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I find this a super interesting topic: My prediction is that we will eventually see a huge backlash against this copyright whitewashing. I think the current sta

I find this a super interesting topic: My prediction is that we will eventually see a huge backlash against this copyright whitewashing. I think the current status quo is unacceptable but I fear the upcoming legislation will throw out the baby with the bathwater.

proamdev123 3y ago
What is “copyright whitewashing”? I’ve never heard that phrase before.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  they mean laundering IP theft
  - weinzierl 3y ago
    Exactly, laundering was what I meant, I mistranslated from German.
- ethbr0 3y ago
  Imagine a machine that takes in copyrighted works and, with the press of a button, outputs works which are substantially similar but not copyrighted. Copyright whitewashing. (I.e. pointing to your black box and claiming it's a clean room)
  - numpad0 3y ago
    But to reiterate existing talking points, using copyrighted works for AI weight generation is exactly the same thing as how human artists learn skills just because some people refer to the process as “learning” or “training”, and any counterarguments to this are meaningless fearmongering outdated Luddite rages, besides such uses are fair uses and transformative uses and explicitly allowed in some jurisdictions under specific terms not allowing blanket rights to regurgitation so it’s all lawful and financially fully exploitable. forwardslash sierra.
  - brookst 3y ago
    So, like Terry Brooks then?
  - chii 3y ago
    > which are substantially similar but not copyrighted. if it's considered substantially similar, then why is it not copyrighted? The difference must also be substantial. Therefore, it should be acceptable as a new works, rather than a derivative works.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- weinzierl 3y ago
  Actually, I only realize now, that it is a mistranslation from my mother tongue. What I meant to say is probably better expressed by 'content laundering' analogous to 'money laundering'.
sfifs 3y ago
One reading of the latest US Supreme Court ruling on the Andy Warhol estate's case is that the current legal frameworks already prevent this. The ruling focused on what was the commercial use case, not on what was the degree of transformation in Andy Warhol's artwork. The opinion appears to say that as the Prince painting was not explicitly licensed for the commercial use case of reproduction in magazine story and could conceivably have been substituted for the purpose of printing in the magazine to accompany a story by the original artist's photograph, it violated copyright. There was even an explicit distinction drawn between this work and the Campbell Soup paintings which were characterized as a social commentary and therefore fair use. There are likely class action lawsuits brewing based on this ruling because today when commercial artists in agencies create layouts, they generally license images & artwork.
- judge2020 3y ago
  The way I read that, it was only ruled in favor because they were directed to recreate x photo with some changes. If the Scream painting were still copyrighted, it sounds like telling an AI to "create Edvard Munch's The Scream just with lighter colors" would be a copyright violation - but something like "create a new painting in the style of Edvard Munch" would still fall under "artists can't copyright a style".
  - bjt 3y ago
    The output isn't the only infringement, arguably. You could also argue (and I expect good lawyers will), that the numeric representation of the artist's works inside the model is already an infringing copy. (Just like the JPEG bytes stored on a server, even without them being blitted to a screen.)
    - zirgs 3y ago
      Models don't store any artist's works. They are way too small to do that.
      - seanhunter 3y ago
xyzzy123 3y ago
In terms of actions, the US has gone as far as to kneecap a competitor's chip industry and restrict their GPU access. I reckon that behind closed doors there will be a strong sense that any kind of regulation that impedes AI development would not be in the national interest.
taneq 3y ago
It still seems odd to me that the standard advice for "how do I avoid copyright issues with example code" is "rewrite it in your own style", and we're happy with this, but now that we have an algorithm that can do this (using a stupendous amount of calculation, it's not like these things learn for free... yet...) this is suddenly somehow cheating. I think the protestations about copyright aren't entirely honest. People aren't mad that LLMs are "stealing their work", they're scared that LLMs are copying their ability to produce such work.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  Its some of both. Stable Diffusion will rarely blatently copy a work, as it has no distinction between creative reconstruction and plagiarism. I think this applies to LLMs too, its just much harder for human brains to detect. At the same time, the artists and such who claim any of its output is illegal are being hypocritical. Nothing is made in a vacuum.
brookst 3y ago
Do you think people should be allowed to learn from books we read, music we hear, etc? If we’re extending copyright to be not only about reproduction of the work, but also providing part of a large knowledge base for future creators to build upon… why does it matter if it’s a neural network or human being doing the learning? I personally hope the copyright maximalists fail, because if they succeed in making “learning from a copyrighted work” without paying illegal, we end up in a dark place indeed.
- sillysaurusx 3y ago
  I think AI aren’t people, and that they’re not even AI: it’s machine learning, and ML is a subset of AI that we haven’t really broken out of. ML is a tool, and asking whether ML should be allowed to learn on copyrighted work is equivalent to asking whether your computer is allowed to contain a copyrighted work: “it depends.” I’m in favor of getting rid of copyright entirely, since it’s become a far cry from what it was intended to be, but we have to acknowledge both sides of the arguments in order to proceed.
  - throwaway2037 3y ago
    I’m in favor of getting rid of copyright entirely This is extreme to me. What is your proposed replacement?
    - JieJie 3y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives
- spacephysics 3y ago
  I agree we should either get rid of, or very least overhaul copyright. However, the line in the sand I draw is giving any kind of human-based rights to ML or AI. People already are thinking ChatGPT is close to human intelligence, and we know we haven’t even seen what’s truly possible. My fear is the typical oversimplification of complex technology will lend us to giving human rights to programs, and lead to a whole host of issues. We need to stop anthropomorphizing technology until we really hit a philosophical quandary. Giving in too early will just give power to less-than-polished tech and either slow down research, or further drain a country’s resources
torginus 3y ago
I would argue if the fair use argument holds up - that the most substantial value of these models lies in their training dataset. It would be morally reprehensible for anyone to block training open models based on the data provided by the public at large. Such legalization would be totally unacceptable.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Why would that be morally reprehensible? Is it not as "morally reprehensible" that I have to restrict my use of the internet now in order to avoid having my works used in that way? That reduces the amount of information available to everybody, after all.
yard2010 3y ago
Or maybe, maybe the people in charge will wake up, do their job, accept the challenge and make modern cc laws? Oh forget about it we will forever live in the 90'
_ea1k 3y ago
> I find this a super interesting topic: My prediction is that we will eventually see a huge backlash against this copyright whitewashing. I think the current status quo is unacceptable but I fear the upcoming legislation will throw out the baby with the bathwater. Worse, they have the potential to push development toward countries that do not have such laws.

