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US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

(www.theregister.com)
451 points croes | 22 comments | 12 May 25 09:49 UTC | HN request time: 1.584s | source | bottom
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jhaile ◴[12 May 25 15:48 UTC] No.43964361[source]▶
One aspect that I feel is ignored by the comments here is the geo-political forces at work. If the US takes the position that LLMs can't use copyrighted work or has to compensate all copyright holders – other countries (e.g. China) will not follow suit. This will mean that US LLM companies will either fall behind or be too expensive. Which means China and other countries will probably surge ahead in AI, at least in terms of how useful the AI is.

That is not to say that we shouldn't do the right thing regardless, but I do think there is a feeling of "who is going to rule the world in the future?" tha underlies governmental decision-making on how much to regulate AI.

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1. oooyay ◴[12 May 25 16:14 UTC] No.43964647[source]▶
Well hell, by that logic average citizens should be able to launder corporate intellectual property because China will never follow suit in adhering to intellectual property law. I'm game if you are.
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2. jowea ◴[12 May 25 16:18 UTC] No.43964701[source]▶
Isn't that sort of logic precisely why China doesn't adhere to IP law?
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3. oooyay ◴[12 May 25 16:25 UTC] No.43964790[source]▶
Yes, I was being a bit facetious. It was snark intended to point out that corporations don't get to have their cake and eat it too. Either everything is free and there are no boundaries or we live by our own principles.
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4. r053bud ◴[12 May 25 16:39 UTC] No.43964944{3}[source]▶
It’s barely facetious though. What is stopping me from “starting an AI company” (LLC, sure), torrenting all ebooks (which Facebook did), and as long as I don’t seed, I’m golden?
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5. snozolli ◴[12 May 25 16:42 UTC] No.43964966{3}[source]▶
Either everything is free and there are no boundaries or we live by our own principles.

Or C) large corporations (and the wealthy) do whatever they want while you still get extortion letters because your kid torrented a movie.

They really do get to have their cake and eat it too, and I don't see any end to it.

6. gruez ◴[12 May 25 16:57 UTC] No.43965117{3}[source]▶
>It was snark intended to point out that corporations don't get to have their cake and eat it too.

"have their cake and eat it too" allegations only work if you're talking about the same entity. The copyright maximalist corporations (ie. publishers) aren't the same as the permissive ones (ie. AI companies). Making such characterizations make as much sense as saying "citizens don't get to eat their cake and eat it too", when referring to the fact that citizens are anti-AI, but freely pirate movies.

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7. gruez ◴[12 May 25 16:58 UTC] No.43965133{4}[source]▶
>What is stopping me from “starting an AI company” (LLC, sure), torrenting all ebooks (which Facebook did), and as long as I don’t seed, I’m golden?

Nothing. You don't even need the LLC. I don't think anyone got prosecuted for only downloading. All prosecutions were for distribution. Note that if you're torrenting, even if you stop the moment it's finished (and thus never goes to "seeding"), you're still uploading, and would count as distribution for the purposes of copyright law.

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8. _aavaa_ ◴[12 May 25 16:59 UTC] No.43965143{4}[source]▶
Yes they are. Look at what happened when deepseek came out. Altman started crying and alleging that deepseek was trained on OpenAI model outputs without an inkling of irony
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9. rollcat ◴[12 May 25 17:06 UTC] No.43965219[source]▶
Well I always felt rebellious about the contemporary face of "rules for thee but not for me", specifically regarding copyright.

Musicians remain subject to abuse by the recording industry; they're making pennies on each dollar you spend on buying CDs^W^W streaming services. I used to say, don't buy that; go to a concert, buy beer, buy merch, support directly. Nowadays live shows are being swallowed whole through exclusivity deals (both for artists and venues). I used to say, support your favourite artist on Bandcamp, Patreon, etc. But most of these new middlemen are ready for their turn to squeeze.

And now on top of all that, these artists' work is being swallowed whole by yet another machine, disregarding what was left of their rights.

What else do you do? Go busking?

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10. gruez ◴[12 May 25 17:08 UTC] No.43965232{5}[source]▶
>Altman started crying and alleging that deepseek was trained on OpenAI model outputs without an inkling of irony

Can you link to the exact comments he made? My impression was that he was upset at the fact that they broke T&C of openai, and deepseek's claim of being much cheaper to train than openai didn't factor in the fact that it requried openai's model to bootstrap the training process. Neither of them directly contradict the claim that training is copyright infringement.

