly confirms that highly transformative gen AI training to produce a hugely multi-purpose model with substantial public benefit is likely fair use!””
Looks like the company that got sued just copy pastaed protected content without making any type of change to make it fair use.
Not the “win” anti-AI people were looking for and the article seems to be misunderstood by most.
Seems as long as AI models use some form “transformative” method to train their AI, then it’s fair use.
Now I feel bad for basing my programming career on material I apparently “stole” from books and other copyrighted sources. Hell, sometimes I even straight-up copypasted example code. I blame society.
I hope Studio Ghibli sue them for a bazillion dollars
I don’t care if copyright holders win I just want AI to lose.
I’d kinda prefer both lose…
Yeah that is the ideal outcome.
Immediately made me think of Betteridge’s law of headlines.
I will remain cautiously optimistic but until it makes it through Supreme Court it’s not a done deal.
When peasants were able to copy ‘intellectual property’ for personal benefit and enjoyment, it was a massive crime. When the oligarchs can steal - everything - for the slight chance of paying less in wages, it is an innovation.
I think it is pretty much certain the model companies escape any penalty for their mass theft of IP. There will be some settlements and token penalties that sound big on paper, but are nothing compared to the market valuations.
Not really. We had collage and training any kind of AI was fine before all this. There’s blood in the water and copyright companies can smell it.
OpenAI is happy to give them a piece of the pie if that means they are the only ones allowed to sell it to consumers.
You are right about the penalty being pennys compared to their profits. It’s not meant to punish them but help them build a moat, the one that got destroyed by China a few months ago.
I’m cynically believing that this is the beginning of enforcing a copywrite use tax; when anyone generates something that is visual or audible.
The tax will be collected by the government and put into a slush fund that mostly goes to corporations and wealthy, while ostensibly supposed to go fairly to all creators
I’m guessing it’s going to be a system where a company like Spotify doesnt yet you upload generated music unless it has the metadata from the “legal” music generators so they can automatically send most of the profits to the shareholders.
Universal already owns Udio, Suno will follow soon. I wish it was an actual tax.
It’s almost like rules are just made up
For them.
Worth reading the original opinion appealed here: great technical writing and explanation of reasoning by the judge
Thanks for the hint.
This is great progress. Curious to see how the Supreme Court eventually rules
“Ya this is illegal. Your fine is 60$”
