4 ms·

If they're not using the book text to train models (keeping the focus on this particular new Kindle feature), where's the room for objection? My device, my cont

by savanaly 10mo ago

If they're not using the book text to train models (keeping the focus on this particular new Kindle feature), where's the room for objection? My device, my content, it's none of the author's business how I read it, in my view. Edit: Given I've been a reader of HN for some time, I am perfectly aware that on Kindle you don't own the content, just a license to the content. Don't need any more people pointing this out! Lol. In my house we still call owning a license to something that is not likely to be revoked "owning it".

Mouvelie 10mo ago
"Amazon DID NOT answer PubLunch’s questions about “what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature was not answered, nor did they elaborate on the technical details of the service and any protections involved (whether to prevent against hallucinations, or to protect the text from AI training).”
- akersten 10mo ago
  > what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature what rights does a bookstore clerk need to answer questions about a product on the store's shelves? what a presumptuous question
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    Yeah, the "but what about a human" argument doesn't really work here. Scale of data matters as always. And an Ai for kindle has the scale of 20 years of literature (and more if they just scrape the internet).
    - akersten 10mo ago
      > Yeah, the "but what about a human" argument doesn't really work here. Scale of data matters as always. And an Ai for kindle has the scale of 20 years of literature I haven't seen a convincing argument why not. There's millions of librarians with the knowledge of more than 20 years of literature under their belt. Why can they answer your questions about a book but the robot can't?
      - bluefirebrand 10mo ago
        > Why can they answer your questions about a book but the robot can't Robots simply do not deserve the same consideration and the same rights that humans have It's really that easy. Humans deserve more rights than inanimate objects
        akersten 10mo ago
        Luckily we do not live in an allow-list based society where we need to ask permission for every new thing we invent. The burden is on someone to show that robot answers book questions is somehow bad, to justify outlawing it. And that has not been shown. Bringing up the ontology of humans having human rights has nothing to do with the argument at hand.
    - simianwords 10mo ago
      That way it should be illegal or discouraged to select text from a book and paste it elsewhere
  - foxyv 10mo ago
    Is the "clerk" scanning the books an digitizing them to generate other products using an LLM under the guise of "Answering Questions?" I believe this is the question being asked. Companies like Amazon and Google have some really sticky fingers when it comes to intellectual property and personal data. I think it's worth asking these questions and holding them accountable for exploiting data that doesn't rightly belong to them.
    - akersten 10mo ago
      > Is the "clerk" scanning the books an digitizing them to generate other products using an LLM under the guise of "Answering Questions?" I believe this is the question being asked. That's what I mean by presumptuous. If that's really what they want the answer to, and what they object to, they should ask it plainly instead of alluding to it by asserting that there's some requisite but missing entitlement for the feature to exist on its face.
  - KaiserPro 10mo ago
    Either the Clerk would have read it, because they bought it, or borrowed it from the library. I mean they could have read it on company time as well. However, let us not use a straw man here. Its not some company clerk, its one of the largest company on earth using other people's copy right to make more money for them selves.
    - fragmede 10mo ago
      The author also gets a cut of this, no? It is the author's prerogative to sell their books to be read on a Kindle and they get compensated, maybe perhaps unfairly, when I choose to buy the book. Whatever happens after that, other then copying it and sticking it on Anna's archive is basically free game as long as I'm making derivative works and making money off them. Anything short of that, I'm good. That's my thoughts on that, anyway.
- catgary 10mo ago
  You don’t need any rights to execute the feature. The user owns the book. The app lets the user feed the book into an LLM, as is absolutely their right, and asks questions.
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    >The app lets the user feed the book into an LLM, as is absolutely their right, I don't think that's cut and clear yet. Throwing media onto someone else's server may count as distribution.
