5 ms·

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 "c

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.

Riverheart 3y ago
It would be more like abetting copyright infringement by making it easier for scrappers to find content to train their models on. LAION isn’t posting a single link on their twitter account for their followers. It’s clear what this dataset is being used for. Artists put content on the internet so you can look at it and share it with your friends and say “wow cool art” not so you can run it through an art generating model to put them out of job. That we never anticipated this possibility means you call fallback on the “fair use” argument but legal does not mean ethical, especially when the law has yet to catch up to changing times.
- srslack 3y ago
  That assumes that using copyrighted works to train AI is copyright infringement. And that simply pasting a link to a publicly available file that the artist themselves made available is "abetting." I'm betting that using copyrighted works to train "AI" is fair use, just like a human learning from a photo would be fair use.
  - Riverheart 3y ago
    You’re right, I can’t claim that it is. I understand that the models do not contain the original work. But they are not simply sharing a single link and the “intent” is different. I personally feel that we should not treat human learning and AI learning the same. Unlike humans, the AI is essentially immortal and infinitely copiable.
Retric 3y ago
The issue isn’t having a link the issue is selling a dataset to people with the intent for them to preform copyright infringement. Selling pipes, cellphones, igniters, and black powder is perfectly legal. Selling pre assembled pipe bombs filled with black powder and a remote detonators is going to very quickly get you into a great deal of legal trouble.
- srslack 3y ago
  1. They're not selling a dataset, it's a public dataset. 2. The artist made the photo publicly available. 3. Read this opinion and come back to the conversation with a more level head instead of making analogies to promoting terrorism: https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/53/5/notes/files/53-5_Gillotte.pdf https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/53/5/notes/files/53...
  - Retric 3y ago
    First the actual use for training AI isn’t needed for copyright protection to kick in, simply downloading his images to build the training set is already copyright infringement. 2. The artist disabled crawling on their website so it’s accessible but not fully available. 3. Your link says many things that aren’t settled in terms of US law but rather the options of the author. “even if infringement occurs during machine learning, training AI with copyrighted works would likely be excused by the fair use doctrine.” That’s a lot of possibilities not actual guarantees. However, it ignores the largest issue namely if the output of these AI’s are all simply derivative works.
    - srslack 3y ago
      2. robots.txt is not legally enforceable. It's a gentleman's agreement, a widely accepted standard to codify into a scraper for it to observe and respect. 3. That's why it's called an opinion. No shit. Maybe instead of talking about promoting terrorism, you should have a level head and talk about fair use.
      - 3y ago
noobermin 3y ago
Is sharing someone's private location information on the internet illegal[0] or immoral? Because it is just linking to their home address, it isn't harming or doing anything physically to the person. There are obvious examples that demonstrate this type of slippery slope argument is equivocation on some level, linking to something can be seen as an invitation for people to copy it and violate copyright. [0] The answer at least in the US is the act itself is likely not illegal although it can be construed to lead to a crime, such as incitement.
- srslack 3y ago
  You have a human you want to train to paint. You download an image of a painting and give it to the human to train it on, amongst many. The human, in the future, may paint something that has vaguely or substantially similar qualities to the original painting. Has copyright infringement occurred in this instance? No: the downloading of the image for study in this particular instance is for sure, 100%, fair use protected by copyright law. Now, let's try something similar. You have a monkey you want to train to paint. You download an image of a painting and give it to the monkey to train it on, amongst many. The monkey, in the future, may paint something that has vaguely or substantially similar qualities to the original painting. Has copyright infringement occurred in this instance? Let's go further: You have a neural network you want to train to paint. You download an image of a painting and give it to the neural network to train it on, amongst many. The neural network, in the future, may paint something that has vaguely or substantially similar qualities to the original painting. Has copyright infringement occurred when that happens? I find it hilarious that in this thread, instead of asking the question of whether this is fair use, multiple posters have jumped to comparing this to thievery, promoting terrorism and posting of private information as an analogy to harm.
  - polotics 3y ago
    Well good luck trying to teach your monkey to paint. Let me propose a simple vocabulary refresher: feeding into an human eye is "showing", feeding into a machine is "copying". calling this copying "training" is nice and cute, but training is what you do as a human. As submarines do not swim, LLM's do not train: they copy information and extract similarities inside a neural net. As for your mention of various "hilarious" scarecrows, it demonstrates that you know your logic is on shaky grounds.

