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> The right to restrict learning from the literary work is not a right that is granted under copyright. And yet, it's apparently perfectly legal to put DRM on

by xg15 4y ago

> The right to restrict learning from the literary work is not a right that is granted under copyright. And yet, it's apparently perfectly legal to put DRM on books and control exactly when and how they are read [1] - by actual humans. > Whether that learning comes via ML, or a real flesh human brain, i think, makes no distinction. Strongly disagree here. Sure, ML shops would like that to be the case, but for now it's just muddying the waters by using anthropomorphizing language. What you call "learning" is so far just scraping the data to adjust model weights using an algorithm in a machine. Contrast that with a human drawing knowledge or inspiration from a work they read before. Those two are different things, unless you want to assume that ML models have a conscious mind and constitute a person - at which point, you'll have much bigger ethical problems than copyright violations. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34391332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34391332

chii 4y ago
> control exactly when and how they are read this is, unfortunately, a right to distribution and display. It is most definitely not learning. > Contrast that with a human drawing knowledge or inspiration from a work they read before. But neural networks is mimicking a human's brain function in simplified form. The requirement for consciousness is not needed. If the argument is that humans' brains do something so special that a machine cannot be made to reproduce it, then you have an argument; but i do not believe it to be true. Using a machine created algorithm to extract ideas, knowledge, structure and form from a literary work is exactly what i would call learning. Imagine, as an example, i learnt how to make/cook new recipes by looking at existing recipes. Is the knowledge gained from doing so a derivative work of the existing recipes? What if i wrote a machine and parsed these recipes, extracted all of the forms/patterns, and used it to reproduce new recipes? How is the outcome any different from above?
- cudgy 4y ago
  One huge difference is scale and effort, which have much larger implications than whether something is “learning”. When a human learns a work of art, it is a single human that took weeks, months, or even years to accomplish a similar work. Only that single human is incremental to the market for that product. Furthermore, that human can improve upon or create an entirely new field or style of work. With machines, this process is replicated instantly and becomes pervasive, resulting in elimination of many humans performing the work. This can destroy the potential creativity that was possible from the replaced humans within that specific trade. The machine learning of today is stupid and simple with no creativity, only copies or amalgamations of existing works. The end result is the death of progress within that trade and potentially stagnation of the human race as it perfects the use of the tools (e.g. prompt engineers, glorified button pressers) and ceases to move things forward.
  - l33tman 4y ago
    While I agree with the dystopic projection, I strongly disagree with your notion that the AI image gens are not creative. I've used them for more than 6 months and am amazed every day I use them what creativity they display. I don't do anything generic, I usually push them to do odd things and I can guarantee they are not doing copies or amalgamations. They do understand the gist of most styles and objects and can combine everything in novel ways just like a human artist would. People who claim they copy/paste stuff and can't be creative have clearly not used them very much.
  - chii 4y ago
    > This can destroy the potential creativity that was possible from the replaced humans within that specific trade. You could argue the same from any introduction of technology that replaces humans. If the output of the machine is of sufficient quality to replace humans, then they should be replaced. If the fear is that those displaced humans will no longer be useful, then society will need to subsidize their existence, or find a way to make use of those displaced humans (such as retraining). It is an unrelated problem to copyright, and copyright should not be used to ensure some group of humans do not get displaced. > only copies or amalgamations of existing works. Not that i agree with the premise of machines lacking creativity, but many of today's human created content is of such level as well.
l33tman 4y ago
IANAL but copyright allows you to control the reproducing medium, in the case of DRM this would be the digital files. It doesn't allow you to control the ideas presented in the medium, so copyright alone cannot restrict you showing the page you're reading in your e-book to your friend or friendly AI. If you publish on the internet you can by copyright restrict someone else from downloading your work and putting it up somewhere else, but you cannot restrict who views it if you put it in a public place. There are other license agreements for that of course but then you'd have to force people to agree to it in order to view your blog post or fan art first. Nothing is stopping gated community sites that require an account to view stuff to require a suitable license agreement. I'm pretty sure it would restrict the views though.. Regarding "just scraping the data to adjust model weights using an algorithm", all research so far shows that the brain does just this, even though the full details of the algorithm are unknown and all the places the weights are encoded are not known in full.
- chii 4y ago
  > you cannot restrict who views it if you put it in a public place actually, public display is one of the rights that the copyright holder can control too. Private display, on the other hand, is not. So you can show it to your friend, or AI in private, but not project it in a public place unless the copyright holder agrees.
  - IYasha 4y ago
    I'm not sure why, but "show it to your AI in private" made me laugh uncontrollably. (proves I'm a human btw :D)
  - l33tman 4y ago
    What I meant was, if the copyright holder puts it in a public place, copyright won't hinder others from viewing it, I'd hope at least... which is analogous to putting your .jpg on your web page for general consumption.
throwaway675309 4y ago
But without a legal precedent in place and an official standard, web scraping to use for machine learning purposes can't tell the difference, and frankly shouldn't have to. Reproduction of the original data is one problem, but if we create restrictions around using data for training purposes I believe this is a huge impediment to human progress. I would imagine that the state of the art in foreign language translation (Google translate, etc) would fall significantly behind for example.

