5 ms·

This is really bad news for the community, especially in the context of the Copilot lawsuit. Soon lawyers will terrorize network creators, startups and users.

by singularity2001 4y ago

JustFinishedBSG 4y ago
Is the bad news that they were right? Because that's only a bad news if you didn't like the truth.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
phoe-krk 4y ago
People profitting from techniques meant to infrige copyright will be persecuted for copyright infrigement, "bad" news at 11.
- scotty79 4y ago
  If you copyrighted a point (2, 1) then is the equation y=3x-5 infringing on that copyright?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - alkonaut 4y ago
    Yes, if the law considered a point(2,1) to be copyrightable, and no otherwise. But more seriously: I think the question is perhaps a bit vague.
    - scotty79 4y ago
      That's insane. Then by just copyrighting a single point you make infinite number of math functions infringing on your copyright.
      - alkonaut 4y ago
        That’s why a point isn’t copyrightable. Insanity avoided. Pretty simple wasn’t it.
        scotty79 4y ago
        Nothing is avoided. Universe is just math. Copyright will collide with mathematical reality eventually and software is what brings math closer and closer to copyright and will eventually destroy it completely. AI is just recent wave of this process.
        alkonaut 4y ago
        This border between universal things and copyrightable works always existed. Some of these technologies might superficially seem like they create some sort of crisis in the area (GitHub CoPilot for example). But I think it’s mostly due to the fact we haven’t yet seen many businesses and thus not many court processes. My amateur legal guess is that it changes nothing: copyright and other protections are unscathed. If you use a copyrighted work or registered trademark (or something close enough to be infringing) you are liable - and then it doesn’t matter where it came from or if you believed that MagicalAIService would spit out royalty free original works. They probably won’t, and they will never accept liability, it will always be on the end user.
        scotty79 4y ago
        To be honest it's a nice trick. Now let me do it with output of artificial neural networks which too are points in n-dimensional space.
  - program_whiz 4y ago
    No it is not, the latent vector and/or weights of the model do not infringe copyright, however people don't typically consume the y=3x-5, they consume the output points (images). If you output (2, 1) you have infringed the holder's copyright (even though the means of production could include any arbitrary set of functions). Let me put it another way. Suppose you authored and copyrighted two images. I then train a model that can interpolate between those images using a "latent space" from 0-1.0. For most of that space, the image might look totally different, or even like noise. But if I set the value to 1.0, generate your exact image (pixel-for-pixel) and then sell it, would you say "well since model could have generated different images, the fact that it generated my image isn't infringement...". This is about like saying that taking a digital photograph and then selling the photograph isn't infringement because the pixels are slightly different, and the digital camera is merely a model that approximates the true colors of the atoms by sampling photons which it maps into a regular grid to approximate colors, which are further down-sampled by means of compression algorithms. Truly, the digital photo and real-life image can't be considered the same, can they? The digital approach only reproduces it using "heuristics" and "algorithms", and could theoretically reproduce any image given a slightly different set of input bytes to the decompression, rendering, and printing algorithms.
    - scotty79 4y ago
      What if I have the model on my computer and I generate (2,1)? Do I still infringe? After all that's exactly what my computer does in case of images that it downloaded from the internet which I open up later from local drive to view them again.
      - program_whiz 4y ago
        If you have a legal right to view it on your computer, then no. However, downloading a movie illegally and watching it (whether it was compressed or reproduced by AI) is not legal. By whatever means of delivery, if you view the movie you are in legal violation unless you bought it. Similarly, you can view a piece of art (if its available), but selling it would be illegal, regardless of if the way you sell it is by encoding the bits a certain way or providing a "generator function" that creates the art for you that you then sell. Take another example: if you try to sell or publicly play a Taylor Swift song without permission, that is illegal (even though it was technically generated by your computer and you used an arbitrary process to create the reproduction), its owned by Taylor Swift. Its long been the case that the song is reproduced by dozens of different mediums, storage procedures, algorithms, sound generators, and mechanisms, but ultimately it is still the creative property of Swift.
madeofpalk 4y ago
That's like saying burglary laws are bad for the burglary community, and soon the lawyers will terrorise all the people just breaking into homes and stealing people's belongings.
yoden 4y ago
Bad news for big tech conglomerates that want to take the work of individuals and sell it back to them. It's good news for the artists and programmers whose work was being copied, though.

