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Legal acquisition does not matter for AI training. If training is fair use then you can train on pirated material (e.g. OpenAI GPT). If it's not fair use then b

Legal acquisition does not matter for AI training. If training is fair use then you can train on pirated material (e.g. OpenAI GPT). If it's not fair use then buying the material does not matter, you have to negotiate a specific license for AI training for each work in the training set, which is impractical at the scales most AI companies want to work.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
This seems to distort the issue a little bit. If you purchase the music, you have a (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) license to do certain things with the music, entirely independent of any concept of "fair use". The question is not "is training part of fair use?" but "is training part of, implicitly or explicitly, the rights I already have after purchase?" Given that "training" can be done by simple playing the music in the presence of a computer with its microphone turned on, it's not clear how this plays out legally.
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  In the US, exceptions to copyright come across in two distinct bundles: first sale and fair use. They exist specifically because of the intersection between copyright law and two other principles of the US constitution: - First sale: The Takings Clause prohibits government theft of private property without compensation. Because copyright owners are using a government-granted monopoly to enforce their rights, we have to bound those rights to avoid copyright owners being able to just come and take copies of books or music you've lawfully purchased. - Fair use: The 1st Amendment prohibits government prohibitions on free speech. Because copyright owners are using a government-granted monopoly to enforce their rights, we have to bound those rights to avoid copyright owners being able to censor you. If you hinge your argument on "I bought a copy", you're making a first sale argument. Notably, first sale is limited to acts that do not create copies. This limit was established by the ReDigi case[0]. Copyright doesn't care about the total number of copies in circulation, it cares about the right to create more. So an AI training defense based on first sale grounds would fail because training unequivocally creates copies. Fair use, on the contrary, does not care if you bought a copy of a work legally. It only cares about balancing your right to speech against the owners' right to a monopoly over theirs. And it has so far been far more resistant to creative industry attempts to limit exceptions to copyright - to the point where I would argue that "fair use" is an effective shorthand for any exception to copyright, including ones in countries that have no fair use doctrine and do not respect judicial precedent. The courts won't care how the training comes about, just if the act of training an AI alone[1] would compete with licensing the images used in the training set data. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi.... [1] Notably, this is separate from the act of using the AI to generate new artistic works, which may be infringing
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    It hasn't been established yet that a diffusion-model generated work is a copy or a derivative of any particular element of the training set.
NegativeK 3y ago
The people above are arguing about being caught, not legality.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

This seems to distort the issue a little bit. If you purchase the music, you have a (sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit) license to do certain things with the music, entirely independent of any concept of "fair use". The question is not "is training part of fair use?" but "is training part of, implicitly or explicitly, the rights I already have after purchase?" Given that "training" can be done by simple playing the music in the presence of a computer with its microphone turned on, it's not clear how this plays out legally.

kmeisthax 3y ago
In the US, exceptions to copyright come across in two distinct bundles: first sale and fair use. They exist specifically because of the intersection between copyright law and two other principles of the US constitution: - First sale: The Takings Clause prohibits government theft of private property without compensation. Because copyright owners are using a government-granted monopoly to enforce their rights, we have to bound those rights to avoid copyright owners being able to just come and take copies of books or music you've lawfully purchased. - Fair use: The 1st Amendment prohibits government prohibitions on free speech. Because copyright owners are using a government-granted monopoly to enforce their rights, we have to bound those rights to avoid copyright owners being able to censor you. If you hinge your argument on "I bought a copy", you're making a first sale argument. Notably, first sale is limited to acts that do not create copies. This limit was established by the ReDigi case[0]. Copyright doesn't care about the total number of copies in circulation, it cares about the right to create more. So an AI training defense based on first sale grounds would fail because training unequivocally creates copies. Fair use, on the contrary, does not care if you bought a copy of a work legally. It only cares about balancing your right to speech against the owners' right to a monopoly over theirs. And it has so far been far more resistant to creative industry attempts to limit exceptions to copyright - to the point where I would argue that "fair use" is an effective shorthand for any exception to copyright, including ones in countries that have no fair use doctrine and do not respect judicial precedent. The courts won't care how the training comes about, just if the act of training an AI alone[1] would compete with licensing the images used in the training set data. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_LLC_v._ReDigi.... [1] Notably, this is separate from the act of using the AI to generate new artistic works, which may be infringing
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  It hasn't been established yet that a diffusion-model generated work is a copy or a derivative of any particular element of the training set.

NegativeK 3y ago

The people above are arguing about being caught, not legality.