4 ms·

> Until then it’s a copyright laundering tool. Something is either a copyright violation or not. You can't "launder" a creative work. It's either a copy or it

> Until then it’s a copyright laundering tool. Something is either a copyright violation or not. You can't "launder" a creative work. It's either a copy or it isn't. It's either something that is a direct replacement for something else in the market or it is not. If I write a book and you buy the book, read the book, sell the book, write another book about the ideas in the book, you can legally sell the new book I wrote. (Seldon v Baker) Ideas are not covered by copyright. Ideas are fungible. Creative works are non-fungible. Money laundering is dependent on money being fungible so the source can be hidden. Hiding the source of a copyright is incoherent. A "copyright laundering tool" is incoherent.

anileated 4y ago
> If I write a book and you buy the book, read the book, sell the book, write another book about the ideas in the book, you can legally sell the new book I wrote. Reread my comment. If you read my book and write your own it’s OK, if a megacorp provides a tool that ingests my book and automatically writes this book for you (and charges you, and does not pay or credit me) it’s not. Why is it not OK? In addition to generating a derivative work based on my book (not on ideas in it, literally on my book, because again this tool is not conscious and does not operate ideas, only the letters), which depending on the license can be illegal, it also kills incentives for people to publish books at all—because now OpenAI can buy one copy of any book, feed it to its ML tool, then charge people for using it and no one else ever needs to buy this book and give any credit to its author. Implications for open information sharing like blogging and such go without mentioning.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  > Reread my comment. If you read my book and write your own it’s OK, if a megacorp provides a tool that ingests my book and automatically writes this book for you (and charges you, and does not pay or credit me) it’s not. This is not something that our courts could ever decide. How would they know if I did not use a LLM tool to assist in writing my new book? > Why it’s not OK? In addition to generating a derivative work based on my book (not on ideas in mine, literally on mine, because this tool is not conscious and does not operate ideas, only the letters), which is already obviously illegal That's not what constitutes a derivative work in the sense of copyright infringement. A derivative work is still a derivative work no matter how it was made. However, it is perfectly legal to say, go to Disney's website, download a JPEG, convert that JPEG to 1s and 0s, print just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not the image, just like a printing press made up of just [1] and [0] character blocks, and sell that. Yes, the 1s and 0s are mathematically derived from the image but the image of 1s and 0s is not a visual derivative of the Disney image. That is, no one is going to buy a t-shirt of 1s and 0s instead of a Mickey t-shirt. Anyone can go to the Disney website and get those same 1s and 0s. > it also kills incentives for people to publish books at all—because now OpenAPI can buy one copy of any book, feed it to its ML tool, then charge people for using it and no one else ever needs to buy this book and give any credit to its author. Implications for open information sharing like blogging and such go without mentioning. There are lots of non-infringing uses for such a tool in the marketplace and this will factor into fair use. (Sony v Universal)
- williamcotton 4y ago
  Here's what people are voting on: 1.) [person does x], it's OK, 2.) if a megacorp [does x], it's not. Let's just be clear that the content of the argument doesn't matter and that most people in this conversation are guilty of base populism.
  - anileated 4y ago
    The latter is illegal by letter and unethical by spirit, the former is not…
    - williamcotton 4y ago
      What you mean to say is that the latter is in your opinion unethical in spirit. You're just plain incorrect that it is likely to be "illegal", or more correctly stated, found to be a copyright infringement. In all likelihood tools like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT will be found to copying works in fair use. The primary argument in favor of fair use is the substantial amount of non-infringing uses for tools like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT (Sony v. Universal). This does not mean that tools like this are not capable of producing works that infringe just that the liability will be on the person choosing how to use the tool and choosing what to do with what the tool produces. By the time this goes to trial there will be entire industries built on significant non-infringing use of large language models that have nothing to do with the scope of the original copyrighted work and this will have a large impact on considerations of fair use!
      - anileated 4y ago
        I think it goes without saying that everything I write is my opinion, and what you write is yours :) > substantial amount of non-infringing uses Your uses may or may not be infringing, but you can use something that infringes to create something that does not infringe. The infringement is at least done by OpenAI etc. when creating the tool you use, even if your use of the tool does not infringe.
        williamcotton 4y ago
nonrandomstring 4y ago
It feels like you are taking a rigid approach and reaching an unsound conclusion. The law does not concern itself strictly with "exact copies". You are missing the essential concepts of "substantial similarity" and "representation". It Britain at least, it has been found a photograph of a famous painting does not obtain its own copyright. Proving the opposite; one cannot take a .wav file, convert it to an .mp3 and claim that because the representations are totally different the "new work" doesn't violate the original. The OP you are arguing with turns a useful phrase with "copyright laundry", because it's clear that GPT tools can and are being used for that function. Trying to move the argument to a higher level, I believe this legal argument will ultimately be solved by a technical matter about noise. Everyone talks about the training data. Nobody talks about the noise. But that is the KEY (literally). Because there is nothing non-deterministic going on, but each run seems to create something "new" a clearer interpretation of the system-signal relation is needed. With exactly the same initial conditions we can treat the seed noise as a decryption key. The law will very probably eventually settle on an interpretation of large models as an encoding mechanism whose seed noise is the other half of a pair, which together constitute a transformation/transcoding of the original source material. The onus is going to fall on the creator to show how their "creative process" is substantially different from transcoding a jpeg to a png through a set of filters to obscure the source.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  > Proving the opposite; one cannot take a .wav file, convert it to an .mp3 and claim that because the representations are totally different the "new work" doesn't violate the original. But let's talk about what is different. It is not a copyright infringement I go to Disney's website, download a JPEG, convert that JPEG to 1s and 0s, print just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not the image and not ascii art of the image, just like a printing press made up of just [1] and [0] character blocks, and sell that. Yes, the 1s and 0s are mathematically derived from the image but the image of 1s and 0s is not a visual derivative of the Disney image. That is, no one is going to buy a t-shirt of 1s and 0s instead of a Mickey t-shirt. Anyone can go to the Disney website and get those same 1s and 0s. This is different than the case where you're talking about a .wav and an .mp3, right? > Trying to move the argument to a higher level, I believe this legal argument will ultimately be solved by a technical matter about noise. > Everyone talks about the training data. Nobody talks about the noise. But that is the KEY (literally). > Because there is nothing non-deterministic going on, but each run seems to create something "new" a clearer interpretation of the system-signal relation is needed. With exactly the same initial conditions we can treat the seed noise as a decryption key. The law will very probably eventually settle on an interpretation of large models as an encoding mechanism whose seed noise is the other half of a pair, which together constitute a transformation/transcoding of the original source material. This is much more interesting than just copyright as this has to do with authorship itself! The combination of the seed and the text inputs in either ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion result in a deterministic output. This means that these are facts. Who owns the output of a seed of "1" and a text input of "astronaut riding a horse"? Who owns what is able to be seen at a certain slice of the sky? Someone could still be found to be infringing on copyrights when they slap certain things on t-shirts that happen to have a deterministic seed and prompt, but copyright is a separate concern from authorship. If someone took a picture of a certain stellar formation somewhere that looked sort of like a cartoon head and then they put a little cartoon speech bubble and made an illustrated novel based on such characters... and then if I take my own pictures of those same stellar formations and I publish a book of astrophotograph... or then if I make my own illustrated novel with different characters but using the same stellar formations... or then however close that line can currently be toed with photographs of stellar formations is where we must be with photographs of seed/prompt formations. > The onus is going to fall on the creator to show how their "creative process" is substantially different from transcoding a jpeg to a png through a set of filters to obscure the source. I'm not familiar with any legal doctrine that follows this logic so I think any lawyers are going to have their defendants focus on establishing useful interpretations of their actions for the court.

