9 ms·

I'm still puzzled as to how these "non-commercial" model licenses are supposed to be enforceable. Software licenses govern the redistribution of the software, n

I'm still puzzled as to how these "non-commercial" model licenses are supposed to be enforceable. Software licenses govern the redistribution of the software, not products produced with it. An image isn't GPL'd because it was produced with GIMP.

cubefox 3y ago
Nobody claimed otherwise?
- littlethoughts 3y ago
  Fantasy.ai was subject to controversy for attempting to license models.
- not2b 3y ago
  There are sites that make Stable Diffusion-derived models available, along with GPU resources, and they sell the service of generating images from the models. The company isn't permitting that use, and it seems that they could find violators and shut them down.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
They're not enforceable.
yorwba 3y ago
The license is a contract that allows you to use the software provided you fulfill some conditions. If you do not fulfill the conditions, you have no right to a copy of the software and can be sued. This enforcement mechanism is the same whether the conditions are that you include source code with copies you redistribute, or that you may only use it for evil, or that you must pay a monthly fee. Of course this enforcement mechanism may turn out to be ineffective if it's hard to discover that you're violating the conditions.
- comex 3y ago
  It also somewhat depends on open legal questions like whether models are copyrightable and, if so, whether model outputs are derivative works of the model. Suppose that models are not copyrightable, due to their not being the product of human creativity (this is debatable). Then the creator can still require people to agree to contractual terms before downloading the model from them, presumably including the usage limitations as well as an agreement not to redistribute the model to anyone else who does not also agree. Agreement can happen explicitly by pressing a button, or potentially implicitly just by downloading the model from them, if the terms are clearly disclosed beforehand. But if someone decides on their own (not induced by you in any way) to violate the contract by uploading it somewhere else, and you passively download it from there, then you may be in the clear.
  - ronsor 3y ago
    > Then the creator can still require people to agree to contractual terms before downloading the model from them, presumably including the usage limitations as well as an agreement not to redistribute the model to anyone else who does not also agree. I don't think it's possible to invent copyright-like rights.
    - yorwba 3y ago
      Why not? Two willing parties can agree to bind themselves to all kinds of obligations in a contract as long as they're not explicitly illegal. Copyleft is an example of someone successfully inventing a copyright-like right by bootstrapping off existing copyright with a specially engineered contract.
      - frognumber 3y ago
        There are a few problems: 1) You and I invent our own private "copyright" for data (which is not copyrightable) 2) Everything is fine until my wife walks up to my computer and makes a copy of the data. She's not bound by our private "copyright." She doesn't even know it exists, and shares the data with her bestie. And... our private pseudo-copyright is dead. Also: Licenses are not the same as contracts. There are times when something can be both, one, or the other. But there are a lot of limits on how far they reach. The output of a program is rarely copyrightable by the author (as opposed to the user).
dist-epoch 3y ago
Visual Studio Community (and many other products) only allows "non-commercial" usage. Sounds like it limits what you can do with what you produce with it. At the end of the day, a license is a legal contract. If you agree that an image which you produce with some software will be GPL'ed, it's enforceable. As an example, see the Creative Commons license, ShareAlike clause: > If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
- blibble 3y ago
  > At the end of the day, a license is a legal contract. If you agree that an image which you produce with some software will be GPL'ed, it's enforceable. you can put whatever you want in a contract, doesn't mean it's enforceable
- antonyt 3y ago
  Do you have link for the VS Community terms you're describing? What I've found is directly contradictory: "Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps." From https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    Enterprise organizations are not allowed to use VS Community for commercial purposes: > In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
    - antonyt 3y ago
      I see, thanks!
kmeisthax 3y ago
So, there's a few different things interacting here that are a little confusing. First off, you have copyright law, which grants monopolies on the act of copying to the creators of the original. In order to legally make use of that work you need to either have permission to do so (a license), or you need to own a copy of the work that was made by someone with permission to make and sell copies (a sale). For the purposes of computer software, you will almost always get rights to the software through a license and not a sale. In fact, there is an argument that usage of computer software requires a license and that a sale wouldn't be enough because you wouldn't have permission to load it into RAM[0]. Licenses are, at least under US law, contracts. These are Turing-complete priestly rites written in a special register of English that legally bind people to do or not do certain things. A license can grant rights, or, confusingly, take them away. For example, you could write a license that takes away your fair use rights[1], and courts will actually respect that. So you can also have a