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>Could we stop celebrating how tech is going to steal everyone's copyrighted works Copyright has a fair-use exception for transformative works. It is difficult

>Could we stop celebrating how tech is going to steal everyone's copyrighted works Copyright has a fair-use exception for transformative works. It is difficult to look at the LLM's of the day and think "No, they have not taken the copywritten works and transformed them into something completely new." There is no hate of artists. I don't know how you get from "It's not copyright violation" to "I hate artists". This is a matter of existing law. It is of course unsettled, the fair-use interpretation not yet tested in courts. But the same goes for affirming it's a violation of copyright. These questions will have their day in court, and until then there is no need to make arguments in an inflammatory tone that that borders on personal attack. In the meantime, maybe engage in a conversation about how copyright law would need to be changed to account for this new technology, not condemn people who see a reasonable interpretation of existing law the differs from your own.

reverius42 3y ago
So I can have a giant database of all the most recent copyrighted works, on my home computer, as long as I claim I'm using it for training a model? And if I happen to listen to some music or watch some movies too, who's going to know? I think an argument could be made that it's fine for an LLM to learn from copyrighted works, but maybe it should have to go to the library to do it. Having your own human-accessible copy of those works (at home, or at Meta), doesn't sound as acceptable to me.
- ineedasername 3y ago
  Sure, I think you’re right, it’s reasonable to expect a company to at least buy a single copy of each book (or whatever it eats) it ingests if the work could not otherwise be legally obtained for free. Or something reasonable along those lines
  - NLPaep 3y ago
    Yes, let’s shut out the small players now go Microsoft can bilk us
    - ineedasername 3y ago
      It’s not Microsoft’s fault that people are generally required to buy a book in order to read it. You could say the same thing about any business with a high capital cost required to get up and running. Want to start a supermarket? That’s many $Millions to plan, buy/rent land, build the facility, stock the shelves, etc. Starting any business costs money, and some cost a lot of money. Suppliers of the materials or feedstock required to start them aren’t to blame. If I want to fine tune a LLM to be an expert on the Dune book series, should I be allowed to download a copy without paying, or should I have to pay $8 for a copy before I feed it to the model? I’m sure the publisher would want me to pay some ridiculous amount but that is a different argument than requiring the purchase of a single copy that anyone would have to do to get access to the content.

reverius42 3y ago

So I can have a giant database of all the most recent copyrighted works, on my home computer, as long as I claim I'm using it for training a model? And if I happen to listen to some music or watch some movies too, who's going to know? I think an argument could be made that it's fine for an LLM to learn from copyrighted works, but maybe it should have to go to the library to do it. Having your own human-accessible copy of those works (at home, or at Meta), doesn't sound as acceptable to me.

ineedasername 3y ago
Sure, I think you’re right, it’s reasonable to expect a company to at least buy a single copy of each book (or whatever it eats) it ingests if the work could not otherwise be legally obtained for free. Or something reasonable along those lines
- NLPaep 3y ago
  Yes, let’s shut out the small players now go Microsoft can bilk us
  - ineedasername 3y ago
    It’s not Microsoft’s fault that people are generally required to buy a book in order to read it. You could say the same thing about any business with a high capital cost required to get up and running. Want to start a supermarket? That’s many $Millions to plan, buy/rent land, build the facility, stock the shelves, etc. Starting any business costs money, and some cost a lot of money. Suppliers of the materials or feedstock required to start them aren’t to blame. If I want to fine tune a LLM to be an expert on the Dune book series, should I be allowed to download a copy without paying, or should I have to pay $8 for a copy before I feed it to the model? I’m sure the publisher would want me to pay some ridiculous amount but that is a different argument than requiring the purchase of a single copy that anyone would have to do to get access to the content.