    - catgary 10mo ago
      Sure, in the sense that any belief about the law isn’t cut and dried until a judge has explicitly dismissed it in the court of law.
    - dpark 10mo ago
      How likely do you think it is that Amazon doesn’t have a pre-existing contract with these publishers to host these books on Amazon servers?
  - Rebelgecko 10mo ago
    1. The user doesn't own the book, the user has a revocable license to the book. Amazon has no qualms about taking away books that people have bought 2. I doubt the Kindle version of the LLM will run locally. Is Amazon repurposing the author-provided files, or will the users' device upload the text of the book?
    - dpark 10mo ago
      I am so confused by some of the comments in this thread. All these weird mental gymnastics to argue that users should have less rights. “Oh, you think you should be able to use an LLM with a book you paid for? Well you don’t own and book.” Ok, and you like that? You want even less ownership? Less control?
      - 10mo ago
- thewebguyd 10mo ago
  > protect the text from AI training Hasn't training been already ruled to be fair use in the recent lawsuits against Meta, Antrhopic? Ruled that works must be legally acquired, yes, but training was fair use.
lawlessone 10mo ago
>none of the author's business how I read it, in my view. my favorite way to eat is give other people my food, and have them tell me how it tastes and what not being hungry feels like. or to labor the point for the people that are having LLMs do their reading for them. Watching golf isn't playing golf.
- freedomben 10mo ago
  Once you've bought that food and it's on your plate, how would you feel about the farmer who grew it coming up and forcing you to eat it with a specific fork or only using approved utensils?
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    You bought a kindle, they already did that to you.
johnnyanmac 10mo ago
It's not training on books, but it will answer questions about the book you're reading. Doesn't pass the sniff test. >My device, my content I don't think you own the kindle store and servers used to train the Ai.
- catgary 10mo ago
  Are you implying that an LLM needs to be trained on a specific piece of text to answer questions about it?
  - johnnyanmac 10mo ago
    If you want proper answers, yes. If you want to rely on whatever reddit or tiktok says about the book, then I guess at that point you're fine with hallucinations and others doing the thinking for you anyway. Hence the issues brought up in the article. I wouldn't trust an LLM for anything more than the most basic questions of it didn't actually have text to cite.
    - terafo 10mo ago
      Having access to the text and being trained on the text are two different things.
    - catgary 10mo ago
      Luckily, the LLM has the text to cite, it can be passed in at inference time, which is legally distinct from training on the data.
- tshaddox 10mo ago
  > It's not training on books, but it will answer questions about the book you're reading. Doesn't pass the sniff test. What do you mean? Presumably the implication is that it will essentially read the book (or search through it) in order to answer questions about it. An LLM can of course summarize text that's not in its training set.
  - 10mo ago
rightbyte 10mo ago
> My device, my content I am quite sure Amazon doesn't sell you that.
bossyTeacher 10mo ago
>My device, my content Afaik, while the device is yours, everything else on it isn't.
- micromacrofoot 10mo ago
  device is hardly yours unless you jailbreak it or collect bricks
freedomben 10mo ago
I wish it was "my device, my content" but it absolutely isn't. If you want that you have to buy from a DRM-free source, and Kindle is the absolute opposite of that.
- bko 10mo ago
  What does this have to do with the parent's comment? Okay it's not 100% my device my content, so I shouldn't be allowed to run a local AI against the text?
  - freedomben 10mo ago
    IMHO you should be able to enjoy your books however you want. If you want to run a local AI against it, more power to you. But my opinion doesn't matter. Only Amazon's does. That's the point I was making. The premise of "my device, my content" is flawed (because of the DRM Amazon uses) and undermines the argument.
    - ffsm8 10mo ago
      Right, under that argument it's their content, their rules then - making this situation even more of a non issue because they're adding this feature themselves.
lm28469 10mo ago
You don't mind having an llm owned by a megacorp lecturing you about the meaning of a book ? "Yes this is a good question about 1984 by George Orwell, you could indeed be tempted to compare the events of this book with current authoritarianism and surveillance but I can assure you this book is a pure work of fiction and at best can only be compared to evil states such as China and Russia, rest assured that as a US citizen you are Free"