license that says you're only allowed to use software for specific listed purposes but not others. In copyright you also have the notion of a derivative work. This was invented whole-cloth by the US Supreme Court, who needed a reason to prosecute someone for making a SSSniperWolf-tier abridgement[2] of someone else's George Washington biography. Normal copyright infringement is evidenced by substantial similarity and access: i.e. you saw the original, then you made something that's nearly identical, ergo infringement. The law regarding derivative works goes a step further and counts hypothetical works that an author might make - like sequels, translations, remakes, abridgements, and so on - as requiring permission in order to make. Without that permission, you don't own anything and your work has no right to exist. The GPL is the anticopyright "judo move", invented by a really ornery computer programmer that was angry about not being able to fix their printer drivers. It disclaims almost the entire copyright monopoly, but it leaves behind one license restriction, called a "copyleft": any derivative work must be licensed under the GPL. So if you modify the software and distribute it, you have to distribute your changes under GPL terms, thus locking the software in the commons. Images made with software are not derivative works of the software, nor do they contain a substantially similar copy of the software in them. Ergo, the GPL copyleft does not trip. In fact, even if it did trip, your image is still not a derivative work of the software, so you don't lose ownership over the image because you didn't get permission. This also applies to model licenses on AI software, insamuch as the AI companies don't own their training data[3]. However, there's still something that licenses can take away: your right to use the software. If you use the model for "commercial" purposes - whatever those would be - you'd be in breach of the license. What happens next is also determined by the license. It could be written to take away your noncommercial rights if you breach the license, or it could preserve them. In either case, however, the primary enforcement mechanism would be a court of law, and courts usually award money damages. If particularly justified, they could demand you destroy all copies of the software. If it went to SCOTUS (unlikely), they might even decide that images made by software are derivative works of the software after all, just to spite you. The Betamax case said that advertising a copying device with potentially infringing scenarios was fine as long as that device could be used in a non-infringing manner, but then the Grokster case said it was "inducement" and overturned it. Static, unchanging rules are ultimately a polite fiction, and the law can change behind your back if the people in power want or need it to. This is why you don't talk about the law in terms of something being legal or illegal, you talk about it in terms of risk. [0] Yes, this is a real argument that courts have actually made. Or at least the Ninth Circuit. The actual facts of the case are even more insane - basically a company trying to sue former employees for fixing it's customers computers. Imagine if Apple sued Louis Rossman for pirating macOS every time he turned on a customer laptop. The only reason why they can't is because Congress actually created a special exemption for computer repair and made it part of the DMCA. [1] For example, one of the things you agree to when you buy Oracle database software is to give up your right to benchmark the software. I'm serious! The tech industry is evil and needs to burn down to the ground! [2] They took 300 pages worth of material from 12 books and copied it into a separate, 2 volume work. [3] Whether or not copyright on the training data images flows through to make generated images a derivative work is a separate legal question in active litigation.
SXX 3y ago
It doesn't have to be enforceable. This licensing model works exactly the same as Microsoft Windows licensing or WinRAR licensing. Lots and lots of people have pirated Windows or just buy some cheap keys off Ebay, but no one of them in their sane mind would use anything like that at their company. The same way you can easily violate any "non-commercial" clauses of models like this one as private person or as some tiny startup, but company that decide to use them for their business will more likely just go and pay. So it's possible to ignore license, but legal and financial risks are not worth it for businesses.
- taberiand 3y ago
  I've heard companies also intentionally do not go after individuals pirating software e.g., Adobe Photoshop - it benefits them to have students pirate and skill up on their software and then enter companies that buy Photoshop because their employees know it, over locking down and having those students, and then the businesses, switch to open source.
  - Duanemclemore 3y ago
    I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but in my personal experience this was Autodesk's strategy with AutoCAD. Get market saturation by being extremely light on piracy. Then, once you're the only one standing lower the boom. I remember, it was almost like flipping a switch on a single DAY in the mid-00's when they went from totally lax on unpaid users to suing the bejeezus out of anyone who they had good enough documentation on. One smart thing they did was they'd check the online job listings and if a firm advertised for needing AutoCAD experience they'd check their licenses. I knew firms who got calls from Autodesk legal the DAY AFTER posting an opening.
stevage 3y ago
A software licence can definitely govern who can use it and what they can do with it. > An image isn't GPL'd because it was produced with GIMP. That's because of how the GPL is written, not because of some limitation of software licences.

