13 ms·

AI used photographer’s photos for training, then slapped him with an invoice

80 points by mikece 4y ago

drunkenmagician 4y ago
This is an abhorrent response from LAION, I could image such from a large corporate, but a non-profit generating 'models for democratization' (their words). I guess they think that others data should therefore be included without restriction? My hope is that this is just over zealous 3rd party IP lawyers, not their actual stance on the matter.
- deleted 4y ago
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- patates 4y ago
  LAION just adds metadata to the publicly available content. It does not have the content. Sending them a legal take-down request would use their resources for a false claim, so it makes sense for them to seek damages. Not sure if it is ethical or not, but it technically makes sense, this is all I'm saying.
- srslack 4y ago
  What's in question is simply a dataset with links to the images, with associated alt tags. The copyright owner came along and complained that they were violating their copyright. LAION was not. It's not an abhorrent response, it's what should be an acceptable response to having to deal with bullshit legal threats from ignorant people. If the copyright owner doesn't want their images linked to, they should take them down from the web or perform such gymnastics such as restricting their serving to their own web server that refuses to serve the images unless certain conditions are met (an HTTP referrer match, a username/password is required, etc.)
  - bryanrasmussen 4y ago
    so if they remove it from the web, will it be removed from the dataset?
    - avereveard 4y ago
      The dataset don't contain the image it contains a link to it. Whoever uses the dataset well receive a 404 and move on with life
  - KaiserPro 4y ago
    > complained that they were violating their copyright. LAION was not. Actually, thats not clear cut. Copyright isn't a binary thing, its a license with a bunch of terms that could be anything. Just because its on the internet, it doesn't mean you can do what you want with it. the chances of you getting caught and told off are very slim, but it doesn't mean its right or indeed legal. > it's what should be an acceptable response to having to deal with bullshit legal threats from ignorant people. again, its not bullshit. The person created those pictures, and has the right to distribute them as they see fit. Now, if you want to allow people to use your pictures in anyway, then you can. There is nothing stopping you. However its down to the individual to choose.
    - srslack 4y ago
      >Actually, thats not clear cut. It is almost perfectly clear cut. LAION is linking to the images, not redistributing them or storing them. A link. In a text file. To photos. Served from a web server. Presumably, the artist's web server or portfolio site hosted by a company they do business with. >The person created those pictures, and has the right to distribute them as they see fit. Yeah, they do have the right to distribute them as they see fit. So, if they don't want them linked to, they can put them behind a paywall. It's a bullshit legal threat. The artist has a complete knuckle dragging understanding of copyright and the web.
      - sharemywin 4y ago
        or move the image to another location so the link doesn't work anymore.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - KaiserPro 4y ago
        > So, if they don't want them linked to Again its not clear cut. the license could be something like: "you are able to view these images as part of this website, anything else is prohibited" or "direct linking to these images is not allowed, these images are licensed only fir use as part of this website" or something along those lines. Now, enforcing that is pretty hard. I'm also willing to bet that he didn't make any such license. But to say its a clear cut legal slam dunk isn't correct.
  - thanatropism 4y ago
    So wait. If I forget my office dooropen to my office, are you entitled to enter, make copies of documents and leave?
    - srslack 4y ago
      This is akin to going to Google, or more accurately Open Street Map since we want to keep the metaphor, and threatening them with legal action for creating a map with the address of your house on it and noting that there's a priceless mural which you originally advertised and made publicly available elsewhere. Since people can take the map, find your address on it, and take pictures of the priceless mural, which they can then use to train a monkey to incorporate the style of the mural into other murals that the monkey creates, thus violating your copyright. And the murals that the monkey produces are not copyrightable. But also, yes, in that instance, if it's public and the door's open. Your analogy isn't a good one though. I like mine better, to illustrate the hoops the artist had to jump through.
    - prepend 4y ago
      Yes, actually. If your door is open the public and your documents are laying on your desk, then I can certainly walk in and take pictures of your documents with my phone. Of course there are restrictions like if your office is already in a private building, probably not. But if it’s facing a public street and I just walk in, how would I know you didn’t leave it open all the time? If you had some “no tresspassing” “private property” signs up and the door was open, then your scenario is less likely to work. Or if your documents are locked up in a file cabinet, then I can’t break into it.
- acomjean 4y ago
  Reminds me of all those open source maintainers, putting their work out there only to be contacted with demands by entitled end users. Except in this case those end users want you to pay because they looked at your code..
anotherhue 4y ago
This is almost like the "penalty for false DMCA" argument that is often made. It's not clear they were wrong to do so, the photographer did cost them legal fees for something that is explicitly legal.
- Archipelagia 4y ago
  Is it legal though? Article mentioned forbidding the use of crawlers. Besides, it talks a lot how they only link to the image... but that's not how AI works, right? Maybe after incorporating the photo into its weights the model no longer needs the original, but it doesn't seem like an explicitly legal thing.
  - Eisenstein 4y ago