g947o 10mo ago
Not your content, it's Amazon's content, you only purchased a license to view it, which can be revoked at any time if daddy Jeff is not happy. And I am not being cynical. That is literally what is on their web page, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTZT9PLM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTZT9PLM
- ceejayoz 10mo ago
  Fun fact: the first book Amazon remotely removed from Kindles was… 1984. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
  - DougMerritt 10mo ago
    Life mimics art.
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    The name Kindle suggests Fahrenheit 451. We're going to destroy books and here's the kindling.
- ctoth 10mo ago
  Sure. But you knew what this comment was trying to say. It is obviously saying that what happens on the Kindle is between the customer and possibly Amazon, specifically that authors should not be involved. They got their money. That part of the transaction is complete. I know you realize this, it's annoying to read the constant "not your keys not your coins" reframe.
  - g947o 10mo ago
    No. The author incorrectly thinks they "own" the "content" like with a physical book, which is the prerequisite for all the discussions following it. I pointed out, factually and correctly, that they don't own anything (other than the license) or have any control over anything.
- tiahura 10mo ago
Marsymars 10mo ago
> My device, my content, it's none of the author's business how I read it, in my view. In practice, that's not the case though, e.g. publishers on Kindle can choose not to allow text-to-speech assistive functionality.
- benmanns 10mo ago
  Audiobook publishers require/request this when you sell subsidiary rights. We’ve been able to push back citing accessibility concerns. I find it really annoying when not available for my own reading.
Gimpei 10mo ago
Couldn’t agree more. This is actually a super useful feature. I can’t think of how many times I’ve been reading a book and some minor character resurfaces and I’m like, who the hell is that guy? Now I can know. I can also get information on historical context. Who knows, maybe I can finally read Ulysses without having to have 5 other books.
nephihaha 10mo ago
In the case of a novel, or even certain text books, the author relies on the reader not jumping ahead. Especially murder mysteries and those kind of genres. There are artistic reasons for that, and it can wreck the work. In my experience, AI summaries often miss points or misrepresent work. There is a human element to reading a well written novel. An AI will miss some of the subtleties and references.
- squigz 10mo ago
  But if I want to jump ahead and read the last page of a book first, is it reasonable for an author to tell me I can't do that?
  - nephihaha 10mo ago
    From an artistic point of view, yes it is. It's a bit like doing a crossword with the answers in big letters next to it... It destroys the point.
    - DennisP 10mo ago
      I agree but for some reason, there are people who enjoy doing that. I think they should be allowed to do as they like. In any case, Amazon claims this feature is spoiler-free and that would be easy to implement. It likely works by feeding the book into an LLM context, and they could simply feed in the portion you've already read.
tshaddox 10mo ago
Amazon is selling digital copies (or licenses, if you like) of the books, which means they need permission from the copyright holders. This permission is likely backed by a contractual agreement that covers some details about how Amazon presents the digital copies to the end users. (This of course wouldn't be the case if they were reselling physical books.)
- ctoth 10mo ago
  So what part of this presentation agreement could possibly apply?
squigz 10mo ago
> Edit: Given I've been a reader of HN for some time, I am perfectly aware that on Kindle you don't own the content, just a license to the content. Don't need any more people pointing this out! Lol. In my house we still call owning a license to something that is not likely to be revoked "owning it". The amount of people completely - and likely intentionally - missing your point is both frustrating and completely unsurprising. A quick reminder that this is part of HN's guidelines > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
dpark 10mo ago
> where's the room for objection? I suspect most of the people arguing this way would be in favor of more end user rights if we were talking about anything except the right to use AI. “Rights good, AI bad” somehow leads to the insane argument that it’s a good thing you don’t have rights over the book you bought. “You don’t really own the book” is a crazy argument unless the person saying this wants the locked-down DRM world where you can’t own a piece of media.