by xg15 4y ago

chii 4y ago

> control exactly when and how they are read this is, unfortunately, a right to distribution and display. It is most definitely not learning. > Contrast that with a human drawing knowledge or inspiration from a work they read before. But neural networks is mimicking a human's brain function in simplified form. The requirement for consciousness is not needed. If the argument is that humans' brains do something so special that a machine cannot be made to reproduce it, then you have an argument; but i do not believe it to be true. Using a machine created algorithm to extract ideas, knowledge, structure and form from a literary work is exactly what i would call learning. Imagine, as an example, i learnt how to make/cook new recipes by looking at existing recipes. Is the knowledge gained from doing so a derivative work of the existing recipes? What if i wrote a machine and parsed these recipes, extracted all of the forms/patterns, and used it to reproduce new recipes? How is the outcome any different from above?

cudgy 4y ago
One huge difference is scale and effort, which have much larger implications than whether something is “learning”. When a human learns a work of art, it is a single human that took weeks, months, or even years to accomplish a similar work. Only that single human is incremental to the market for that product. Furthermore, that human can improve upon or create an entirely new field or style of work. With machines, this process is replicated instantly and becomes pervasive, resulting in elimination of many humans performing the work. This can destroy the potential creativity that was possible from the replaced humans within that specific trade. The machine learning of today is stupid and simple with no creativity, only copies or amalgamations of existing works. The end result is the death of progress within that trade and potentially stagnation of the human race as it perfects the use of the tools (e.g. prompt engineers, glorified button pressers) and ceases to move things forward.
- l33tman 4y ago
  While I agree with the dystopic projection, I strongly disagree with your notion that the AI image gens are not creative. I've used them for more than 6 months and am amazed every day I use them what creativity they display. I don't do anything generic, I usually push them to do odd things and I can guarantee they are not doing copies or amalgamations. They do understand the gist of most styles and objects and can combine everything in novel ways just like a human artist would. People who claim they copy/paste stuff and can't be creative have clearly not used them very much.
- chii 4y ago
  > This can destroy the potential creativity that was possible from the replaced humans within that specific trade. You could argue the same from any introduction of technology that replaces humans. If the output of the machine is of sufficient quality to replace humans, then they should be replaced. If the fear is that those displaced humans will no longer be useful, then society will need to subsidize their existence, or find a way to make use of those displaced humans (such as retraining). It is an unrelated problem to copyright, and copyright should not be used to ensure some group of humans do not get displaced. > only copies or amalgamations of existing works. Not that i agree with the premise of machines lacking creativity, but many of today's human created content is of such level as well.

l33tman 4y ago

IANAL but copyright allows you to control the reproducing medium, in the case of DRM this would be the digital files. It doesn't allow you to control the ideas presented in the medium, so copyright alone cannot restrict you showing the page you're reading in your e-book to your friend or friendly AI. If you publish on the internet you can by copyright restrict someone else from downloading your work and putting it up somewhere else, but you cannot restrict who views it if you put it in a public place. There are other license agreements for that of course but then you'd have to force people to agree to it in order to view your blog post or fan art first. Nothing is stopping gated community sites that require an account to view stuff to require a suitable license agreement. I'm pretty sure it would restrict the views though.. Regarding "just scraping the data to adjust model weights using an algorithm", all research so far shows that the brain does just this, even though the full details of the algorithm are unknown and all the places the weights are encoded are not known in full.

chii 4y ago
> you cannot restrict who views it if you put it in a public place actually, public display is one of the rights that the copyright holder can control too. Private display, on the other hand, is not. So you can show it to your friend, or AI in private, but not project it in a public place unless the copyright holder agrees.
- IYasha 4y ago
  I'm not sure why, but "show it to your AI in private" made me laugh uncontrollably. (proves I'm a human btw :D)
- l33tman 4y ago
  What I meant was, if the copyright holder puts it in a public place, copyright won't hinder others from viewing it, I'd hope at least... which is analogous to putting your .jpg on your web page for general consumption.

throwaway675309 4y ago

But without a legal precedent in place and an official standard, web scraping to use for machine learning purposes can't tell the difference, and frankly shouldn't have to. Reproduction of the original data is one problem, but if we create restrictions around using data for training purposes I believe this is a huge impediment to human progress. I would imagine that the state of the art in foreign language translation (Google translate, etc) would fall significantly behind for example.