cross-posted from: https://nom.mom/post/121481
OpenAI could be fined up to $150,000 for each piece of infringing content.https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/report-potential-nyt-lawsuit-could-force-openai-to-wipe-chatgpt-and-start-over/#comments
Nobody is limiting how people can use their pc. This would be regulations targeted at commercial use and monetization.
… Google’s proposed Web Integrity API seems like a move in that direction to me.
But that’s besides the point, I was trying to establish the principle that people who make things shouldn’t be able to impose limitations on how these things are used later on.
A pen is not a creative work. A creative work is much different than something that’s mass produced.
Why should that difference matter, in particular when it comes to the principle I mentioned?
Why should that difference matter, in particular when it comes to the principle I mentioned?
Because creative works are rather obviously fundamentally different from physical objects, in spite of a number of shared qualities.
Like physical objects, they can be distinguished one from another - the text of Moby Dick is notably different from the text of Waiting for Godot, for instance
More to the point, like physical objects, they’re products of applied labor - the text of Moby Dick exists only because Herman Melville labored to bring it into existence.
However, they’re notably different from physical objects insofar as they’re quite simply NOT physical objects. The text of Moby Dick - the thing that Melville labored to create - really exists only conceptually. It’s of course presented in a physical form - generally as a printed book - but that physical form is not really the thing under consideration, and more importantly, the thing to which copyright law applies (or in the case of Moby Dick, used to apply). The thing under consideration is more fundamental than that - the original composition.
And, bluntly, that distinction matters and has to be stipulated because selectively ignoring it in order to equivocate on the concept of rightful property is central to the NoIP position, as illustrated by your inaccurate comparison to a pen.
Nobody is trying to control the use of pens (or computers, as they were being compared to). The dispute is over the use of original compositions - compositions that are at least arguably, and certainly under the law, somebody else’s property.
Google web integrity is very much different than what I’m proposing. “Nobody” was more in relation to regulating this.
I hold the opposite opinion in that creatives (I’d almost say individuals only, no companies) own all rights to their work and can impose any limitations they’d like on (edit: commercial) use. Current copyright law doesn’t extend quite that far though.
A creative work is not a reproduceable quantifiable product. No two are exactly alike until they’re mass produced.
Your analogy works more with a person rather than a pen, in that why is it ok when a person reads something and uses it as inspiration and not a computer? This comes back around to my argument about transformative works. An AI cannot add anything new, only guess based on historical knowledge. One of the best traits of the human race is our ability to be creative and bring completely new ideas.
Edit: added in a commercial use specifier after it was pointed out that the rules over individuals would be too restrictive.
I hold the opposite opinion in that creatives (I’d almost say individuals only, no companies) own all rights to their work and can impose any limitations they’d like on use. Current copyright law doesn’t extend quite that far though.
I think that point’s worth discussing by itself - leaving aside the AI - as you wrote it quite general.
I came up with some examples:
- Let’s say an author really hates when quotes are taken out of context, and has stipulated that their book must only appear in whole. Do you think I should be able to decorate the interior of my own room with quotes from it?
- What about an author that insists readers read no more than one chapter per day, to force them to think on the chapter before moving in. Would that be a valid use restriction?
- If an author wrote a book to critique capitalism - and insists that is its purpose. But when I read the book, I interpreted it very differently, and saw in its pages a very strong argument for capitalism. Should I be able to use said book to make said argument for capitalism?
Taking your statement at face value - the answers should be: no (I can’t decorate), yes (it’s a valid restriction), and no (I can’t use it to illustrate my argument). But maybe you didn’t mean it quite that strict? What do you think on each example and why?
Fair points. I think the restrictions in most part would have to be in place for commercial use primarily.
So under your examples
-
Yes, you should. As there’s no commercial usage you’re not profiting off of their work, you’re simply using your copy of it to decorate a personal space
-
If we restrict the copyright protections to only apply to commercial use then this becomes a non-issue. The copyright extends to reproduction (or performance in the case of music) of the work in any kind, but does not extend to complete control over personal usage.
-
Personal interpretation is fine. If you start using that argument in some kind of publication or “performance”, then you end up with fair use being called into question. Quoting, with appropriate attribution is fine, but say you print a chapter of the book, then a chapter of critique. Where is that line drawn? Right now it’s ambiguous at best, downright invisible at most times.
I appreciate the well thought out response. I hold sting views on copyright of an individuals creative work as a musician and developer, and believe that they should have control over how their products are used to make money. These views probably are a little too restrictive for the general public, and probably won’t ever garner a huge amount of support.
I dropped the ball on making sure to specify use as in commercial use, I’ll put an edit at the bottom of the op to clarify it too
It’s not like AI is using works to create something new. Chatgpt is similar to if someone were to buy 10 copies of different books, put them into 1 book as a collection of stories, then mass produce and sell the “new” book. It’s the same thing but much more convoluted.
Edit: to reply to your main point, people who make things should absolutely be able to impose limitations on how they are used. That’s what copyright is. Someone else made a song, can you freely use that song in your movie since you listened to it once? Not without their permission. You wrote a book, can I buy a copy and then use it to make more copies and sell? Not without your permission.
Chatgpt is similar to if someone were to buy 10 copies of different books, put them into 1 book as a collection of stories, then mass produce and sell the “new” book
That is not even close to correct. LLMs are little more than massively complex webs of statistics. Here’s a basic primer:
I’ve coded LLMs, I was just simplifying it because at its base level it’s not that different. It’s just much more convoluted as I said. They’re essentially selling someone else’s work as their own, it’s just run through a computer program first.
it’s not even close to that black and white… i’d say it’s a much more grey area:
possibly that you buy a bunch of books by the same author and emulate their style… that’s perfectly acceptable until you start using their characters
if you wrote a research paper about the linguistic and statistical information that makes an authors style, that also wouldn’t be a problem
so there’s something beyond just the authors “style” that they think is being infringed. we need to sort out exactly where the line is. what’s the extension to these 2 ideas that makes training an LLM a problem?
No, someone emulating someone else’s style is still going to have their own experiences, style, and creativity make their way into the book. They have an entire lifetime of “training data” to draw from. An AI that would “emulate” someone else’s style would really only be able to refer to the author’s books, or someone else’s books, therefore it’s stealing. Another example: if someone decided to remix different parts of a musician’s catalogue into one song, that would be a copyright infringement. AI adds nothing beyond what it’s trained on, therefore whatever it spits out is just other people’s works in a different way.
Except it’s not a collection of stories, it’s an amalgamation - and at a very granular level at that. For instance, take the beginning of a sentence from the middle of first book, then switch to a sentence in the 3-rd, then finish with another part of the original sentence. Change some words here and there, add one for good measure (based on some sentence in the 7-th book). Then fix the grammar. All the while, keeping track that there’s some continuity between the sentences you’re stringing together.
That counts as “new” for me. And a lot of stuff humans do isn’t more original.