Mouvelie 10mo ago

"Amazon DID NOT answer PubLunch’s questions about “what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature was not answered, nor did they elaborate on the technical details of the service and any protections involved (whether to prevent against hallucinations, or to protect the text from AI training).”

akersten 10mo ago
> what rights the company was relying upon to execute the new feature what rights does a bookstore clerk need to answer questions about a product on the store's shelves? what a presumptuous question
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  Yeah, the "but what about a human" argument doesn't really work here. Scale of data matters as always. And an Ai for kindle has the scale of 20 years of literature (and more if they just scrape the internet).
  - akersten 10mo ago
    > Yeah, the "but what about a human" argument doesn't really work here. Scale of data matters as always. And an Ai for kindle has the scale of 20 years of literature I haven't seen a convincing argument why not. There's millions of librarians with the knowledge of more than 20 years of literature under their belt. Why can they answer your questions about a book but the robot can't?
    - bluefirebrand 10mo ago
      > Why can they answer your questions about a book but the robot can't Robots simply do not deserve the same consideration and the same rights that humans have It's really that easy. Humans deserve more rights than inanimate objects
      - akersten 10mo ago
        Luckily we do not live in an allow-list based society where we need to ask permission for every new thing we invent. The burden is on someone to show that robot answers book questions is somehow bad, to justify outlawing it. And that has not been shown. Bringing up the ontology of humans having human rights has nothing to do with the argument at hand.
  - simianwords 10mo ago
    That way it should be illegal or discouraged to select text from a book and paste it elsewhere
- foxyv 10mo ago
  Is the "clerk" scanning the books an digitizing them to generate other products using an LLM under the guise of "Answering Questions?" I believe this is the question being asked. Companies like Amazon and Google have some really sticky fingers when it comes to intellectual property and personal data. I think it's worth asking these questions and holding them accountable for exploiting data that doesn't rightly belong to them.
  - akersten 10mo ago
    > Is the "clerk" scanning the books an digitizing them to generate other products using an LLM under the guise of "Answering Questions?" I believe this is the question being asked. That's what I mean by presumptuous. If that's really what they want the answer to, and what they object to, they should ask it plainly instead of alluding to it by asserting that there's some requisite but missing entitlement for the feature to exist on its face.
- KaiserPro 10mo ago
  Either the Clerk would have read it, because they bought it, or borrowed it from the library. I mean they could have read it on company time as well. However, let us not use a straw man here. Its not some company clerk, its one of the largest company on earth using other people's copy right to make more money for them selves.
  - fragmede 10mo ago
    The author also gets a cut of this, no? It is the author's prerogative to sell their books to be read on a Kindle and they get compensated, maybe perhaps unfairly, when I choose to buy the book. Whatever happens after that, other then copying it and sticking it on Anna's archive is basically free game as long as I'm making derivative works and making money off them. Anything short of that, I'm good. That's my thoughts on that, anyway.
catgary 10mo ago
You don’t need any rights to execute the feature. The user owns the book. The app lets the user feed the book into an LLM, as is absolutely their right, and asks questions.
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  >The app lets the user feed the book into an LLM, as is absolutely their right, I don't think that's cut and clear yet. Throwing media onto someone else's server may count as distribution.
  - catgary 10mo ago
    Sure, in the sense that any belief about the law isn’t cut and dried until a judge has explicitly dismissed it in the court of law.
  - dpark 10mo ago
    How likely do you think it is that Amazon doesn’t have a pre-existing contract with these publishers to host these books on Amazon servers?
- Rebelgecko 10mo ago
  1. The user doesn't own the book, the user has a revocable license to the book. Amazon has no qualms about taking away books that people have bought 2. I doubt the Kindle version of the LLM will run locally. Is Amazon repurposing the author-provided files, or will the users' device upload the text of the book?
  - dpark 10mo ago
    I am so confused by some of the comments in this thread. All these weird mental gymnastics to argue that users should have less rights. “Oh, you think you should be able to use an LLM with a book you paid for? Well you don’t own and book.” Ok, and you like that? You want even less ownership? Less control?
    - 10mo ago
thewebguyd 10mo ago
> protect the text from AI training Hasn't training been already ruled to be fair use in the recent lawsuits against Meta, Antrhopic? Ruled that works must be legally acquired, yes, but training was fair use.

lawlessone 10mo ago

>none of the author's business how I read it, in my view. my favorite way to eat is give other people my food, and have them tell me how it tastes and what not being hungry feels like. or to labor the point for the people that are having LLMs do their reading for them. Watching golf isn't playing golf.

freedomben 10mo ago
Once you've bought that food and it's on your plate, how would you feel about the farmer who grew it coming up and forcing you to eat it with a specific fork or only using approved utensils?
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  You bought a kindle, they already did that to you.

johnnyanmac 10mo ago

It's not training on books, but it will answer questions about the book you're reading. Doesn't pass the sniff test. >My device, my content I don't think you own the kindle store and servers used to train the Ai.

catgary 10mo ago
Are you implying that an LLM needs to be trained on a specific piece of text to answer questions about it?
- johnnyanmac 10mo ago
  If you want proper answers, yes. If you want to rely on whatever reddit or tiktok says about the book, then I guess at that point you're fine with hallucinations and others doing the thinking for you anyway. Hence the issues brought up in the article. I wouldn't trust an LLM for anything more than the most basic questions of it didn't actually have text to cite.
  - terafo 10mo ago
    Having access to the text and being trained on the text are two different things.
  - catgary 10mo ago
    Luckily, the LLM has the text to cite, it can be passed in at inference time, which is legally distinct from training on the data.
tshaddox 10mo ago
> It's not training on books, but it will answer questions about the book you're reading. Doesn't pass the sniff test. What do you mean? Presumably the implication is that it will essentially read the book (or search through it) in order to answer questions about it. An LLM can of course summarize text that's not in its training set.
- 10mo ago

rightbyte 10mo ago

> My device, my content I am quite sure Amazon doesn't sell you that.

bossyTeacher 10mo ago

>My device, my content Afaik, while the device is yours, everything else on it isn't.

micromacrofoot 10mo ago
device is hardly yours unless you jailbreak it or collect bricks

freedomben 10mo ago

I wish it was "my device, my content" but it absolutely isn't. If you want that you have to buy from a DRM-free source, and Kindle is the absolute opposite of that.