proamdev123 3y ago

What is “copyright whitewashing”? I’ve never heard that phrase before.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
they mean laundering IP theft
- weinzierl 3y ago
  Exactly, laundering was what I meant, I mistranslated from German.
ethbr0 3y ago
Imagine a machine that takes in copyrighted works and, with the press of a button, outputs works which are substantially similar but not copyrighted. Copyright whitewashing. (I.e. pointing to your black box and claiming it's a clean room)
- numpad0 3y ago
  But to reiterate existing talking points, using copyrighted works for AI weight generation is exactly the same thing as how human artists learn skills just because some people refer to the process as “learning” or “training”, and any counterarguments to this are meaningless fearmongering outdated Luddite rages, besides such uses are fair uses and transformative uses and explicitly allowed in some jurisdictions under specific terms not allowing blanket rights to regurgitation so it’s all lawful and financially fully exploitable. forwardslash sierra.
- brookst 3y ago
  So, like Terry Brooks then?
- chii 3y ago
  > which are substantially similar but not copyrighted. if it's considered substantially similar, then why is it not copyrighted? The difference must also be substantial. Therefore, it should be acceptable as a new works, rather than a derivative works.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
weinzierl 3y ago
Actually, I only realize now, that it is a mistranslation from my mother tongue. What I meant to say is probably better expressed by 'content laundering' analogous to 'money laundering'.

sfifs 3y ago

One reading of the latest US Supreme Court ruling on the Andy Warhol estate's case is that the current legal frameworks already prevent this. The ruling focused on what was the commercial use case, not on what was the degree of transformation in Andy Warhol's artwork. The opinion appears to say that as the Prince painting was not explicitly licensed for the commercial use case of reproduction in magazine story and could conceivably have been substituted for the purpose of printing in the magazine to accompany a story by the original artist's photograph, it violated copyright. There was even an explicit distinction drawn between this work and the Campbell Soup paintings which were characterized as a social commentary and therefore fair use. There are likely class action lawsuits brewing based on this ruling because today when commercial artists in agencies create layouts, they generally license images & artwork.

