3 ms·

We don’t actually know that it’s not legal. The copyrightability of model weights is an open legal question right now afaik.

by rvcdbn 3y ago

tensor 3y ago
It doesn't have to be copyrightable to be intellectual property.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Patents? Trademark? What do you mean?
  - Rexxar 3y ago
    Maybe this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right but it doesn't exist in every countries.
- twbarr 3y ago
  No, but what is it? Not your lawyer, not legal advice, but it's not a trade secret, they've given it to researchers. It's not a trademark because it's not an origin identifier. The structure might be patentable, but the weights won't be. It's certainly not a mask work. It might have been a contract violation for the guy who redistributed it, but I'm not a party to that contract.
  - Art9681 3y ago
    I'm going to play devil's advocate and state that a lot of what you mentioned will be relevant to a tiny part of the world that has the means to enforce this. The law will be forced to change as a response to AI. Many debates will be had. Many crap laws will be made by people grasping at straws but it's too late. Putting red tape around this technology puts that nation at a technological disadvantage. I would go as far as labeling a national security threat. I'm calling it now. Based on what I see today. Europe will position itself as a leader in AI legislation, and its economy will give way to the nations that want to enter the race and grab a chunk of the new economy. It's a Catch 22. You either gimp your own technological progress, or start a war with a nation that does not. Pretty sure Russia and China don't really care about the ethics behind it. There are plenty of nations capable enough in the same boat. Now what? OK, so in some hypothetical future China has an uncensored model with free reign over the internet. The US and Europe has banned this. What's stopping anyone from running the Chinese model? There isn't enough money in the world to enforce software laws. How long have they tried to take down The Pirate Bay? Pretty much every permutation of every software that's ever been banned can be found and ran with impunity if you have the technical knowledge to do so. No law exists that can prevent that. If it did, OpenAI wouldn't exist.
    - rileymat2 3y ago
      > How long have they tried to take down The Pirate Bay? Pretty much every permutation of every software that's ever been banned can be found and ran with impunity if you have the technical knowledge to do so. No law exists that can prevent that. Forms of this argument get tossed out a lot. Laws don’t prevent, they hopefully limit. Murder has been illegal for a long time, it still happens.
      - szundi 3y ago
        You missed the point: these laws are not limiting other countries, only those who introduce them. Self-limiting, giving advantage to others.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > It might have been a contract violation for the guy who redistributed it, but I'm not a party to that contract. Wouldn’t that violate the Nemo dat quod non habet legal principle and so you cannot hide behind the claim that you weren’t party to the contact? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet
    - zarzavat 3y ago
      No because the weights are not IP protected by the entity that trained the model, so they cannot prevent you to redistribute it because it doesn’t belong to them in any legal sense. GPU cycles alone don’t make IP. The contracts in these cases are somewhat similar to an NDA, without the secrecy aspect. Restricted disclosure of public information. You can agree to such a contract if you want to, and a court might even enforce it, but it doesn’t affect anybody else’s rights to distribute that information. Contracts are not statutes, they only bind the people directly involved. To restrict the actions of random strangers, you need to get elected.
- rvcdbn 3y ago
  I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you’re making this statement because it feels like they should have some intellectual property rights in this case. Independently of whether that feeling corresponds to legal reality (the original question) I would also encourage you to question the source of this feeling. I believe it is rooted in an ideology where information is restricted as property by default. This is a dangerous ideology that constantly threatens to encroach on intellectual freedom e.g. software patents, gene patents. We have a wonderful tradition in the US that information is free by default. It has been much eroded by this ideology but I believe freedom is still legally the default unless the information falls under the criteria of trademark, copyright or patent. I think it’s important to recognize how this ideology of non-freedom has perniciously warped people’s default expectation around information sharing.
  - tensor 3y ago
    It has nothing to do with any sort of feeling. Perhaps you should check your own mental state. It is the same as any confidential data. Logs, readings from sensors, etc etc. If it's confidential and given to a 3rd party through a contract that doesn't mean that it's suddenly not confidential data for the rest of the world, even if the 3rd party leaks it. And if you really have a lawyer trying to tell you that some, at best, extreme grey area, is fine to build a business on, I think you should find a new lawyer.
    - rvcdbn 3y ago
      I think that just further shows your worldview that defaults to information/data as property. I think this is wrong both in the sense that it isn't really what the law says (but aren't going to agree here anyway) but more importantly I think what it should say. Information should not be and is not property by default. There are only three specific ways in which it can become property ("intellectual property"): copyright, trademark and patent. If it's none of those then the government doesn't get to make any rules about how anyone deals in the data because of the 1st Amendment. That's my understanding of the US system at least.

