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The law on copyright doesn't depend on the word "learning", it depends on whether it's a human doing it, or a mechanical process. If a human reads a book and p

The law on copyright doesn't depend on the word "learning", it depends on whether it's a human doing it, or a mechanical process. If a human reads a book and produces a different book that's sort-of-derivative but doesn't copy too many elements too directly, then that book is a new creative work and doesn't infringe on the copyright of the original author. For example, 50 Shades of Gray is somewhat derivative of Twilight (famously starting as a Twilight fan-fic) but it's legally a separate copyright. Conversely, if you use a machine to produce the same book, taking only copyrighted text as input and an algorithm that replaces certain words and phrases and adds certain passages, then the result is a derivative work of the original and it infringes the copyright of the original author. So again, the facts of the law are pretty simple, at the moment at least: even if a machine and a human do the exact same thing, it's still different from a legal perspective.

DoctorOetker 2y ago
machines work on behalf of humans, any human could similarly claim their typewriter did it
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  That's still irrelevant. The distinction the law makes is between human creativity vs machine processes. A human may or may not have added their own creativity to the mix, and the law falls on the side of assuming creativity from humans (though if there is proof that the human followed some mechanical process, that likely changes things). Machines are not creative, by definition in the law today, so any transformation that a machine makes is irrelevant, the work is fundamentally the same work that was used as input from a legal perspective. That this work is done on behalf of a human changes nothing, the problem the law has with this is that the human is copying the original work without copyright, even if the human used a machine to produce an altered copy. Whether they used bcrypt, zip, an mp3 encoder, a bad copy machine, or a machine learning algorithm, the result is the same: the output of a purely mechanical process is still a copy of the original works from a copyright perspective.

DoctorOetker 2y ago

machines work on behalf of humans, any human could similarly claim their typewriter did it

tsimionescu 2y ago
That's still irrelevant. The distinction the law makes is between human creativity vs machine processes. A human may or may not have added their own creativity to the mix, and the law falls on the side of assuming creativity from humans (though if there is proof that the human followed some mechanical process, that likely changes things). Machines are not creative, by definition in the law today, so any transformation that a machine makes is irrelevant, the work is fundamentally the same work that was used as input from a legal perspective. That this work is done on behalf of a human changes nothing, the problem the law has with this is that the human is copying the original work without copyright, even if the human used a machine to produce an altered copy. Whether they used bcrypt, zip, an mp3 encoder, a bad copy machine, or a machine learning algorithm, the result is the same: the output of a purely mechanical process is still a copy of the original works from a copyright perspective.