    > but that's not how AI works, right? What this organization is doing is making a database of links to pictures with metadata that includes what is in the pictures. AIs can use this to train. The organization is not using it to train AI nor do they host the image.
    - Archipelagia 4y ago
      I didn't realize that, thank you
rich_sasha 4y ago
There's a lot of debate going on about whether training AI on such data is copyright infringement or not. This is of course _immediately_ important, as a pressing legal question, but also longer-term less interesting. The interesting question, IMHO, is whether we should amend copyright to deal with this! As I read it, the spirit of copyright is to give creators safeguards against their work being misused, so they aren't cagey about sharing it, in limited contexts. The public has some, limited, rights to such published work, in return. The question is, should we allow people to publish their work, while also disagreeing to it being used for AI training. I think, resoundingly, yes. The constructs of copyright just don't make sense in a world where a machine can perfectly recreate the human skill, if only it can consume all of its data. As a painter, say, it won't bother me that someone might use my paintings to learn, over the course of many years, and maybe even surpass my current level of skill - by the time they do I will be either better, or retired. But if a machine can do this over weeks or months and take my job away, sure I won't like it. The alternative IMHO is just more paywalls, as people realise they don't want to be unpaid AI trainers and labellers.
- Jevon23 4y ago
  Good point. The entire concept of copyright was, frankly, invented out of thin air. That’s not a bad thing, to be clear - that’s how pretty much all laws get invented. The point is just that you can’t analyze existing copyright law like it’s a sacred text that has the One True Answer to whether AI training without permission is ethical or not. If we as a society decide that we don’t want to allow it, then we can simply write a law that says that. What current laws say is irrelevant. At least in the US though, meaningful action on major legislation like this has become virtually impossible, which is why everyone is staking their hopes on the interpretation of existing copyright law.
  - sharemywin 4y ago
    the problem is the cat's already kind of out of the bag. the models have already been trained and widely distributed. what do you do with existing models?
IanCal 4y ago
There's a missing step in this story it feels. He asked for them to be deleted. Their lawyers responded to say that the pictures are not stored and so they can't delete them and said if you try and make an unjustified copyright claim we can recoup the cost. He made some kind of claims in a letter that as far as I can tell isn't in the article - I guess he pushed forwards with making the claim about copyright and/or demanding they delete his pictures? What did he send? They responded saying well we told you it was unjustified and now we've incurred costs so as previously stated we're charging them to you. > while LAION continues to use his pictures. Are they using his pictures? What they have is a link to the picture, right?
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  The Pirate Bay guys said, "we are just linking to the pictures".
  - croes 4y ago
    Valid reply
  - redeux 4y ago
    This is actually a good analogy. TPB is just linking to copyrighted materials. It’s the user who is committing the infringement by downloading, using, reproducing, etc the material. In this case they’re both linking to the material and controlling the application that’s downloading, using, reproducing, etc the material. That seems like a material difference to me. (Pun intended)
  - vintermann 4y ago
    Even the film industry might have had trouble getting the Pirate Bay guys if the pictures they were linking to were hosted by the film industry themselves.
  - srslack 4y ago
    If we want to go down the rabbit hole where a hyperlink in a text file to a publicly accessible copyrighted photo on an artist's portfolio site/web server is "copyright infringement", or more accurately "assisting in making copyrighted content available", where the artist themselves is the one making those images is available publicly, then we're officially in clown world.
rdez6173 4y ago
This gets into hairy territory of derivative works. I think this will be an uphill battle for content creators until laws are updated for the new state of the art. Prior to the unfettered access to generative AI, derivative works took time and effort comparable to the original. Now, derivatives can be created en masse and in seconds. Where's the line? What's fair use now? These questions will likely be answered in a court or by legislative bodies. In the meantime, protect your images, paywall high res versions, watermark thumbnails, etc. Also, if you're going up against a company? Lawyer up.
Archipelagia 4y ago
It kind of seems like an intimidation tactic. Not too many artists will be willing to claim copyright infringement, if they can get hit with a suit in response. And in the meantime, they cab happily continue training their model on whatever they want.
- gwd 4y ago
  On the other hand, assuming that the following are true: * The activity "has been expressly permitted by the European legislator" * The person in question continued to threaten / press legal action Doesn't it make sense to be able to ask for damages? IOW, shouldn't we be intimidating people against making baseless legal threats? Obviously if either of the above two are false, then the legal firm in question are in violation of professional ethics and need to be hauled up before the German equivalent of the Bar Association.
- prepend 4y ago
  This is like people filing bogus dcma takedowns on YouTube videos. The photographer doesn’t have a valid claim, yet continues to file claims knowing that he doesn’t. What other remedy does the site have? People can’t train modes on whatever they want. They can train models on whatever is legally available. If I set up a photography site and post images for the entire world to see, then the entire world can see them. Including model trainers.
  - anon84873628 4y ago
    Well if a work is copyrighted does that make it "legally available" for training models? Does the answer depend on to what degree the model can end up reproducing the work?
    - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