We don’t actually know that it’s not legal. The copyrightability of model weights is an open legal question right now afaik.

by rvcdbn 3y ago

We don’t actually know that it’s not legal. The copyrightability of model weights is an open legal question right now afaik.

tensor 3y ago

It doesn't have to be copyrightable to be intellectual property.

actionfromafar 3y ago
Patents? Trademark? What do you mean?
- Rexxar 3y ago
  Maybe this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right but it doesn't exist in every countries.
twbarr 3y ago
No, but what is it? Not your lawyer, not legal advice, but it's not a trade secret, they've given it to researchers. It's not a trademark because it's not an origin identifier. The structure might be patentable, but the weights won't be. It's certainly not a mask work. It might have been a contract violation for the guy who redistributed it, but I'm not a party to that contract.
- Art9681 3y ago
  I'm going to play devil's advocate and state that a lot of what you mentioned will be relevant to a tiny part of the world that has the means to enforce this. The law will be forced to change as a response to AI. Many debates will be had. Many crap laws will be made by people grasping at straws but it's too late. Putting red tape around this technology puts that nation at a technological disadvantage. I would go as far as labeling a national security threat. I'm calling it now. Based on what I see today. Europe will position itself as a leader in AI legislation, and its economy will give way to the nations that want to enter the race and grab a chunk of the new economy. It's a Catch 22. You either gimp your own technological progress, or start a war with a nation that does not. Pretty sure Russia and China don't really care about the ethics behind it. There are plenty of nations capable enough in the same boat. Now what? OK, so in some hypothetical future China has an uncensored model with free reign over the internet. The US and Europe has banned this. What's stopping anyone from running the Chinese model? There isn't enough money in the world to enforce software laws. How long have they tried to take down The Pirate Bay? Pretty much every permutation of every software that's ever been banned can be found and ran with impunity if you have the technical knowledge to do so. No law exists that can prevent that. If it did, OpenAI wouldn't exist.
  - rileymat2 3y ago
    > How long have they tried to take down The Pirate Bay? Pretty much every permutation of every software that's ever been banned can be found and ran with impunity if you have the technical knowledge to do so. No law exists that can prevent that. Forms of this argument get tossed out a lot. Laws don’t prevent, they hopefully limit. Murder has been illegal for a long time, it still happens.
    - szundi 3y ago
      You missed the point: these laws are not limiting other countries, only those who introduce them. Self-limiting, giving advantage to others.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > It might have been a contract violation for the guy who redistributed it, but I'm not a party to that contract. Wouldn’t that violate the Nemo dat quod non habet legal principle and so you cannot hide behind the claim that you weren’t party to the contact? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet
  - zarzavat 3y ago
    No because the weights are not IP protected by the entity that trained the model, so they cannot prevent you to redistribute it because it doesn’t belong to them in any legal sense. GPU cycles alone don’t make IP. The contracts in these cases are somewhat similar to an NDA, without the secrecy aspect. Restricted disclosure of public information. You can agree to such a contract if you want to, and a court might even enforce it, but it doesn’t affect anybody else’s rights to distribute that information. Contracts are not statutes, they only bind the people directly involved. To restrict the actions of random strangers, you need to get elected.
rvcdbn 3y ago
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that you’re making this statement because it feels like they should have some intellectual property rights in this case. Independently of whether that feeling corresponds to legal reality (the original question) I would also encourage you to question the source of this feeling. I believe it is rooted in an ideology where information is restricted as property by default. This is a dangerous ideology that constantly threatens to encroach on intellectual freedom e.g. software patents, gene patents. We have a wonderful tradition in the US that information is free by default. It has been much eroded by this ideology but I believe freedom is still legally the default unless the information falls under the criteria of trademark, copyright or patent. I think it’s important to recognize how this ideology of non-freedom has perniciously warped people’s default expectation around information sharing.
- tensor 3y ago
  It has nothing to do with any sort of feeling. Perhaps you should check your own mental state. It is the same as any confidential data. Logs, readings from sensors, etc etc. If it's confidential and given to a 3rd party through a contract that doesn't mean that it's suddenly not confidential data for the rest of the world, even if the 3rd party leaks it. And if you really have a lawyer trying to tell you that some, at best, extreme grey area, is fine to build a business on, I think you should find a new lawyer.
  - rvcdbn 3y ago
    I think that just further shows your worldview that defaults to information/data as property. I think this is wrong both in the sense that it isn't really what the law says (but aren't going to agree here anyway) but more importantly I think what it should say. Information should not be and is not property by default. There are only three specific ways in which it can become property ("intellectual property"): copyright, trademark and patent. If it's none of those then the government doesn't get to make any rules about how anyone deals in the data because of the 1st Amendment. That's my understanding of the US system at least.