This is really bad news for the community, especially in the context of the Copilot lawsuit. Soon lawyers will terrorize network creators, startups and users.

JustFinishedBSG 4y ago

Is the bad news that they were right? Because that's only a bad news if you didn't like the truth.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

phoe-krk 4y ago

People profitting from techniques meant to infrige copyright will be persecuted for copyright infrigement, "bad" news at 11.

scotty79 4y ago
If you copyrighted a point (2, 1) then is the equation y=3x-5 infringing on that copyright?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- alkonaut 4y ago
  Yes, if the law considered a point(2,1) to be copyrightable, and no otherwise. But more seriously: I think the question is perhaps a bit vague.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    That's insane. Then by just copyrighting a single point you make infinite number of math functions infringing on your copyright.
    - alkonaut 4y ago
      That’s why a point isn’t copyrightable. Insanity avoided. Pretty simple wasn’t it.
      - scotty79 4y ago
        Nothing is avoided. Universe is just math. Copyright will collide with mathematical reality eventually and software is what brings math closer and closer to copyright and will eventually destroy it completely. AI is just recent wave of this process.
        alkonaut 4y ago
        This border between universal things and copyrightable works always existed. Some of these technologies might superficially seem like they create some sort of crisis in the area (GitHub CoPilot for example). But I think it’s mostly due to the fact we haven’t yet seen many businesses and thus not many court processes. My amateur legal guess is that it changes nothing: copyright and other protections are unscathed. If you use a copyrighted work or registered trademark (or something close enough to be infringing) you are liable - and then it doesn’t matter where it came from or if you believed that MagicalAIService would spit out royalty free original works. They probably won’t, and they will never accept liability, it will always be on the end user.
      - scotty79 4y ago
        To be honest it's a nice trick. Now let me do it with output of artificial neural networks which too are points in n-dimensional space.
- program_whiz 4y ago
  No it is not, the latent vector and/or weights of the model do not infringe copyright, however people don't typically consume the y=3x-5, they consume the output points (images). If you output (2, 1) you have infringed the holder's copyright (even though the means of production could include any arbitrary set of functions). Let me put it another way. Suppose you authored and copyrighted two images. I then train a model that can interpolate between those images using a "latent space" from 0-1.0. For most of that space, the image might look totally different, or even like noise. But if I set the value to 1.0, generate your exact image (pixel-for-pixel) and then sell it, would you say "well since model could have generated different images, the fact that it generated my image isn't infringement...". This is about like saying that taking a digital photograph and then selling the photograph isn't infringement because the pixels are slightly different, and the digital camera is merely a model that approximates the true colors of the atoms by sampling photons which it maps into a regular grid to approximate colors, which are further down-sampled by means of compression algorithms. Truly, the digital photo and real-life image can't be considered the same, can they? The digital approach only reproduces it using "heuristics" and "algorithms", and could theoretically reproduce any image given a slightly different set of input bytes to the decompression, rendering, and printing algorithms.
  - scotty79 4y ago
    What if I have the model on my computer and I generate (2,1)? Do I still infringe? After all that's exactly what my computer does in case of images that it downloaded from the internet which I open up later from local drive to view them again.
    - program_whiz 4y ago
      If you have a legal right to view it on your computer, then no. However, downloading a movie illegally and watching it (whether it was compressed or reproduced by AI) is not legal. By whatever means of delivery, if you view the movie you are in legal violation unless you bought it. Similarly, you can view a piece of art (if its available), but selling it would be illegal, regardless of if the way you sell it is by encoding the bits a certain way or providing a "generator function" that creates the art for you that you then sell. Take another example: if you try to sell or publicly play a Taylor Swift song without permission, that is illegal (even though it was technically generated by your computer and you used an arbitrary process to create the reproduction), its owned by Taylor Swift. Its long been the case that the song is reproduced by dozens of different mediums, storage procedures, algorithms, sound generators, and mechanisms, but ultimately it is still the creative property of Swift.

madeofpalk 4y ago

That's like saying burglary laws are bad for the burglary community, and soon the lawyers will terrorise all the people just breaking into homes and stealing people's belongings.

yoden 4y ago

Bad news for big tech conglomerates that want to take the work of individuals and sell it back to them. It's good news for the artists and programmers whose work was being copied, though.