      Those are indeed open legal questions which are yet to be litigated. The answer is not clear cut!
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
Borrible 4y ago
Someone reddit on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35685497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35685497
- xdavidliu 4y ago
  I don’t understand your comment.
mnbn 4y ago
Robert Kneschke asked for his work to be removed from the training data, and LAION replied that they only maintain links to the work. That is a non-answer that didn't work out well for the Pirate Bay. The intimidation tactics are despicable, but that is expected for "non-profit" that pretends to work for the "democratization of $X".
- chmod775 4y ago
  The pirate bay trial happened in a different jurisdiction and the jurisdiction in this case doesn't have a concept of legal precedent anyways.
- brookst 4y ago
  That's a terrible comparison, unless you're asserting that the photographer's own website was infringing his copyright, so LIAON has the same vicarious liability that TPB (arguably) did. In which case, I guess he should sue himself. That's the nonsense world this silly claim leads to. The open web depends on being able to freely link to content. Don't let an emotional response to AI turn you against by hyperlinks.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  There's something to be said for not pissing people off. Certain other search engines would still accept the filetype:torrent search key for the longest time after, with no problems whatsoever. (Currently doesn't seem to work anymore, mostly because I think people switched to magnet links).
hermannj314 4y ago
Text of the law referenced: (4) Where the notification is unjustified or ineffective, the person notified may demand reimbursement of the necessary expenses incurred in respect of defending their rights, unless the person giving notification was not able to recognise at the point in time when notification was made that the notification was unjustified. So it seems the notified party doesn't have to demand any money, but if they do so then only necessary costs can be demanded. I find it hard to believe that $1000 (or whatever) was a necessary cost. Otherwise, you could create companies that operate on the legal fringe that pretend to "serve humanity" when the real MO of your org is to profit from charging legal fees to regular people confused about the law. This is a new type of patent troll. Addendum - to clarify my point, I am arguing that someone is almost definitely profiting handsomely from charging $1000 to send an email saying "nope, we still aren't infringing" and that "necessary costs" (as required by law) probably doesn't include such leeway for egregious profit taking. Otherwise, you create a huge moral hazard that silences dissent under threat of arbitrarily inflated legal fees. Not a German resident and not a lawyer though.
- prepend 4y ago
  $1000 is an hour (maybe two) of attorneys time to draft the response. It was incurred after the photographer received a “free” letter saying “this is legal if you pursue we are legally entitled to recoup fees from you, so please don’t.”
  - hermannj314 4y ago
    I don't doubt they found someone willing to charge that rate. Very convenient for them. But you won't me convince me that such a routine letter required 2 hours of work at what is probably the top 0.1% wage rate in the nation as a "necessary" cost. A company that routinely crawls millions of websites can't send a form letter for less than $1000 a pop? Don't buy it. Scam.
    - ISL 4y ago
      Attorney-time isn't just for drafting simple documents. It is also for knowing which documents to send and when.
FinnKuhn 4y ago
As I understand it current EU law (both the AI team and the photographer are in Germany so this seems relevant) explicitly allows data mining (for example to train AI) if that data is available online and no machine-readable reservation of rights has been made, but please correct me if I am incorrect in my believe. The German law Podcast "Rechtsbelehrung" also has an Episode [2] on copyright law and AI that touches on this topic and might be interesting for any German planning on using AI. > ...In the case of content that has been made publicly available online, it should only be considered appropriate to reserve those rights by the use of machine-readable means, including metadata and terms and conditions of a website or a service... [1] [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32019L0790 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A... [2] https://rechtsbelehrung.com/113-ki/ https://rechtsbelehrung.com/113-ki/ or on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sHjcmwqL1hUETKwINtHKu?si=7399d76362d74b47 https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sHjcmwqL1hUETKwINtHKu?si=7...
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prepend 4y ago
I don’t like these forms of half-truth articles. The headline, and really article leaves out the important step of “photographer filed bogus copyright claims” that’s a very important step in the middle. This article assumes the audience is already on the author’s side so seems to just stir up existing emotions and beliefs by telling an inaccurate story.
- jeffrallen 4y ago
  He filed a claim he legitimately considered valid, and persisted when told (by the target if his claim, not a court) that his claim was invalid. Then as retribution for persisting, the target of his claim invoiced him. That's retribution aimed at creating a chilling effect and they deserve every bit of criticism they are getting here and more. If they want to use this as a test case to redefine copyright law to mean something favorable to their shareholders, fine. Good luck to them. But attempting to intimidate your adversary with fines is just totally uncool. (And, frankly, a stupid strategy.)
zepolen 4y ago
So based on this, it's perfectly okay to listen to a lawyer's advice and then refuse to pay them right? The sound waves produced were briefly processed by my brain and no longer 'exist'.
- awegio 4y ago
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londons_explore 4y ago