cubefox 3y ago

Nobody claimed otherwise?

littlethoughts 3y ago
Fantasy.ai was subject to controversy for attempting to license models.
not2b 3y ago
There are sites that make Stable Diffusion-derived models available, along with GPU resources, and they sell the service of generating images from the models. The company isn't permitting that use, and it seems that they could find violators and shut them down.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

They're not enforceable.

yorwba 3y ago

The license is a contract that allows you to use the software provided you fulfill some conditions. If you do not fulfill the conditions, you have no right to a copy of the software and can be sued. This enforcement mechanism is the same whether the conditions are that you include source code with copies you redistribute, or that you may only use it for evil, or that you must pay a monthly fee. Of course this enforcement mechanism may turn out to be ineffective if it's hard to discover that you're violating the conditions.

comex 3y ago
It also somewhat depends on open legal questions like whether models are copyrightable and, if so, whether model outputs are derivative works of the model. Suppose that models are not copyrightable, due to their not being the product of human creativity (this is debatable). Then the creator can still require people to agree to contractual terms before downloading the model from them, presumably including the usage limitations as well as an agreement not to redistribute the model to anyone else who does not also agree. Agreement can happen explicitly by pressing a button, or potentially implicitly just by downloading the model from them, if the terms are clearly disclosed beforehand. But if someone decides on their own (not induced by you in any way) to violate the contract by uploading it somewhere else, and you passively download it from there, then you may be in the clear.
- ronsor 3y ago
  > Then the creator can still require people to agree to contractual terms before downloading the model from them, presumably including the usage limitations as well as an agreement not to redistribute the model to anyone else who does not also agree. I don't think it's possible to invent copyright-like rights.
  - yorwba 3y ago
    Why not? Two willing parties can agree to bind themselves to all kinds of obligations in a contract as long as they're not explicitly illegal. Copyleft is an example of someone successfully inventing a copyright-like right by bootstrapping off existing copyright with a specially engineered contract.
    - frognumber 3y ago
      There are a few problems: 1) You and I invent our own private "copyright" for data (which is not copyrightable) 2) Everything is fine until my wife walks up to my computer and makes a copy of the data. She's not bound by our private "copyright." She doesn't even know it exists, and shares the data with her bestie. And... our private pseudo-copyright is dead. Also: Licenses are not the same as contracts. There are times when something can be both, one, or the other. But there are a lot of limits on how far they reach. The output of a program is rarely copyrightable by the author (as opposed to the user).

dist-epoch 3y ago

Visual Studio Community (and many other products) only allows "non-commercial" usage. Sounds like it limits what you can do with what you produce with it. At the end of the day, a license is a legal contract. If you agree that an image which you produce with some software will be GPL'ed, it's enforceable. As an example, see the Creative Commons license, ShareAlike clause: > If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.

blibble 3y ago
> At the end of the day, a license is a legal contract. If you agree that an image which you produce with some software will be GPL'ed, it's enforceable. you can put whatever you want in a contract, doesn't mean it's enforceable
antonyt 3y ago
Do you have link for the VS Community terms you're describing? What I've found is directly contradictory: "Any individual developer can use Visual Studio Community to create their own free or paid apps." From https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/community/
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  Enterprise organizations are not allowed to use VS Community for commercial purposes: > In enterprise organizations (meaning those with >250 PCs or >$1 Million US Dollars in annual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, academic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios described above.
  - antonyt 3y ago
    I see, thanks!