bko 10mo ago
What does this have to do with the parent's comment? Okay it's not 100% my device my content, so I shouldn't be allowed to run a local AI against the text?
- freedomben 10mo ago
  IMHO you should be able to enjoy your books however you want. If you want to run a local AI against it, more power to you. But my opinion doesn't matter. Only Amazon's does. That's the point I was making. The premise of "my device, my content" is flawed (because of the DRM Amazon uses) and undermines the argument.
  - ffsm8 10mo ago
    Right, under that argument it's their content, their rules then - making this situation even more of a non issue because they're adding this feature themselves.

lm28469 10mo ago

You don't mind having an llm owned by a megacorp lecturing you about the meaning of a book ? "Yes this is a good question about 1984 by George Orwell, you could indeed be tempted to compare the events of this book with current authoritarianism and surveillance but I can assure you this book is a pure work of fiction and at best can only be compared to evil states such as China and Russia, rest assured that as a US citizen you are Free"

g947o 10mo ago

Not your content, it's Amazon's content, you only purchased a license to view it, which can be revoked at any time if daddy Jeff is not happy. And I am not being cynical. That is literally what is on their web page, e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTZT9PLM https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BTZT9PLM

ceejayoz 10mo ago
Fun fact: the first book Amazon remotely removed from Kindles was… 1984. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-ki...
- DougMerritt 10mo ago
  Life mimics art.
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  The name Kindle suggests Fahrenheit 451. We're going to destroy books and here's the kindling.
ctoth 10mo ago
Sure. But you knew what this comment was trying to say. It is obviously saying that what happens on the Kindle is between the customer and possibly Amazon, specifically that authors should not be involved. They got their money. That part of the transaction is complete. I know you realize this, it's annoying to read the constant "not your keys not your coins" reframe.
- g947o 10mo ago
  No. The author incorrectly thinks they "own" the "content" like with a physical book, which is the prerequisite for all the discussions following it. I pointed out, factually and correctly, that they don't own anything (other than the license) or have any control over anything.
tiahura 10mo ago

Marsymars 10mo ago

> My device, my content, it's none of the author's business how I read it, in my view. In practice, that's not the case though, e.g. publishers on Kindle can choose not to allow text-to-speech assistive functionality.

benmanns 10mo ago
Audiobook publishers require/request this when you sell subsidiary rights. We’ve been able to push back citing accessibility concerns. I find it really annoying when not available for my own reading.

Gimpei 10mo ago

Couldn’t agree more. This is actually a super useful feature. I can’t think of how many times I’ve been reading a book and some minor character resurfaces and I’m like, who the hell is that guy? Now I can know. I can also get information on historical context. Who knows, maybe I can finally read Ulysses without having to have 5 other books.

nephihaha 10mo ago

In the case of a novel, or even certain text books, the author relies on the reader not jumping ahead. Especially murder mysteries and those kind of genres. There are artistic reasons for that, and it can wreck the work. In my experience, AI summaries often miss points or misrepresent work. There is a human element to reading a well written novel. An AI will miss some of the subtleties and references.

squigz 10mo ago
But if I want to jump ahead and read the last page of a book first, is it reasonable for an author to tell me I can't do that?
- nephihaha 10mo ago
  From an artistic point of view, yes it is. It's a bit like doing a crossword with the answers in big letters next to it... It destroys the point.
  - DennisP 10mo ago
    I agree but for some reason, there are people who enjoy doing that. I think they should be allowed to do as they like. In any case, Amazon claims this feature is spoiler-free and that would be easy to implement. It likely works by feeding the book into an LLM context, and they could simply feed in the portion you've already read.

tshaddox 10mo ago

Amazon is selling digital copies (or licenses, if you like) of the books, which means they need permission from the copyright holders. This permission is likely backed by a contractual agreement that covers some details about how Amazon presents the digital copies to the end users. (This of course wouldn't be the case if they were reselling physical books.)

ctoth 10mo ago
So what part of this presentation agreement could possibly apply?

squigz 10mo ago

> Edit: Given I've been a reader of HN for some time, I am perfectly aware that on Kindle you don't own the content, just a license to the content. Don't need any more people pointing this out! Lol. In my house we still call owning a license to something that is not likely to be revoked "owning it". The amount of people completely - and likely intentionally - missing your point is both frustrating and completely unsurprising. A quick reminder that this is part of HN's guidelines > Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

dpark 10mo ago

> where's the room for objection? I suspect most of the people arguing this way would be in favor of more end user rights if we were talking about anything except the right to use AI. “Rights good, AI bad” somehow leads to the insane argument that it’s a good thing you don’t have rights over the book you bought. “You don’t really own the book” is a crazy argument unless the person saying this wants the locked-down DRM world where you can’t own a piece of media.