This photographer contacted the wrong person. LAION is a list of links to images. LAION itself does not store the images. Therefore they are claiming they had no part in any AI use/misuse. They also committed no copyright infringement in what they did (which was to download an image, verify that it was in fact an image, and add it to their list). However, since LAION had to retain a lawyer to deal with this (incorrect) request, they now want to be paid for that lawyers time - which seems reasonable. Other parties used the LAION list to train AI models - and those parties are who the photographer should have made claims against in the first place.
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- Retric 4y ago
  In the law intent matters. LAION is aiding and abetting copyright infringement just as much as the Pirate Bay does. They very vigorously don’t want to be held responsible for this, but it’s their letters don’t have any specific legal weight.
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    Potentially it can be argued that LAION is aiding in copyright infringement, but there is a very strong argument that no copyright infringement is occurring at all. (With one of the many interesting twists being that AI output is considered PD in the US) My lawyer would say this is a "legally interesting situation": by which he means that the situation legally and ethically very unclear, and lawyers can earn a lot of money sorting it out.
    - rubyron 4y ago
      Something you never want to hear from your lawyer, or doctor, is that your case is interesting.
roxgib 4y ago
On the whole I like the idea that someone sending bogus legal demands has to bear some costs, as doubtful as it is that they'd actually pursue him for costs.
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roberthahn 4y ago
Some countries (I know Canada is one, Germany, where the artist works, is possibly another) have the concept of moral rights enshrined into law. Boiled down, this means that anyone who wants to use an artist’s work in some context must get permission and/or be prepared to compensate the artist (ianal but I did study copyright law for artists in Canada) The canonical example Canadians refer to is the Eaton Center adorning Michael Snow’s sculpture Flight Stop with ribbons over Christmas. Snow sued the Eaton Centre for compromising the integrity of his art and won. If a similar mechanism exists in German law (my quick research suggests it does) then the artist may well have an argument to make about AI comprising the integrity of his work.
- DiabloD3 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, LAION is effectively a phone book. This would be like suing someone because they made a browser bookmark saying that was piracy.
zmgsabst 4y ago
This isn’t as clear to me as it is to others for two reasons: 1. The alt-text/caption from the original source is copyrighted and they outright copy it. 2. Facilitating copyright infringement is often illegal, and it’s clear that LAION put together this resource to facilitate automatic copying of the works for unauthorized use — and then encouraged other people to do exactly that.
Yizahi 4y ago
NNs are basically working as a kind of laundromat for digital artifacts. They replace a single copy operation with a multiple transform operations all leading to the same intended result. I wonder how soon we would see NNs which can produce bit perfect copy of the trained dataset on demand. And after that where will we draw the line? Imagine a NN which produces bit perfect copy of the image and then changes 1 pixel in it to make it different. Is it an original art? No? Well, what if we change 2 pixels then? Still not original? What about 3 pixels?.. The amount of popcorn to be consumed watching all these fancy new legal battles will be astronomical :)
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  I'm not sure about bit perfect, but very similar images has already happened at times, is considered a bug, and newer models do their utmost best to avoid it. These days -under normal circumstances- it is highly unlikely to occur. Either way the actual model(s) themselves don't actually store images. (A single SD model based off of (among other things) LAION fits on a single USB stick. AFAICT It takes up several orders less space than the LAION URL LIST, let alone the images themselves )
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    Yes, I read the PR statements about recent NNs. But what if some new company did it intentionally? So for example, starting from today: - Currently NNs are in a grey legal area all over the world because nobody knows if so called "training" is a copying or a fair use. - Lets imagine that NN corpos would win and legalize all NN training as fair use, disregarding any copyrights. - Now this hypothetical company appears which has a NN producing copies of original training data on demand. When confronted with a question they simply wave it away saying that all "training" of NNs is legal, so they aren't breaking any law. And when perfect copies start to annoy too many people they fine tune their model to produce almost perfect copies. Because there is no definitive line in the art separating a copy from original art.
    - shultays 4y ago
      What if a company used those NNs to train kill bots and used them to kill children? Can somebody please think of the children here?!
tpoacher 4y ago
I wonder if he had a license that explicitly forbids AI training, and/or an appropriate robots.txt file, would that have strengthened his case, or not really?
pepa65 4y ago
In a subtle way, this case exposes that copyright law itself is unrighteous and fundamentally unethical. Most people have bought into the thinking behind copyright laws (as children of their time), which makes it hard to see how it could be wrong (illustrating the Stockholm -and related- syndromes). But trying to make the case where using copyrighted images as data for a neural network as being wrong, because it "feels wrong" to those whose sense of fairness is calibrated against the concepts behind copyright law, highlights that the case cannot logically be made. "But they made use of the 'copyrighted' images, they are profitting off of them" - which copyright law is supposed to protect against: only the copyright holder should derive financial benefit from the material. It appears now that is not just hard to enforce, but it ultimately doesn't make sense, it just enormously complicated the world (giving rise to a whole class of well-paid lawyers).
mock-possum 4y ago
I kinda like it. The Anti-AI crowd is way too frothy, maybe this'll be a splash of cold water.