judge2020 3y ago
The way I read that, it was only ruled in favor because they were directed to recreate x photo with some changes. If the Scream painting were still copyrighted, it sounds like telling an AI to "create Edvard Munch's The Scream just with lighter colors" would be a copyright violation - but something like "create a new painting in the style of Edvard Munch" would still fall under "artists can't copyright a style".
- bjt 3y ago
  The output isn't the only infringement, arguably. You could also argue (and I expect good lawyers will), that the numeric representation of the artist's works inside the model is already an infringing copy. (Just like the JPEG bytes stored on a server, even without them being blitted to a screen.)
  - zirgs 3y ago
    Models don't store any artist's works. They are way too small to do that.
    - seanhunter 3y ago

xyzzy123 3y ago

In terms of actions, the US has gone as far as to kneecap a competitor's chip industry and restrict their GPU access. I reckon that behind closed doors there will be a strong sense that any kind of regulation that impedes AI development would not be in the national interest.

taneq 3y ago

It still seems odd to me that the standard advice for "how do I avoid copyright issues with example code" is "rewrite it in your own style", and we're happy with this, but now that we have an algorithm that can do this (using a stupendous amount of calculation, it's not like these things learn for free... yet...) this is suddenly somehow cheating. I think the protestations about copyright aren't entirely honest. People aren't mad that LLMs are "stealing their work", they're scared that LLMs are copying their ability to produce such work.

brucethemoose2 3y ago
Its some of both. Stable Diffusion will rarely blatently copy a work, as it has no distinction between creative reconstruction and plagiarism. I think this applies to LLMs too, its just much harder for human brains to detect. At the same time, the artists and such who claim any of its output is illegal are being hypocritical. Nothing is made in a vacuum.

brookst 3y ago

Do you think people should be allowed to learn from books we read, music we hear, etc? If we’re extending copyright to be not only about reproduction of the work, but also providing part of a large knowledge base for future creators to build upon… why does it matter if it’s a neural network or human being doing the learning? I personally hope the copyright maximalists fail, because if they succeed in making “learning from a copyrighted work” without paying illegal, we end up in a dark place indeed.

sillysaurusx 3y ago
I think AI aren’t people, and that they’re not even AI: it’s machine learning, and ML is a subset of AI that we haven’t really broken out of. ML is a tool, and asking whether ML should be allowed to learn on copyrighted work is equivalent to asking whether your computer is allowed to contain a copyrighted work: “it depends.” I’m in favor of getting rid of copyright entirely, since it’s become a far cry from what it was intended to be, but we have to acknowledge both sides of the arguments in order to proceed.
- throwaway2037 3y ago
  I’m in favor of getting rid of copyright entirely This is extreme to me. What is your proposed replacement?
  - JieJie 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_alternatives
spacephysics 3y ago
I agree we should either get rid of, or very least overhaul copyright. However, the line in the sand I draw is giving any kind of human-based rights to ML or AI. People already are thinking ChatGPT is close to human intelligence, and we know we haven’t even seen what’s truly possible. My fear is the typical oversimplification of complex technology will lend us to giving human rights to programs, and lead to a whole host of issues. We need to stop anthropomorphizing technology until we really hit a philosophical quandary. Giving in too early will just give power to less-than-polished tech and either slow down research, or further drain a country’s resources

torginus 3y ago

I would argue if the fair use argument holds up - that the most substantial value of these models lies in their training dataset. It would be morally reprehensible for anyone to block training open models based on the data provided by the public at large. Such legalization would be totally unacceptable.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
JohnFen 3y ago
Why would that be morally reprehensible? Is it not as "morally reprehensible" that I have to restrict my use of the internet now in order to avoid having my works used in that way? That reduces the amount of information available to everybody, after all.

yard2010 3y ago

Or maybe, maybe the people in charge will wake up, do their job, accept the challenge and make modern cc laws? Oh forget about it we will forever live in the 90'

_ea1k 3y ago

> I find this a super interesting topic: My prediction is that we will eventually see a huge backlash against this copyright whitewashing. I think the current status quo is unacceptable but I fear the upcoming legislation will throw out the baby with the bathwater. Worse, they have the potential to push development toward countries that do not have such laws.