4 ms·

Have there been any court cases about whether neural net weights can be included under software licenses?

• xiphias2 6y ago
  Copyright doesn't make a distinction between software and other text, but GPL3 probably does, and maybe allows changed weights without them being released (unlike software, where it's explicitly stated). I didn't read the license though.
  • kragen 6y ago
    No, but copyright (in the US and US-influenced countries) does make a crucial distinction between work that is an expression of human creativity and work that doesn't, even more strongly since Feist. If the weights are a dump from some kind of ML training algorithm, it's likely that they're not copyrightable under US law.
    • mappu 6y ago
      This (to its logical absurd extreme) would mean that compiled binaries are not copyrightable and only source code is. The GPL is clear here: you must release sources in the preferred form of the work for making changes in it. For a neural network, that is the training data, models and scripts - unless you really are just editing the final weights.
      • kragen 6y ago
        For better or worse, US courts have not interpreted the Feist precedent to mean that compiled binaries are not copyrightable. I'm not sure if any defendant has tried that argument when admitting to copying binaries; it doesn't seem likely to be a winning argument.