80 points by mikece 4y ago

This is an abhorrent response from LAION, I could image such from a large corporate, but a non-profit generating 'models for democratization' (their words). I guess they think that others data should therefore be included without restriction? My hope is that this is just over zealous 3rd party IP lawyers, not their actual stance on the matter.

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patates 4y ago
LAION just adds metadata to the publicly available content. It does not have the content. Sending them a legal take-down request would use their resources for a false claim, so it makes sense for them to seek damages. Not sure if it is ethical or not, but it technically makes sense, this is all I'm saying.
srslack 4y ago
What's in question is simply a dataset with links to the images, with associated alt tags. The copyright owner came along and complained that they were violating their copyright. LAION was not. It's not an abhorrent response, it's what should be an acceptable response to having to deal with bullshit legal threats from ignorant people. If the copyright owner doesn't want their images linked to, they should take them down from the web or perform such gymnastics such as restricting their serving to their own web server that refuses to serve the images unless certain conditions are met (an HTTP referrer match, a username/password is required, etc.)
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  so if they remove it from the web, will it be removed from the dataset?
  - avereveard 4y ago
    The dataset don't contain the image it contains a link to it. Whoever uses the dataset well receive a 404 and move on with life
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  > complained that they were violating their copyright. LAION was not. Actually, thats not clear cut. Copyright isn't a binary thing, its a license with a bunch of terms that could be anything. Just because its on the internet, it doesn't mean you can do what you want with it. the chances of you getting caught and told off are very slim, but it doesn't mean its right or indeed legal. > it's what should be an acceptable response to having to deal with bullshit legal threats from ignorant people. again, its not bullshit. The person created those pictures, and has the right to distribute them as they see fit. Now, if you want to allow people to use your pictures in anyway, then you can. There is nothing stopping you. However its down to the individual to choose.
  - srslack 4y ago
    >Actually, thats not clear cut. It is almost perfectly clear cut. LAION is linking to the images, not redistributing them or storing them. A link. In a text file. To photos. Served from a web server. Presumably, the artist's web server or portfolio site hosted by a company they do business with. >The person created those pictures, and has the right to distribute them as they see fit. Yeah, they do have the right to distribute them as they see fit. So, if they don't want them linked to, they can put them behind a paywall. It's a bullshit legal threat. The artist has a complete knuckle dragging understanding of copyright and the web.
    - sharemywin 4y ago
      or move the image to another location so the link doesn't work anymore.
      - deleted 4y ago
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    - KaiserPro 4y ago
      > So, if they don't want them linked to Again its not clear cut. the license could be something like: "you are able to view these images as part of this website, anything else is prohibited" or "direct linking to these images is not allowed, these images are licensed only fir use as part of this website" or something along those lines. Now, enforcing that is pretty hard. I'm also willing to bet that he didn't make any such license. But to say its a clear cut legal slam dunk isn't correct.
- thanatropism 4y ago
  So wait. If I forget my office dooropen to my office, are you entitled to enter, make copies of documents and leave?
  - srslack 4y ago
    This is akin to going to Google, or more accurately Open Street Map since we want to keep the metaphor, and threatening them with legal action for creating a map with the address of your house on it and noting that there's a priceless mural which you originally advertised and made publicly available elsewhere. Since people can take the map, find your address on it, and take pictures of the priceless mural, which they can then use to train a monkey to incorporate the style of the mural into other murals that the monkey creates, thus violating your copyright. And the murals that the monkey produces are not copyrightable. But also, yes, in that instance, if it's public and the door's open. Your analogy isn't a good one though. I like mine better, to illustrate the hoops the artist had to jump through.
  - prepend 4y ago
    Yes, actually. If your door is open the public and your documents are laying on your desk, then I can certainly walk in and take pictures of your documents with my phone. Of course there are restrictions like if your office is already in a private building, probably not. But if it’s facing a public street and I just walk in, how would I know you didn’t leave it open all the time? If you had some “no tresspassing” “private property” signs up and the door was open, then your scenario is less likely to work. Or if your documents are locked up in a file cabinet, then I can’t break into it.
acomjean 4y ago
Reminds me of all those open source maintainers, putting their work out there only to be contacted with demands by entitled end users. Except in this case those end users want you to pay because they looked at your code..

anotherhue 4y ago

This is almost like the "penalty for false DMCA" argument that is often made. It's not clear they were wrong to do so, the photographer did cost them legal fees for something that is explicitly legal.