11. Pooge ◴[12 May 25 18:23 UTC] No.43966059{5}[source]▶
Which is still what Facebook did, if I'm not mistaken. There's no way they torrented and managed to upload less than 1 bit.
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12. FireBeyond ◴[12 May 25 19:32 UTC] No.43966700{6}[source]▶
You're right. They claimed they made efforts to minimize seeding, but minimal is not none, as you say.
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13. gruez ◴[12 May 25 19:58 UTC] No.43966888{7}[source]▶
You can make a patched torrent client that never uploads any pieces to peers. It'd definitely be within Meta's capability to do so. The real problem is that unlike typical torrenting lawusits, they weren't caught red-handed in the act, and would therefore be hard to go after them. This might seem unfair, but it's not any different than you openly posting on Reddit that you torrent, but it'd be tough for rights holders to go after you even with such admission.
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14. breakingcups ◴[12 May 25 21:21 UTC] No.43967576{8}[source]▶
> Previously, a Meta executive in charge of project management, Michael Clark, had testified that Meta allegedly modified torrenting settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur," which seems to support authors' claims that some seeding occurred. And an internal message from Meta researcher Frank Zhang appeared to show that Meta allegedly tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to "avoid" the "risk" of anyone "tracing back the seeder/downloader" from Facebook servers. Once this information came to light, authors asked the court for a chance to depose Meta executives again, alleging that new facts "contradict prior deposition testimony."
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15. gruez ◴[12 May 25 21:44 UTC] No.43967762{9}[source]▶
>Meta allegedly modified torrenting settings "so that the smallest amount of seeding possible could occur,"

>Meta allegedly tried to conceal the seeding by not using Facebook servers while downloading the dataset to "avoid" the "risk" of anyone "tracing back the seeder/downloader" from Facebook servers

Sounds like they used a VPN, set the upload speed to 1kb/s and stopped after the download is done. If the average Joe copied that setup there's 0% chance he'd get sued, so I don't really see a double standard here. If anything, Meta might get additional scrutiny because they're big enough of a target that rights holders will go through the effort of suing them.

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16. rubslopes ◴[12 May 25 22:27 UTC] No.43968036{5}[source]▶
Another example: Microsoft suing pirated Windows distributors.
17. johnnyanmac ◴[13 May 25 01:37 UTC] No.43968990[source]▶
We regulate it like how we did centuries ago that lead to copyright. If we already have rules we enforce it. If no one in power wants to, we put in people who will.

In the end this all comes down to needing the people to care enough.

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18. FireBeyond ◴[13 May 25 02:23 UTC] No.43969185{10}[source]▶
> If the average Joe copied that setup there's 0% chance he'd get sued

Citation needed. RIAA used to just watch torrents and sent cease and desists to everyone who connected, whether for a minute or for months. It was very much a dragnet, and I highly doubt there was any nuance of "but Your Honor, I only seeded 1MB back so it's all good".

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19. seanmcdirmid ◴[13 May 25 05:57 UTC] No.43969949[source]▶
In the long run private IP will eventually become very public despite laws you have, it’s been like that since the Stone Age. The American Industrial Revolution was built partially on stolen IP from Britain. The internet has just sped up diffusion. You can stop it if you are willing to cut the line, but legal action is only some friction and even then only in the short term
20. gruez ◴[13 May 25 13:07 UTC] No.43972516{11}[source]▶
Did you miss the part about using a VPN?
21. rollcat ◴[13 May 25 19:02 UTC] No.43976413{3}[source]▶
Disney continued to lobby to extend copyright for like half a century. A lot of people did care. What use is regulation if you can just buy it?
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22. johnnyanmac ◴[14 May 25 08:19 UTC] No.43982182{4}[source]▶
>a lot of people did care

As did Disney, apparently.

>what use is regulation if you can just buy it?

I don't like it either, but it still comes down to the same issues. We vote in people who can be bought and don't make a scandal out of it when it happens. The first step to fixing that corruption is to make congress afraid of being ousted if discovered. With today's communication structure, that's easier than ever.

But if the people don't care, we see the obvious Victor.