4 ms·

https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing Doesn't this imply the produced model has to be CC-BY-SA too?

wongarsu 4y ago
By that line of reasoning, GitHub copilot would have to be GPL. Until somebody fights about this in court we don't really know. But even in the worst case the CC-BY-SA is one of the easier licenses to fulfill, not much worse than the MIT-licensed code contained in the dataset.
gattilorenz 4y ago
Welcome to this can of worms. CC-BY-SA content needs attribution too, but I don’t see the(se) model(s) in the current state being able to do so. I imagine we’re gonna see the IBM PC bios/Unix/ReactOS “tainted code” arguments again in court, this time is not the human who is more-or-less knowingly responsible for sneaking in copyrighted code.
gpm 4y ago
No. It means that if they are doing something that is prohibited by copyright law (without a license) then it needs to be CC-BY-SA. The only theory under which training this sort of model is remotely legal is that doing so is not prohibited by copyright law in the first place. If that theory is correct they don't need a license, and they don't need to abide by any terms of licenses that they were granted without asking. If that theory is incorrect, they have to comply with the stackoverflow license, but they also have to not use any of the (massive amounts) of unlicensed training data they are using, and comply with the numerous incompatible licenses other sources of training data are licensed under. In other words it's impossible to do this.
- jameshart 4y ago
  If ‘reading something and using the content to update your Bayesian priors about the world’ is a breach of copyright, then reading things is a breach of copyright. The tricky new world that the LLM opens up is that it lets you distribute an exact copy of the result of having read the thing. That’s something you can’t do with a human mind (although it’s sort of the job description of a ‘teacher’).
  - gpm 4y ago
    Humans and machines are distinct with respect to copyright law. A human memorizing a book is legal. A machine scanning a book is creating a new copy and is in (at least some cases) illegal. It is not obvious that just because humans are allowed to learn from things that machines also are. I tend to favour the view that in this case it is legal (by way of the de minimis doctrine), but I don't think it's a trivial question.
    - jameshart 4y ago
      A human memorizing a book is legal; a human reciting that book aloud for an audience is not (performances of plays require licenses to the performing rights of a work, for example). Distribution is when the issue arises - not consumption and construction of a mental model. I acknowledge the parallels are imperfect and this all needs to be worked out in court. But it’s possible that at the pace LLMs are developing, by the time courts start addressing these questions we’ll already be questioning whether the distinction between machines and people is as big as we thought.
      - gpm 4y ago
        Copyright law prohibits copying (some exceptions apply) amongst other things not just distribution.
      - pyth0 4y ago
        brb, acquiring the necessary license to read my son a bedtime story.
        gpm 4y ago
        You (typically) need a license to publicly perform a work, not to read it your son.
  - archontes 4y ago
    That's not likely to be true. An AI can create a work that is infringing, a picture of a Marvel character, for example. But that doesn't make the AI or its weights or its training an infringement.
taneq 4y ago
Even if the model doesn’t, where does code written with the aid of an llm end up after the various rulings about the output of Stable Diffusion etc. not being copyrightable at all?

wongarsu 4y ago

By that line of reasoning, GitHub copilot would have to be GPL. Until somebody fights about this in court we don't really know. But even in the worst case the CC-BY-SA is one of the easier licenses to fulfill, not much worse than the MIT-licensed code contained in the dataset.

gattilorenz 4y ago

Welcome to this can of worms. CC-BY-SA content needs attribution too, but I don’t see the(se) model(s) in the current state being able to do so. I imagine we’re gonna see the IBM PC bios/Unix/ReactOS “tainted code” arguments again in court, this time is not the human who is more-or-less knowingly responsible for sneaking in copyrighted code.

gpm 4y ago

No. It means that if they are doing something that is prohibited by copyright law (without a license) then it needs to be CC-BY-SA. The only theory under which training this sort of model is remotely legal is that doing so is not prohibited by copyright law in the first place. If that theory is correct they don't need a license, and they don't need to abide by any terms of licenses that they were granted without asking. If that theory is incorrect, they have to comply with the stackoverflow license, but they also have to not use any of the (massive amounts) of unlicensed training data they are using, and comply with the numerous incompatible licenses other sources of training data are licensed under. In other words it's impossible to do this.

jameshart 4y ago
If ‘reading something and using the content to update your Bayesian priors about the world’ is a breach of copyright, then reading things is a breach of copyright. The tricky new world that the LLM opens up is that it lets you distribute an exact copy of the result of having read the thing. That’s something you can’t do with a human mind (although it’s sort of the job description of a ‘teacher’).
- gpm 4y ago
  Humans and machines are distinct with respect to copyright law. A human memorizing a book is legal. A machine scanning a book is creating a new copy and is in (at least some cases) illegal. It is not obvious that just because humans are allowed to learn from things that machines also are. I tend to favour the view that in this case it is legal (by way of the de minimis doctrine), but I don't think it's a trivial question.
  - jameshart 4y ago
    A human memorizing a book is legal; a human reciting that book aloud for an audience is not (performances of plays require licenses to the performing rights of a work, for example). Distribution is when the issue arises - not consumption and construction of a mental model. I acknowledge the parallels are imperfect and this all needs to be worked out in court. But it’s possible that at the pace LLMs are developing, by the time courts start addressing these questions we’ll already be questioning whether the distinction between machines and people is as big as we thought.
    - gpm 4y ago
      Copyright law prohibits copying (some exceptions apply) amongst other things not just distribution.
    - pyth0 4y ago
      brb, acquiring the necessary license to read my son a bedtime story.
      - gpm 4y ago
        You (typically) need a license to publicly perform a work, not to read it your son.
- archontes 4y ago
  That's not likely to be true. An AI can create a work that is infringing, a picture of a Marvel character, for example. But that doesn't make the AI or its weights or its training an infringement.

taneq 4y ago

Even if the model doesn’t, where does code written with the aid of an llm end up after the various rulings about the output of Stable Diffusion etc. not being copyrightable at all?