Archipelagia 4y ago
Is it legal though? Article mentioned forbidding the use of crawlers. Besides, it talks a lot how they only link to the image... but that's not how AI works, right? Maybe after incorporating the photo into its weights the model no longer needs the original, but it doesn't seem like an explicitly legal thing.
- Eisenstein 4y ago
  > but that's not how AI works, right? What this organization is doing is making a database of links to pictures with metadata that includes what is in the pictures. AIs can use this to train. The organization is not using it to train AI nor do they host the image.
  - Archipelagia 4y ago
    I didn't realize that, thank you

rich_sasha 4y ago

There's a lot of debate going on about whether training AI on such data is copyright infringement or not. This is of course _immediately_ important, as a pressing legal question, but also longer-term less interesting. The interesting question, IMHO, is whether we should amend copyright to deal with this! As I read it, the spirit of copyright is to give creators safeguards against their work being misused, so they aren't cagey about sharing it, in limited contexts. The public has some, limited, rights to such published work, in return. The question is, should we allow people to publish their work, while also disagreeing to it being used for AI training. I think, resoundingly, yes. The constructs of copyright just don't make sense in a world where a machine can perfectly recreate the human skill, if only it can consume all of its data. As a painter, say, it won't bother me that someone might use my paintings to learn, over the course of many years, and maybe even surpass my current level of skill - by the time they do I will be either better, or retired. But if a machine can do this over weeks or months and take my job away, sure I won't like it. The alternative IMHO is just more paywalls, as people realise they don't want to be unpaid AI trainers and labellers.

Jevon23 4y ago
Good point. The entire concept of copyright was, frankly, invented out of thin air. That’s not a bad thing, to be clear - that’s how pretty much all laws get invented. The point is just that you can’t analyze existing copyright law like it’s a sacred text that has the One True Answer to whether AI training without permission is ethical or not. If we as a society decide that we don’t want to allow it, then we can simply write a law that says that. What current laws say is irrelevant. At least in the US though, meaningful action on major legislation like this has become virtually impossible, which is why everyone is staking their hopes on the interpretation of existing copyright law.
- sharemywin 4y ago
  the problem is the cat's already kind of out of the bag. the models have already been trained and widely distributed. what do you do with existing models?

IanCal 4y ago

There's a missing step in this story it feels. He asked for them to be deleted. Their lawyers responded to say that the pictures are not stored and so they can't delete them and said if you try and make an unjustified copyright claim we can recoup the cost. He made some kind of claims in a letter that as far as I can tell isn't in the article - I guess he pushed forwards with making the claim about copyright and/or demanding they delete his pictures? What did he send? They responded saying well we told you it was unjustified and now we've incurred costs so as previously stated we're charging them to you. > while LAION continues to use his pictures. Are they using his pictures? What they have is a link to the picture, right?

actionfromafar 4y ago
The Pirate Bay guys said, "we are just linking to the pictures".
- croes 4y ago
  Valid reply
- redeux 4y ago
  This is actually a good analogy. TPB is just linking to copyrighted materials. It’s the user who is committing the infringement by downloading, using, reproducing, etc the material. In this case they’re both linking to the material and controlling the application that’s downloading, using, reproducing, etc the material. That seems like a material difference to me. (Pun intended)
- vintermann 4y ago
  Even the film industry might have had trouble getting the Pirate Bay guys if the pictures they were linking to were hosted by the film industry themselves.
- srslack 4y ago
  If we want to go down the rabbit hole where a hyperlink in a text file to a publicly accessible copyrighted photo on an artist's portfolio site/web server is "copyright infringement", or more accurately "assisting in making copyrighted content available", where the artist themselves is the one making those images is available publicly, then we're officially in clown world.

rdez6173 4y ago

This gets into hairy territory of derivative works. I think this will be an uphill battle for content creators until laws are updated for the new state of the art. Prior to the unfettered access to generative AI, derivative works took time and effort comparable to the original. Now, derivatives can be created en masse and in seconds. Where's the line? What's fair use now? These questions will likely be answered in a court or by legislative bodies. In the meantime, protect your images, paywall high res versions, watermark thumbnails, etc. Also, if you're going up against a company? Lawyer up.

Archipelagia 4y ago

It kind of seems like an intimidation tactic. Not too many artists will be willing to claim copyright infringement, if they can get hit with a suit in response. And in the meantime, they cab happily continue training their model on whatever they want.

gwd 4y ago
On the other hand, assuming that the following are true: * The activity "has been expressly permitted by the European legislator" * The person in question continued to threaten / press legal action Doesn't it make sense to be able to ask for damages? IOW, shouldn't we be intimidating people against making baseless legal threats? Obviously if either of the above two are false, then the legal firm in question are in violation of professional ethics and need to be hauled up before the German equivalent of the Bar Association.
prepend 4y ago
This is like people filing bogus dcma takedowns on YouTube videos. The photographer doesn’t have a valid claim, yet continues to file claims knowing that he doesn’t. What other remedy does the site have? People can’t train modes on whatever they want. They can train models on whatever is legally available. If I set up a photography site and post images for the entire world to see, then the entire world can see them. Including model trainers.
- anon84873628 4y ago
  Well if a work is copyrighted does that make it "legally available" for training models? Does the answer depend on to what degree the model can end up reproducing the work?
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    Those are indeed open legal questions which are yet to be litigated. The answer is not clear cut!
- Waterluvian 4y ago