anileated 4y ago

> If I write a book and you buy the book, read the book, sell the book, write another book about the ideas in the book, you can legally sell the new book I wrote. Reread my comment. If you read my book and write your own it’s OK, if a megacorp provides a tool that ingests my book and automatically writes this book for you (and charges you, and does not pay or credit me) it’s not. Why is it not OK? In addition to generating a derivative work based on my book (not on ideas in it, literally on my book, because again this tool is not conscious and does not operate ideas, only the letters), which depending on the license can be illegal, it also kills incentives for people to publish books at all—because now OpenAI can buy one copy of any book, feed it to its ML tool, then charge people for using it and no one else ever needs to buy this book and give any credit to its author. Implications for open information sharing like blogging and such go without mentioning.

williamcotton 4y ago
> Reread my comment. If you read my book and write your own it’s OK, if a megacorp provides a tool that ingests my book and automatically writes this book for you (and charges you, and does not pay or credit me) it’s not. This is not something that our courts could ever decide. How would they know if I did not use a LLM tool to assist in writing my new book? > Why it’s not OK? In addition to generating a derivative work based on my book (not on ideas in mine, literally on mine, because this tool is not conscious and does not operate ideas, only the letters), which is already obviously illegal That's not what constitutes a derivative work in the sense of copyright infringement. A derivative work is still a derivative work no matter how it was made. However, it is perfectly legal to say, go to Disney's website, download a JPEG, convert that JPEG to 1s and 0s, print just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not the image, just like a printing press made up of just [1] and [0] character blocks, and sell that. Yes, the 1s and 0s are mathematically derived from the image but the image of 1s and 0s is not a visual derivative of the Disney image. That is, no one is going to buy a t-shirt of 1s and 0s instead of a Mickey t-shirt. Anyone can go to the Disney website and get those same 1s and 0s. > it also kills incentives for people to publish books at all—because now OpenAPI can buy one copy of any book, feed it to its ML tool, then charge people for using it and no one else ever needs to buy this book and give any credit to its author. Implications for open information sharing like blogging and such go without mentioning. There are lots of non-infringing uses for such a tool in the marketplace and this will factor into fair use. (Sony v Universal)
williamcotton 4y ago
Here's what people are voting on: 1.) [person does x], it's OK, 2.) if a megacorp [does x], it's not. Let's just be clear that the content of the argument doesn't matter and that most people in this conversation are guilty of base populism.
- anileated 4y ago
  The latter is illegal by letter and unethical by spirit, the former is not…
  - williamcotton 4y ago
    What you mean to say is that the latter is in your opinion unethical in spirit. You're just plain incorrect that it is likely to be "illegal", or more correctly stated, found to be a copyright infringement. In all likelihood tools like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT will be found to copying works in fair use. The primary argument in favor of fair use is the substantial amount of non-infringing uses for tools like Stable Diffusion and ChatGPT (Sony v. Universal). This does not mean that tools like this are not capable of producing works that infringe just that the liability will be on the person choosing how to use the tool and choosing what to do with what the tool produces. By the time this goes to trial there will be entire industries built on significant non-infringing use of large language models that have nothing to do with the scope of the original copyrighted work and this will have a large impact on considerations of fair use!
    - anileated 4y ago
      I think it goes without saying that everything I write is my opinion, and what you write is yours :) > substantial amount of non-infringing uses Your uses may or may not be infringing, but you can use something that infringes to create something that does not infringe. The infringement is at least done by OpenAI etc. when creating the tool you use, even if your use of the tool does not infringe.
      - williamcotton 4y ago

