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Japan will not enforce copyright laws on AI data training, says minister

17 points by mikece 3y ago

htrp 3y ago
This is the worst (or best) version of Prisoners Dilemma All it takes is one G20 country to allow this to happen. And because of the potential upside of having a homegrown AI industry, it's almost guaranteed that someone will choose to betray.
- JoeAltmaier 3y ago
  I remember when three Silicon Valley companies were going to announce a new standard Unix. The announcement day came, all three announced their deviations from the standard to make their version best.
belugacat 3y ago
Interesting, given how stringent Japanese copyright is otherwise. I'd bet large Japanese media companies lobbied against that (eg Nintendo surely doesn't want AI nets able to make Mario/Zelda/etc art indistinguishable from source material). Curious what ultimately led them to reach that conclusion.
- gedy 3y ago
  My guess is this is to drum up support for even stricter laws. "Nope nothing we can do to stop this with current laws" etc
- unsignedint 3y ago
  Partly due to the stringent Japanese copyright laws that hindered their progress in technology development, such as search engines, they found themselves falling behind and allowing outsiders to gain control. Undoubtedly, they wanted to avoid repeating that mistake, which likely explains their current situation.
soraminazuki 3y ago
This is a rehash of a previous article, which is a complete lie. I summarized what the original Japanese source says a few days back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147226 Slides published by the Japanese government shows that they're evaluating how to deal with copyright and AI. Their view is that current laws has few (but not zero) restrictions when it comes to training AI. However, strict copyright restrictions do apply to AI generated works even today. If it's proven that an AI-generated work is similar to or based on existing copyrighted material, that would be regarded as a violation and criminal charges may follow. Here's the slide (in Japanese): https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/ai/ai_team/3kai/shiryo.pdf https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/ai/ai_team/3kai/shiryo.pdf
- iamevn 3y ago
  It's disappointing to see reporting based on machine translations. Unfortunately it's not at all uncommon and many people will accept the gibberish mtl outputs at face value.

17 points by mikece 3y ago

htrp 3y ago

This is the worst (or best) version of Prisoners Dilemma All it takes is one G20 country to allow this to happen. And because of the potential upside of having a homegrown AI industry, it's almost guaranteed that someone will choose to betray.

JoeAltmaier 3y ago
I remember when three Silicon Valley companies were going to announce a new standard Unix. The announcement day came, all three announced their deviations from the standard to make their version best.

belugacat 3y ago

Interesting, given how stringent Japanese copyright is otherwise. I'd bet large Japanese media companies lobbied against that (eg Nintendo surely doesn't want AI nets able to make Mario/Zelda/etc art indistinguishable from source material). Curious what ultimately led them to reach that conclusion.

gedy 3y ago
My guess is this is to drum up support for even stricter laws. "Nope nothing we can do to stop this with current laws" etc
unsignedint 3y ago
Partly due to the stringent Japanese copyright laws that hindered their progress in technology development, such as search engines, they found themselves falling behind and allowing outsiders to gain control. Undoubtedly, they wanted to avoid repeating that mistake, which likely explains their current situation.

soraminazuki 3y ago

This is a rehash of a previous article, which is a complete lie. I summarized what the original Japanese source says a few days back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36147226 Slides published by the Japanese government shows that they're evaluating how to deal with copyright and AI. Their view is that current laws has few (but not zero) restrictions when it comes to training AI. However, strict copyright restrictions do apply to AI generated works even today. If it's proven that an AI-generated work is similar to or based on existing copyrighted material, that would be regarded as a violation and criminal charges may follow. Here's the slide (in Japanese): https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/ai/ai_team/3kai/shiryo.pdf https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/ai/ai_team/3kai/shiryo.pdf

iamevn 3y ago
It's disappointing to see reporting based on machine translations. Unfortunately it's not at all uncommon and many people will accept the gibberish mtl outputs at face value.