Borrible 4y ago

Someone reddit on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35685497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35685497

xdavidliu 4y ago
I don’t understand your comment.

mnbn 4y ago

Robert Kneschke asked for his work to be removed from the training data, and LAION replied that they only maintain links to the work. That is a non-answer that didn't work out well for the Pirate Bay. The intimidation tactics are despicable, but that is expected for "non-profit" that pretends to work for the "democratization of $X".

chmod775 4y ago
The pirate bay trial happened in a different jurisdiction and the jurisdiction in this case doesn't have a concept of legal precedent anyways.
brookst 4y ago
That's a terrible comparison, unless you're asserting that the photographer's own website was infringing his copyright, so LIAON has the same vicarious liability that TPB (arguably) did. In which case, I guess he should sue himself. That's the nonsense world this silly claim leads to. The open web depends on being able to freely link to content. Don't let an emotional response to AI turn you against by hyperlinks.
Kim_Bruning 4y ago
There's something to be said for not pissing people off. Certain other search engines would still accept the filetype:torrent search key for the longest time after, with no problems whatsoever. (Currently doesn't seem to work anymore, mostly because I think people switched to magnet links).

hermannj314 4y ago

Text of the law referenced: (4) Where the notification is unjustified or ineffective, the person notified may demand reimbursement of the necessary expenses incurred in respect of defending their rights, unless the person giving notification was not able to recognise at the point in time when notification was made that the notification was unjustified. So it seems the notified party doesn't have to demand any money, but if they do so then only necessary costs can be demanded. I find it hard to believe that $1000 (or whatever) was a necessary cost. Otherwise, you could create companies that operate on the legal fringe that pretend to "serve humanity" when the real MO of your org is to profit from charging legal fees to regular people confused about the law. This is a new type of patent troll. Addendum - to clarify my point, I am arguing that someone is almost definitely profiting handsomely from charging $1000 to send an email saying "nope, we still aren't infringing" and that "necessary costs" (as required by law) probably doesn't include such leeway for egregious profit taking. Otherwise, you create a huge moral hazard that silences dissent under threat of arbitrarily inflated legal fees. Not a German resident and not a lawyer though.

prepend 4y ago
$1000 is an hour (maybe two) of attorneys time to draft the response. It was incurred after the photographer received a “free” letter saying “this is legal if you pursue we are legally entitled to recoup fees from you, so please don’t.”
- hermannj314 4y ago
  I don't doubt they found someone willing to charge that rate. Very convenient for them. But you won't me convince me that such a routine letter required 2 hours of work at what is probably the top 0.1% wage rate in the nation as a "necessary" cost. A company that routinely crawls millions of websites can't send a form letter for less than $1000 a pop? Don't buy it. Scam.
  - ISL 4y ago
    Attorney-time isn't just for drafting simple documents. It is also for knowing which documents to send and when.

FinnKuhn 4y ago

As I understand it current EU law (both the AI team and the photographer are in Germany so this seems relevant) explicitly allows data mining (for example to train AI) if that data is available online and no machine-readable reservation of rights has been made, but please correct me if I am incorrect in my believe. The German law Podcast "Rechtsbelehrung" also has an Episode [2] on copyright law and AI that touches on this topic and might be interesting for any German planning on using AI. > ...In the case of content that has been made publicly available online, it should only be considered appropriate to reserve those rights by the use of machine-readable means, including metadata and terms and conditions of a website or a service... [1] [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32019L0790 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A... [2] https://rechtsbelehrung.com/113-ki/ https://rechtsbelehrung.com/113-ki/ or on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sHjcmwqL1hUETKwINtHKu?si=7399d76362d74b47 https://open.spotify.com/episode/0sHjcmwqL1hUETKwINtHKu?si=7...

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prepend 4y ago

I don’t like these forms of half-truth articles. The headline, and really article leaves out the important step of “photographer filed bogus copyright claims” that’s a very important step in the middle. This article assumes the audience is already on the author’s side so seems to just stir up existing emotions and beliefs by telling an inaccurate story.

jeffrallen 4y ago
He filed a claim he legitimately considered valid, and persisted when told (by the target if his claim, not a court) that his claim was invalid. Then as retribution for persisting, the target of his claim invoiced him. That's retribution aimed at creating a chilling effect and they deserve every bit of criticism they are getting here and more. If they want to use this as a test case to redefine copyright law to mean something favorable to their shareholders, fine. Good luck to them. But attempting to intimidate your adversary with fines is just totally uncool. (And, frankly, a stupid strategy.)

zepolen 4y ago

So based on this, it's perfectly okay to listen to a lawyer's advice and then refuse to pay them right? The sound waves produced were briefly processed by my brain and no longer 'exist'.

awegio 4y ago
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londons_explore 4y ago

This photographer contacted the wrong person. LAION is a list of links to images. LAION itself does not store the images. Therefore they are claiming they had no part in any AI use/misuse. They also committed no copyright infringement in what they did (which was to download an image, verify that it was in fact an image, and add it to their list). However, since LAION had to retain a lawyer to deal with this (incorrect) request, they now want to be paid for that lawyers time - which seems reasonable. Other parties used the LAION list to train AI models - and those parties are who the photographer should have made claims against in the first place.