nonrandomstring 4y ago

It feels like you are taking a rigid approach and reaching an unsound conclusion. The law does not concern itself strictly with "exact copies". You are missing the essential concepts of "substantial similarity" and "representation". It Britain at least, it has been found a photograph of a famous painting does not obtain its own copyright. Proving the opposite; one cannot take a .wav file, convert it to an .mp3 and claim that because the representations are totally different the "new work" doesn't violate the original. The OP you are arguing with turns a useful phrase with "copyright laundry", because it's clear that GPT tools can and are being used for that function. Trying to move the argument to a higher level, I believe this legal argument will ultimately be solved by a technical matter about noise. Everyone talks about the training data. Nobody talks about the noise. But that is the KEY (literally). Because there is nothing non-deterministic going on, but each run seems to create something "new" a clearer interpretation of the system-signal relation is needed. With exactly the same initial conditions we can treat the seed noise as a decryption key. The law will very probably eventually settle on an interpretation of large models as an encoding mechanism whose seed noise is the other half of a pair, which together constitute a transformation/transcoding of the original source material. The onus is going to fall on the creator to show how their "creative process" is substantially different from transcoding a jpeg to a png through a set of filters to obscure the source.

williamcotton 4y ago
> Proving the opposite; one cannot take a .wav file, convert it to an .mp3 and claim that because the representations are totally different the "new work" doesn't violate the original. But let's talk about what is different. It is not a copyright infringement I go to Disney's website, download a JPEG, convert that JPEG to 1s and 0s, print just a bunch of 1s and 0s and not the image and not ascii art of the image, just like a printing press made up of just [1] and [0] character blocks, and sell that. Yes, the 1s and 0s are mathematically derived from the image but the image of 1s and 0s is not a visual derivative of the Disney image. That is, no one is going to buy a t-shirt of 1s and 0s instead of a Mickey t-shirt. Anyone can go to the Disney website and get those same 1s and 0s. This is different than the case where you're talking about a .wav and an .mp3, right? > Trying to move the argument to a higher level, I believe this legal argument will ultimately be solved by a technical matter about noise. > Everyone talks about the training data. Nobody talks about the noise. But that is the KEY (literally). > Because there is nothing non-deterministic going on, but each run seems to create something "new" a clearer interpretation of the system-signal relation is needed. With exactly the same initial conditions we can treat the seed noise as a decryption key. The law will very probably eventually settle on an interpretation of large models as an encoding mechanism whose seed noise is the other half of a pair, which together constitute a transformation/transcoding of the original source material. This is much more interesting than just copyright as this has to do with authorship itself! The combination of the seed and the text inputs in either ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion result in a deterministic output. This means that these are facts. Who owns the output of a seed of "1" and a text input of "astronaut riding a horse"? Who owns what is able to be seen at a certain slice of the sky? Someone could still be found to be infringing on copyrights when they slap certain things on t-shirts that happen to have a deterministic seed and prompt, but copyright is a separate concern from authorship. If someone took a picture of a certain stellar formation somewhere that looked sort of like a cartoon head and then they put a little cartoon speech bubble and made an illustrated novel based on such characters... and then if I take my own pictures of those same stellar formations and I publish a book of astrophotograph... or then if I make my own illustrated novel with different characters but using the same stellar formations... or then however close that line can currently be toed with photographs of stellar formations is where we must be with photographs of seed/prompt formations. > The onus is going to fall on the creator to show how their "creative process" is substantially different from transcoding a jpeg to a png through a set of filters to obscure the source. I'm not familiar with any legal doctrine that follows this logic so I think any lawyers are going to have their defendants focus on establishing useful interpretations of their actions for the court.