3 ms·

When it comes to litigation, the parties will and resources to engage an aggressive legal adversary is critical aspect of assessing legal dynamics in a matter.

When it comes to litigation, the parties will and resources to engage an aggressive legal adversary is critical aspect of assessing legal dynamics in a matter. For example, even in cases for which there is no direct legal leverage, party might be exposed to patent, copyright, etc infringement if the other party discovers they have a valid existing claim for which the other party is dependent on and access to it is revocable. Beyond that, it’s unclear to me if there is code that is part of LLaMa that’s not subject to copyright claims, if such code was authored by humans. Someone violating the terms, downloading the code, and reposting it, even without the terms, would be irrelevant to the rights of the party on future use by a party if they notified they’re infringing; otherwise, able copyright notices and software licenses would be meaningless, because you could simple launder stolen property, which is obviously not the case. If you’re positive there no copyrighted materials used in deploying LLaMa, then obviously there’s no copyright claim or breach of contract. To be clear, I agree human author per the US Copyright Office is at present required to claim copyrights. Lastly, my core claim is it’s easy to state something is legal, it’s completely different story to take on legal liabilities related to defending those rights. I for one would have no interest in litigation with Facebook regardless of the legal merits of my position. The OP based on there ignoring the topic, which I raised, nor for that matter is it likely anyone that read this thread is likely to take on the burden of publicly disputing if LLaMa is free from legal claims for commercial use.

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
> if LLaMa is free from legal claims for commercial use. That restriction is only in the license though, which was not accepted. So it won't apply, right? > otherwise, [all?] copyright notices and software licenses would be meaningless, because you could simple launder stolen property That applies to trade secrets. If I knowingly induce you to leak a secret I can't use it, but if you leak the secret to the public in an unrelated fashion and I discover it, I can. It doesn't apply to copyright, as you note. > If you’re positive there no copyrighted materials used in deploying LLaMa, then obviously there’s no copyright claim or breach of contract. There's no breach of contract because there was no agreement. Therefore there's no license to use, so you're right - the copyrightable parts will be a violation. Basically everything except 'data' or machine translations of someone else's works. And yes, I assume that there's some incidental content, at least, which will be infringing. Even a readme is copyrighted after all. And yes, of course any code which isn't already public elsewhere. I think the weights themselves are the interesting bit though, and perhaps someone could rerelease them without any incidentals just to clarify the issue.
- O__________O 4y ago
  Happy to be proven wrong, but the weights are meaningless without the parts written by humans. If someone refers to any parts that are protected to write a new interface to the weights it would most likely be violate the law. Using the weights alone, it would be impossible to reverse engineer them using a clean-room to develop new interface to the weights. >> There's no breach of contract because there was no agreement. No, this is property laundering. If intentional, it’s a crime. If unintentional, the property owner need just notify the party of their rights, the remedy they’re seeking, and if needed, send a cease and desist.
  - LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
    > weights are meaningless without the parts written by humans. I think this can be true, but that the format of these is well known. The torrent consists of params.json, consolidated.*.pth, and tokenizer.model plus some .chk files. Notably, there is one script, llama.sh, which is about 2k so even if it was needed, can't be that complex. > If someone refers to any parts that are protected to write a new interface to the weights it would most likely be violate the law Not at all. I can refer to pages and words in a book I don't own. > No, this is property laundering. If intentional, it’s a crime. Only if the weights are copyrightable. Otherwise it'd hinge on being a trade secret, the best theory I've seen yet, and that basically says the cat's out of the bag once the public knows something.
    - O__________O 4y ago
      >> can't be that complex. Point is unless the new system only references the property that’s free of any claims, there’s at the very least a valid legal basis to file a complaint and it would at that point be in the courts hands to decide whether the contracts or copyrights had been breached. >> Not at all. I can refer to pages and words in a book I don't own. It depends, the only way for this for sure not to be the case is for the author of the code to have never seen the relevant code. At the point they have seen the code, it would be up to the courts to decide the merits of the arguments presented in court. >> Only if the weights are copyrightable. Weights are irrelevant, what is relevant is any aspect of the system that is subject to the related terms of use and/or copyright.

LawTalkingGuy 4y ago

> if LLaMa is free from legal claims for commercial use. That restriction is only in the license though, which was not accepted. So it won't apply, right? > otherwise, [all?] copyright notices and software licenses would be meaningless, because you could simple launder stolen property That applies to trade secrets. If I knowingly induce you to leak a secret I can't use it, but if you leak the secret to the public in an unrelated fashion and I discover it, I can. It doesn't apply to copyright, as you note. > If you’re positive there no copyrighted materials used in deploying LLaMa, then obviously there’s no copyright claim or breach of contract. There's no breach of contract because there was no agreement. Therefore there's no license to use, so you're right - the copyrightable parts will be a violation. Basically everything except 'data' or machine translations of someone else's works. And yes, I assume that there's some incidental content, at least, which will be infringing. Even a readme is copyrighted after all. And yes, of course any code which isn't already public elsewhere. I think the weights themselves are the interesting bit though, and perhaps someone could rerelease them without any incidentals just to clarify the issue.

O__________O 4y ago
Happy to be proven wrong, but the weights are meaningless without the parts written by humans. If someone refers to any parts that are protected to write a new interface to the weights it would most likely be violate the law. Using the weights alone, it would be impossible to reverse engineer them using a clean-room to develop new interface to the weights. >> There's no breach of contract because there was no agreement. No, this is property laundering. If intentional, it’s a crime. If unintentional, the property owner need just notify the party of their rights, the remedy they’re seeking, and if needed, send a cease and desist.
- LawTalkingGuy 4y ago
  > weights are meaningless without the parts written by humans. I think this can be true, but that the format of these is well known. The torrent consists of params.json, consolidated.*.pth, and tokenizer.model plus some .chk files. Notably, there is one script, llama.sh, which is about 2k so even if it was needed, can't be that complex. > If someone refers to any parts that are protected to write a new interface to the weights it would most likely be violate the law Not at all. I can refer to pages and words in a book I don't own. > No, this is property laundering. If intentional, it’s a crime. Only if the weights are copyrightable. Otherwise it'd hinge on being a trade secret, the best theory I've seen yet, and that basically says the cat's out of the bag once the public knows something.
  - O__________O 4y ago
    >> can't be that complex. Point is unless the new system only references the property that’s free of any claims, there’s at the very least a valid legal basis to file a complaint and it would at that point be in the courts hands to decide whether the contracts or copyrights had been breached. >> Not at all. I can refer to pages and words in a book I don't own. It depends, the only way for this for sure not to be the case is for the author of the code to have never seen the relevant code. At the point they have seen the code, it would be up to the courts to decide the merits of the arguments presented in court. >> Only if the weights are copyrightable. Weights are irrelevant, what is relevant is any aspect of the system that is subject to the related terms of use and/or copyright.