Riverheart 3y ago

It would be more like abetting copyright infringement by making it easier for scrappers to find content to train their models on. LAION isn’t posting a single link on their twitter account for their followers. It’s clear what this dataset is being used for. Artists put content on the internet so you can look at it and share it with your friends and say “wow cool art” not so you can run it through an art generating model to put them out of job. That we never anticipated this possibility means you call fallback on the “fair use” argument but legal does not mean ethical, especially when the law has yet to catch up to changing times.

srslack 3y ago
That assumes that using copyrighted works to train AI is copyright infringement. And that simply pasting a link to a publicly available file that the artist themselves made available is "abetting." I'm betting that using copyrighted works to train "AI" is fair use, just like a human learning from a photo would be fair use.
- Riverheart 3y ago
  You’re right, I can’t claim that it is. I understand that the models do not contain the original work. But they are not simply sharing a single link and the “intent” is different. I personally feel that we should not treat human learning and AI learning the same. Unlike humans, the AI is essentially immortal and infinitely copiable.

Retric 3y ago

The issue isn’t having a link the issue is selling a dataset to people with the intent for them to preform copyright infringement. Selling pipes, cellphones, igniters, and black powder is perfectly legal. Selling pre assembled pipe bombs filled with black powder and a remote detonators is going to very quickly get you into a great deal of legal trouble.

srslack 3y ago
1. They're not selling a dataset, it's a public dataset. 2. The artist made the photo publicly available. 3. Read this opinion and come back to the conversation with a more level head instead of making analogies to promoting terrorism: https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/53/5/notes/files/53-5_Gillotte.pdf https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/53/5/notes/files/53...
- Retric 3y ago
  First the actual use for training AI isn’t needed for copyright protection to kick in, simply downloading his images to build the training set is already copyright infringement. 2. The artist disabled crawling on their website so it’s accessible but not fully available. 3. Your link says many things that aren’t settled in terms of US law but rather the options of the author. “even if infringement occurs during machine learning, training AI with copyrighted works would likely be excused by the fair use doctrine.” That’s a lot of possibilities not actual guarantees. However, it ignores the largest issue namely if the output of these AI’s are all simply derivative works.
  - srslack 3y ago
    2. robots.txt is not legally enforceable. It's a gentleman's agreement, a widely accepted standard to codify into a scraper for it to observe and respect. 3. That's why it's called an opinion. No shit. Maybe instead of talking about promoting terrorism, you should have a level head and talk about fair use.
    - 3y ago

noobermin 3y ago

Is sharing someone's private location information on the internet illegal[0] or immoral? Because it is just linking to their home address, it isn't harming or doing anything physically to the person. There are obvious examples that demonstrate this type of slippery slope argument is equivocation on some level, linking to something can be seen as an invitation for people to copy it and violate copyright. [0] The answer at least in the US is the act itself is likely not illegal although it can be construed to lead to a crime, such as incitement.

srslack 3y ago
You have a human you want to train to paint. You download an image of a painting and give it to the human to train it on, amongst many. The human, in the future, may paint something that has vaguely or substantially similar qualities to the original painting. Has copyright infringement occurred in this instance? No: the downloading of the image for study in this particular instance is for sure, 100%, fair use protected by copyright law. Now, let's try something similar. You have a monkey you want to train to paint. You download an image of a painting and give it to the monkey to train it on, amongst many. The monkey, in the future, may paint something that has vaguely or substantially similar qualities to the original painting. Has copyright infringement occurred in this instance? Let's go further: You have a neural network you want to train to paint. You download an image of a painting and give it to the neural network to train it on, amongst many. The neural network, in the future, may paint something that has vaguely or substantially similar qualities to the original painting. Has copyright infringement occurred when that happens? I find it hilarious that in this thread, instead of asking the question of whether this is fair use, multiple posters have jumped to comparing this to thievery, promoting terrorism and posting of private information as an analogy to harm.
- polotics 3y ago
  Well good luck trying to teach your monkey to paint. Let me propose a simple vocabulary refresher: feeding into an human eye is "showing", feeding into a machine is "copying". calling this copying "training" is nice and cute, but training is what you do as a human. As submarines do not swim, LLM's do not train: they copy information and extract similarities inside a neural net. As for your mention of various "hilarious" scarecrows, it demonstrates that you know your logic is on shaky grounds.