3 ms·

But acquiring the material illegally is the thrust of the issue, and the point of the thread here: the notion that large companies can get away with piracy if t

by kibwen 3y ago

But acquiring the material illegally is the thrust of the issue, and the point of the thread here: the notion that large companies can get away with piracy if they just execute it on a large enough scale. Copyright infringment for thee but not for me.

startupsfail 3y ago
Large countries seem to be doing it as well - https://petapixel.com/2023/06/05/japan-declares-ai-training-data-fair-game-and-will-not-enforce-copyright/ https://petapixel.com/2023/06/05/japan-declares-ai-training-... And as long as OpenAI have an office in Japan they can absolutely legally train the models, no?
- TheCleric 3y ago
  They could legally train the models in Japan, yes. Whether they could then use that model outside of Japan would be (and, possibly related, whether it would be considered a derivative work in those locales) would be ultimately up to the courts.
buildbot 3y ago
The power imbalance has always been there. Getty images commits large amounts of copyright theft and mostly gets away with it, but will happily sue the shit out of you for using your own images they stole. Also, the notion of the downloading itself being an illegal act is not universal as others have pointed out.
holmesworcester 3y ago
There's no "for thee but not for me" issue here: nobody has ever been sued or prosecuted simply for downloading, acquiring, or possessing illegally acquired copyrighted works. People are sued and prosecuted for unlicensed distribution. Making and having your own copies, and doing what you want with them, has always been fine. At worst it's a grey area, but in many cases it's been protected as fair use.
- tinco 3y ago
  I am not sure where you're getting your information from, but you're not a lawyer, so you shouldn't be so confident in telling people what things are fine legally. Whether people have been sued for downloading works they don't have the right to copy onto their machines is irrelevant to whether it is actually illegal. And it certainly has nothing to do with fair use, which is about copyrighted works that you actually do have some right to. IANAL so I'm not going to tell anyone what does and what does not constitute fair use in what jurisdictions. BTW people are being sued for distribution because they make great examples because their offenses and thus the damages are much greater.
  - holmesworcester 3y ago
    I've followed the issue in the US since the early 2000s as an activist and policy expert. I'm not familiar with the state of play outside the US, but the US is one of the stricter jurisdictions in this regard, for reasons that have mostly to do with sophisticated corruption. I'm responding to the "for me not for thee" and the top comment about there being an inconsistency between the treatment of large companies and the treatment of individuals in this case. Unless people are typically punished for downloading and using copyrighted content, there is no such inconsistency. They are not, so there is not. Copyright troll lawsuits have been fairly public and widely covered in the tech press, and most criminal prosecutions come with a formulaic, gloating press release from the law enforcement folks responsible. So it's pretty easy to follow this stuff.
    - slowmovintarget 3y ago
      Are you forgetting all the DMCA lawsuits slapping individuals who downloaded MP3s with tens of thousands of dollars? These were not corporations, these were teenagers still living with their parents who pulled music files off the likes of Napster. The DMCA does allow harassment by copyright holders to individuals suspected of infringement. It's just that most people like authors wouldn't blow their legal budget suing kids.
      - deleted 3y ago
bubblethink 3y ago
>acquiring the material illegally is the thrust of the issue 'Acquiring' is more difficult to pursue legally. It's easier to go after distribution. In this case, Meta or OpenAI did not distribute anything because they are not chumps. They can go after whoever posted the dataset containing books. Not sure if that is eleuther or just some random person on the internet. In either case, the strategy of going after the rich companies won't work.

by kibwen 3y ago

startupsfail 3y ago

Large countries seem to be doing it as well - https://petapixel.com/2023/06/05/japan-declares-ai-training-data-fair-game-and-will-not-enforce-copyright/ https://petapixel.com/2023/06/05/japan-declares-ai-training-... And as long as OpenAI have an office in Japan they can absolutely legally train the models, no?

TheCleric 3y ago
They could legally train the models in Japan, yes. Whether they could then use that model outside of Japan would be (and, possibly related, whether it would be considered a derivative work in those locales) would be ultimately up to the courts.

buildbot 3y ago

The power imbalance has always been there. Getty images commits large amounts of copyright theft and mostly gets away with it, but will happily sue the shit out of you for using your own images they stole. Also, the notion of the downloading itself being an illegal act is not universal as others have pointed out.

holmesworcester 3y ago

There's no "for thee but not for me" issue here: nobody has ever been sued or prosecuted simply for downloading, acquiring, or possessing illegally acquired copyrighted works. People are sued and prosecuted for unlicensed distribution. Making and having your own copies, and doing what you want with them, has always been fine. At worst it's a grey area, but in many cases it's been protected as fair use.

tinco 3y ago
I am not sure where you're getting your information from, but you're not a lawyer, so you shouldn't be so confident in telling people what things are fine legally. Whether people have been sued for downloading works they don't have the right to copy onto their machines is irrelevant to whether it is actually illegal. And it certainly has nothing to do with fair use, which is about copyrighted works that you actually do have some right to. IANAL so I'm not going to tell anyone what does and what does not constitute fair use in what jurisdictions. BTW people are being sued for distribution because they make great examples because their offenses and thus the damages are much greater.
- holmesworcester 3y ago
  I've followed the issue in the US since the early 2000s as an activist and policy expert. I'm not familiar with the state of play outside the US, but the US is one of the stricter jurisdictions in this regard, for reasons that have mostly to do with sophisticated corruption. I'm responding to the "for me not for thee" and the top comment about there being an inconsistency between the treatment of large companies and the treatment of individuals in this case. Unless people are typically punished for downloading and using copyrighted content, there is no such inconsistency. They are not, so there is not. Copyright troll lawsuits have been fairly public and widely covered in the tech press, and most criminal prosecutions come with a formulaic, gloating press release from the law enforcement folks responsible. So it's pretty easy to follow this stuff.
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    Are you forgetting all the DMCA lawsuits slapping individuals who downloaded MP3s with tens of thousands of dollars? These were not corporations, these were teenagers still living with their parents who pulled music files off the likes of Napster. The DMCA does allow harassment by copyright holders to individuals suspected of infringement. It's just that most people like authors wouldn't blow their legal budget suing kids.
    - deleted 3y ago

bubblethink 3y ago

>acquiring the material illegally is the thrust of the issue 'Acquiring' is more difficult to pursue legally. It's easier to go after distribution. In this case, Meta or OpenAI did not distribute anything because they are not chumps. They can go after whoever posted the dataset containing books. Not sure if that is eleuther or just some random person on the internet. In either case, the strategy of going after the rich companies won't work.