kmeisthax 3y ago

So, there's a few different things interacting here that are a little confusing. First off, you have copyright law, which grants monopolies on the act of copying to the creators of the original. In order to legally make use of that work you need to either have permission to do so (a license), or you need to own a copy of the work that was made by someone with permission to make and sell copies (a sale). For the purposes of computer software, you will almost always get rights to the software through a license and not a sale. In fact, there is an argument that usage of computer software requires a license and that a sale wouldn't be enough because you wouldn't have permission to load it into RAM[0]. Licenses are, at least under US law, contracts. These are Turing-complete priestly rites written in a special register of English that legally bind people to do or not do certain things. A license can grant rights, or, confusingly, take them away. For example, you could write a license that takes away your fair use rights[1], and courts will actually respect that. So you can also have a license that says you're only allowed to use software for specific listed purposes but not others. In copyright you also have the notion of a derivative work. This was invented whole-cloth by the US Supreme Court, who needed a reason to prosecute someone for making a SSSniperWolf-tier abridgement[2] of someone else's George Washington biography. Normal copyright infringement is evidenced by substantial similarity and access: i.e. you saw the original, then you made something that's nearly identical, ergo infringement. The law regarding derivative works goes a step further and counts hypothetical works that an author might make - like sequels, translations, remakes, abridgements, and so on - as requiring permission in order to make. Without that permission, you don't own anything and your work has no right to exist. The GPL is the anticopyright "judo move", invented by a really ornery computer programmer that was angry about not being able to fix their printer drivers. It disclaims almost the entire copyright monopoly, but it leaves behind one license restriction, called a "copyleft": any derivative work must be licensed under the GPL. So if you modify the software and distribute it, you have to distribute your changes under GPL terms, thus locking the software in the commons. Images made with software are not derivative works of the software, nor do they contain a substantially similar copy of the software in them. Ergo, the GPL copyleft does not trip. In fact, even if it did trip, your image is still not a derivative work of the software, so you don't lose ownership over the image because you didn't get permission. This also applies to model licenses on AI software, insamuch as the AI companies don't own their training data[3]. However, there's still something that licenses can take away: your right to use the software. If you use the model for "commercial" purposes - whatever those would be - you'd be in breach of the license. What happens next is also determined by the license. It could be written to take away your noncommercial rights if you breach the license, or it could preserve them. In either case, however, the primary enforcement mechanism would be a court of law, and courts usually award money damages. If particularly justified, they could demand you destroy all copies of the software. If it went to SCOTUS (unlikely), they might even decide that images made by software are derivative works of the software after all, just to spite you. The Betamax case said that advertising a copying device with potentially infringing scenarios was fine as long as that device could be used in a non-infringing manner, but then the Grokster case said it was "inducement" and overturned it. Static, unchanging rules are ultimately a polite fiction, and the law can change behind your back if the people in power want or need it to. This is why you don't talk about the law in terms of something being legal or illegal, you talk about it in terms of risk. [0] Yes, this is a real argument that courts have actually made. Or at least the Ninth Circuit. The actual facts of the case are even more insane - basically a company trying to sue former employees for fixing it's customers computers. Imagine if Apple sued Louis Rossman for pirating macOS every time he turned on a customer laptop. The only reason why they can't is because Congress actually created a special exemption for computer repair and made it part of the DMCA. [1] For example, one of the things you agree to when you buy Oracle database software is to give up your right to benchmark the software. I'm serious! The tech industry is evil and needs to burn down to the ground! [2] They took 300 pages worth of material from 12 books and copied it into a separate, 2 volume work. [3] Whether or not copyright on the training data images flows through to make generated images a derivative work is a separate legal question in active litigation.

SXX 3y ago

It doesn't have to be enforceable. This licensing model works exactly the same as Microsoft Windows licensing or WinRAR licensing. Lots and lots of people have pirated Windows or just buy some cheap keys off Ebay, but no one of them in their sane mind would use anything like that at their company. The same way you can easily violate any "non-commercial" clauses of models like this one as private person or as some tiny startup, but company that decide to use them for their business will more likely just go and pay. So it's possible to ignore license, but legal and financial risks are not worth it for businesses.

taberiand 3y ago
I've heard companies also intentionally do not go after individuals pirating software e.g., Adobe Photoshop - it benefits them to have students pirate and skill up on their software and then enter companies that buy Photoshop because their employees know it, over locking down and having those students, and then the businesses, switch to open source.
- Duanemclemore 3y ago
  I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but in my personal experience this was Autodesk's strategy with AutoCAD. Get market saturation by being extremely light on piracy. Then, once you're the only one standing lower the boom. I remember, it was almost like flipping a switch on a single DAY in the mid-00's when they went from totally lax on unpaid users to suing the bejeezus out of anyone who they had good enough documentation on. One smart thing they did was they'd check the online job listings and if a firm advertised for needing AutoCAD experience they'd check their licenses. I knew firms who got calls from Autodesk legal the DAY AFTER posting an opening.

stevage 3y ago

A software licence can definitely govern who can use it and what they can do with it. > An image isn't GPL'd because it was produced with GIMP. That's because of how the GPL is written, not because of some limitation of software licences.