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The headline made me think they were suing the tool, but they are really going after an AI offering made by Nvidia that used the copyrighted work. >AI's rise h

The headline made me think they were suing the tool, but they are really going after an AI offering made by Nvidia that used the copyrighted work. >AI's rise has made Nvidia a favorite of investors. >The Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker's stock price has risen almost 600% since the end of 2022, giving Nvidia a market value of nearly $2.2 trillion. Me and Joe Nobody wouldn't be able to afford it, but I find it hard to believe a trillion-dollar company couldn't get proper rights to the data it uses to train its models.

bongodongobob 3y ago
The issue is whether or not you'd need to. I say no. Nothing was taken or copied. If you don't want your work seen, don't put it on the internet. They might have had a chance when Google started crawling the Internet, but that ship has sailed. Imo, crawling and making an index is more "stealy" than adjusting parameters.
- andy99 3y ago
  I can see the argument that if you train on a currently sold copyrighted work you have to buy a normal copy, you can't just download a torrent and still call it fair use (if you accept the concept of copyright at all...). So if someone could prove that Nvidia or whoever didn't own a copy (note who has the burden of proof) they could be liable for whatever an illegal downloading infringement is worth. Otherwise I agree that training on anything public is fair use.
  - stubish 3y ago
    Owning a copy of a book doesn't give me the right to make copies and sell them or even give them away. You can't even do that with publicly available material unless it has been put in the public domain or exceptions like fair use or satire apply. The model contains a copy of the work, and you can't distribute or publish your model without violating copyright. Offering access to this model as a service is legally in dispute, with AI companies generally arguing that liability for copyright infringement lies with the end user.
    - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
      > The model contains a copy of the work, and you can't distribute or publish your model without violating copyright. Does it? And if it did, why wouldn't fair use apply here as much as it would apply to the actual training/SaaS offering?
      - stubish 3y ago
        How is distributing a model containing copyright material any different to distributing a .zip file containing copyright material? Both contain an encoded, transformed copy of the work. And both can be used to reproduce the original work. The reproduction doesn't even need to be verbatim; just similar enough to convince a court that it is plagiarism. Fair use generally only applies for parts of a work, and not using the entire thing. AI companies are claiming fair use, claiming that the processing is transformative. This needs to be determined in court. I think the court cases currently underway will show it is not transformative, because the original work can be recovered. Fair use is also determined on a case by case basis, so I think courts won't have the power to grant blanket permission. New laws would need to be passed for that.
        EMIRELADERO 3y ago
        > How is distributing a model containing copyright material any different to distributing a .zip file containing copyright material? Both contain an encoded, transformed copy of the work. And both can be used to reproduce the original work. The reproduction doesn't even need to be verbatim; just similar enough to convince a court that it is plagiarism. Because of the substantial non-infringing uses. A court wouldn't throw away a model that can do non-infringing stuff 90% of the time if it can infringe copyright the other 10%. > Fair use generally only applies for parts of a work, and not using the entire thing. AI companies are claiming fair use, claiming that the processing is transformative. This needs to be determined in court. I think the court cases currently underway will show it is not transformative, because the original work can be recovered. Fair use is also determined on a case by case basis, so I think courts won't have the power to grant blanket permission. New laws would need to be passed for that. Fair use can apply to any possible allegation of infringement, not just parts of a work, as long as courts find the facts are in favor of it. Whiile fair use is a case-by-case thing, courts can set precedent that will apply to all situations with similar fact patterns.
- AlienRobot 3y ago
  >If you don't want your work seen, don't put it on the internet. Reminder: anyone nerd enough to be on this site is on the top 5% of computer skill, and 20% of people in the planet can't even use a computer, and 30% that can wouldn't be able to perform a simple multi-filter task such as "find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year."[1] I believe if the web is meant to be open, it can not antagonize 50% of the people in the world who can't understand technology. It's just not in the spirit of the web to say "don't put it on the internet." The web was made to put things on the internet. When we can't do that anymore, the web is dead. 1. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/

bongodongobob 3y ago

The issue is whether or not you'd need to. I say no. Nothing was taken or copied. If you don't want your work seen, don't put it on the internet. They might have had a chance when Google started crawling the Internet, but that ship has sailed. Imo, crawling and making an index is more "stealy" than adjusting parameters.

andy99 3y ago
I can see the argument that if you train on a currently sold copyrighted work you have to buy a normal copy, you can't just download a torrent and still call it fair use (if you accept the concept of copyright at all...). So if someone could prove that Nvidia or whoever didn't own a copy (note who has the burden of proof) they could be liable for whatever an illegal downloading infringement is worth. Otherwise I agree that training on anything public is fair use.
- stubish 3y ago
  Owning a copy of a book doesn't give me the right to make copies and sell them or even give them away. You can't even do that with publicly available material unless it has been put in the public domain or exceptions like fair use or satire apply. The model contains a copy of the work, and you can't distribute or publish your model without violating copyright. Offering access to this model as a service is legally in dispute, with AI companies generally arguing that liability for copyright infringement lies with the end user.
  - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
    > The model contains a copy of the work, and you can't distribute or publish your model without violating copyright. Does it? And if it did, why wouldn't fair use apply here as much as it would apply to the actual training/SaaS offering?
    - stubish 3y ago
      How is distributing a model containing copyright material any different to distributing a .zip file containing copyright material? Both contain an encoded, transformed copy of the work. And both can be used to reproduce the original work. The reproduction doesn't even need to be verbatim; just similar enough to convince a court that it is plagiarism. Fair use generally only applies for parts of a work, and not using the entire thing. AI companies are claiming fair use, claiming that the processing is transformative. This needs to be determined in court. I think the court cases currently underway will show it is not transformative, because the original work can be recovered. Fair use is also determined on a case by case basis, so I think courts won't have the power to grant blanket permission. New laws would need to be passed for that.
      - EMIRELADERO 3y ago
        > How is distributing a model containing copyright material any different to distributing a .zip file containing copyright material? Both contain an encoded, transformed copy of the work. And both can be used to reproduce the original work. The reproduction doesn't even need to be verbatim; just similar enough to convince a court that it is plagiarism. Because of the substantial non-infringing uses. A court wouldn't throw away a model that can do non-infringing stuff 90% of the time if it can infringe copyright the other 10%. > Fair use generally only applies for parts of a work, and not using the entire thing. AI companies are claiming fair use, claiming that the processing is transformative. This needs to be determined in court. I think the court cases currently underway will show it is not transformative, because the original work can be recovered. Fair use is also determined on a case by case basis, so I think courts won't have the power to grant blanket permission. New laws would need to be passed for that. Fair use can apply to any possible allegation of infringement, not just parts of a work, as long as courts find the facts are in favor of it. Whiile fair use is a case-by-case thing, courts can set precedent that will apply to all situations with similar fact patterns.
AlienRobot 3y ago
>If you don't want your work seen, don't put it on the internet. Reminder: anyone nerd enough to be on this site is on the top 5% of computer skill, and 20% of people in the planet can't even use a computer, and 30% that can wouldn't be able to perform a simple multi-filter task such as "find a sustainability-related document that was sent to you by John Smith in October last year."[1] I believe if the web is meant to be open, it can not antagonize 50% of the people in the world who can't understand technology. It's just not in the spirit of the web to say "don't put it on the internet." The web was made to put things on the internet. When we can't do that anymore, the web is dead. 1. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/