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

(www.theregister.com)
451 points croes | 2 comments | 12 May 25 09:49 UTC | HN request time: 0.416s | source
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mattxxx ◴[12 May 25 13:58 UTC] No.43962976[source]▶
Well, firing someone for this is super weird. It seems like an attempt to censor an interpretation of the law that:

1. Criticizes a highly useful technology 2. Matches a potentially-outdated, strict interpretation of copyright law

My opinion: I think using copyrighted data to train models for sure seems classically illegal. Despite that, Humans can read a book, get inspiration, and write a new book and not be litigated against. When I look at the litany of derivative fantasy novels, it's obvious they're not all fully independent works.

Since AI is and will continue to be so useful and transformative, I think we just need to acknowledge that our laws did not accomodate this use-case, then we should change them.

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palmotea[dead post] ◴[12 May 25 14:14 UTC] No.43963168[source]▶
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gruez ◴[12 May 25 16:53 UTC] No.43965072[source]▶
>The fatal flaw in your reasoning: machines aren't humans. You can't reason that a machine has rights from the fact a human has them. Otherwise it's murder to recycle a car.

That might be true but I don't see how it's relevant. There's no provision in copyright law that gives a free pass to humans vs machines, or makes a distinction between them.

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moralestapia ◴[12 May 25 17:20 UTC] No.43965379[source]▶
In the case of Copyright law, no provision means it will fall in "forbidden" land, not in "allowed" land.

Also in general, grey areas don't mean those things are legal.

Edit: this remains true even if you don't like it, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

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1. gruez ◴[12 May 25 17:33 UTC] No.43965497[source]▶
>In the case of Copyright law, no provision means it will fall in "forbidden" land, not in "allowed" land.

AI companies claim it falls under fair use. Pirates use the same excuse too. Just look at all the clips uploaded to youtube with a "it's fair use guys!" note in the description. The only difference between the two is that the former is novel enough that there's plausible arguments for both sides, and the latter has been so thoroughly litigated that you'd be laughed out of the courtroom for claiming that your torrenting falls under fai ruse.

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2. moralestapia ◴[12 May 25 17:48 UTC] No.43965695[source]▶
Agree. It feels a bit like earlier days in Bitcoin world. Eventually the courts decided how it was going to be and people like CZ had to pay a visit to jail, but there is now clear jurisdiction on that.

The same will happen with AI, no one will go to jail but perhaps it is ruled out that LLMs infringe copyright.

(Same thing happened in the early days of YouTube as well, the solution was stuff like MusicDNA, etc...)