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Retric 4y ago
In the law intent matters. LAION is aiding and abetting copyright infringement just as much as the Pirate Bay does. They very vigorously don’t want to be held responsible for this, but it’s their letters don’t have any specific legal weight.
- Kim_Bruning 4y ago
  Potentially it can be argued that LAION is aiding in copyright infringement, but there is a very strong argument that no copyright infringement is occurring at all. (With one of the many interesting twists being that AI output is considered PD in the US) My lawyer would say this is a "legally interesting situation": by which he means that the situation legally and ethically very unclear, and lawyers can earn a lot of money sorting it out.
  - rubyron 4y ago
    Something you never want to hear from your lawyer, or doctor, is that your case is interesting.

roxgib 4y ago

On the whole I like the idea that someone sending bogus legal demands has to bear some costs, as doubtful as it is that they'd actually pursue him for costs.

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roberthahn 4y ago

Some countries (I know Canada is one, Germany, where the artist works, is possibly another) have the concept of moral rights enshrined into law. Boiled down, this means that anyone who wants to use an artist’s work in some context must get permission and/or be prepared to compensate the artist (ianal but I did study copyright law for artists in Canada) The canonical example Canadians refer to is the Eaton Center adorning Michael Snow’s sculpture Flight Stop with ribbons over Christmas. Snow sued the Eaton Centre for compromising the integrity of his art and won. If a similar mechanism exists in German law (my quick research suggests it does) then the artist may well have an argument to make about AI comprising the integrity of his work.

DiabloD3 4y ago
As far as I can tell, LAION is effectively a phone book. This would be like suing someone because they made a browser bookmark saying that was piracy.

zmgsabst 4y ago

This isn’t as clear to me as it is to others for two reasons: 1. The alt-text/caption from the original source is copyrighted and they outright copy it. 2. Facilitating copyright infringement is often illegal, and it’s clear that LAION put together this resource to facilitate automatic copying of the works for unauthorized use — and then encouraged other people to do exactly that.

Yizahi 4y ago

NNs are basically working as a kind of laundromat for digital artifacts. They replace a single copy operation with a multiple transform operations all leading to the same intended result. I wonder how soon we would see NNs which can produce bit perfect copy of the trained dataset on demand. And after that where will we draw the line? Imagine a NN which produces bit perfect copy of the image and then changes 1 pixel in it to make it different. Is it an original art? No? Well, what if we change 2 pixels then? Still not original? What about 3 pixels?.. The amount of popcorn to be consumed watching all these fancy new legal battles will be astronomical :)

Kim_Bruning 4y ago
I'm not sure about bit perfect, but very similar images has already happened at times, is considered a bug, and newer models do their utmost best to avoid it. These days -under normal circumstances- it is highly unlikely to occur. Either way the actual model(s) themselves don't actually store images. (A single SD model based off of (among other things) LAION fits on a single USB stick. AFAICT It takes up several orders less space than the LAION URL LIST, let alone the images themselves )
- Yizahi 4y ago
  Yes, I read the PR statements about recent NNs. But what if some new company did it intentionally? So for example, starting from today: - Currently NNs are in a grey legal area all over the world because nobody knows if so called "training" is a copying or a fair use. - Lets imagine that NN corpos would win and legalize all NN training as fair use, disregarding any copyrights. - Now this hypothetical company appears which has a NN producing copies of original training data on demand. When confronted with a question they simply wave it away saying that all "training" of NNs is legal, so they aren't breaking any law. And when perfect copies start to annoy too many people they fine tune their model to produce almost perfect copies. Because there is no definitive line in the art separating a copy from original art.
  - shultays 4y ago
    What if a company used those NNs to train kill bots and used them to kill children? Can somebody please think of the children here?!

tpoacher 4y ago

I wonder if he had a license that explicitly forbids AI training, and/or an appropriate robots.txt file, would that have strengthened his case, or not really?

pepa65 4y ago

In a subtle way, this case exposes that copyright law itself is unrighteous and fundamentally unethical. Most people have bought into the thinking behind copyright laws (as children of their time), which makes it hard to see how it could be wrong (illustrating the Stockholm -and related- syndromes). But trying to make the case where using copyrighted images as data for a neural network as being wrong, because it "feels wrong" to those whose sense of fairness is calibrated against the concepts behind copyright law, highlights that the case cannot logically be made. "But they made use of the 'copyrighted' images, they are profitting off of them" - which copyright law is supposed to protect against: only the copyright holder should derive financial benefit from the material. It appears now that is not just hard to enforce, but it ultimately doesn't make sense, it just enormously complicated the world (giving rise to a whole class of well-paid lawyers).

mock-possum 4y ago

I kinda like it. The Anti-AI crowd is way too frothy, maybe this'll be a splash of cold water.