5 ms·

What if you used the LLM to generate works that were already copyrighted?

by lurk2 7mo ago

dataflow 7mo ago
IMO the bigger question is how would you even tell if a work was generated by an LLM? There's a ton of code being written out there; the folks who generated it are going to claim they authored it for copyright purposes, and those who want to use it are going to claim it was LLM-generated. So what happens?
- terminalshort 7mo ago
  That code isn't going to be open source. And if you use someone else's closed source code you are violating laws that have nothing to do with copyright.
  - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
    Can you expand on that, please? Which other laws are infringed if you use someone else's closed source code?
    - LtWorf 7mo ago
      You used an illegal leak to train your llm
      - Dylan16807 7mo ago
        What makes the leak illegal other than copyright? The occasional piece of software might be a trade secret, but a person downloading a preexisting leak isn't affected by those laws.
        dataflow 7mo ago
        > What makes the leak illegal other than copyright? The occasional piece of software might be a trade secret, but a person downloading a preexisting leak isn't affected by those laws. I think 18 U.S.C. § 1832 (a) (3) might answer your question? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1832 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1832
        marcus_holmes 7mo ago
        To qualify as a trade secret, you have to actually register it as a trade secret. Closed-source code is not automatically a trade secret.
        dataflow 7mo ago
        That's completely false as far as I'm aware. Where did you see this? A simple web search shows numerous sources to the contrary. Are you confusing them with patents by any chance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret
        marcus_holmes 7mo ago
        Huh, TIL something new. I was sure they had to be registered. Thanks for the correction :)
  - dataflow 7mo ago
    I'm not sure I understand. I'm not talking about stolen/leaked code here. I'm saying: imagine you claim you're the author of some piece of code. You may or may not have written it with an LLM, but even if so, assume you have the full rights to all the inputs. You post it publicly on GitHub. You don't attach a license, or perhaps you attach a restrictive license that doesn't permit much beyond viewing. Someone comes across your code, finds it brilliant, and wants to use it. If that code was non-copyrightable (such as generated via an LLM), then they're fine doing it without your permission, no? But if that code was copyrightable, then they're not permitted to do so, correct? So now consider two questions: 1. You actually didn't use an LLM, but they believe & claim you did. Who has the burden of proof to show that you actually own the copyright, and how do they do so? 2. They write new code that you feel is based on yours. They claim they washed it through an LLM, but you don't believe so. Who has the burden of proof here and how do they do so?
    - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
      Good questions. My take on the answers (I am not a lawyer): 1. You copy their code. They bring a copyright claim (let's assume this isn't a DMCA thing and they're actually bringing a claim to court). Your defence is "the LLM wrote it so no copyright attaches". Since they're asserting their copyright claim, they would have to provide evidence for that claim (same as in any other copyright case), including providing evidence that a human wrote it (which is new, and required to defeat your defence). 2. They copy your code. You bring a copyright case. Their defence is "I used an LLM to wash the code without copying". Since they're not disputing your copyright claim to the original code, you don't have to defend or prove your copyright. But you do have to prove that their code infringes on your copyright, which would mean proving that the LLM copied your code when creating the new code. This has been done before by demonstrating similarity.
- greyface- 7mo ago
  The alleged author, when bringing a copyright infringement suit, will submit testimony claiming they wrote it. Parties to the suit will have a chance to present arguments and evidence. Then, the claim will be adjudicated by a judge and/or jury.
AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
There was a recent case that everyone has been describing as "LLM output can't be copyrighted" but what it actually said was you can't register the AI as the author.
- bdowling 7mo ago
  Powerful interests want it to be true.
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago
  This is not true, and I'd love to see some actual citation here. The courts have repeatedly said that copyright only applies to human creativity. The Supreme Court explicitly said this when they refused to hear the appeal: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Thaler_v._Perlmutter,_Refusal_of_First_Request_for_Reconsideration https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Thaler_v._Perlmutter,_Refusal... > "We affirm our decision to refuse registration for the Work because it lacks the human authorship necessary to be eligible for copyright protection." So they're saying that the LLM cannot be the author, because LLMs cannot claim copyright. The related case about patents is more supportive of the narrative that AIs cannot be authors (see https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINION.8-5-2022_1988142.pdf https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINIO...), specifically: "Here, there is no ambiguity: the Patent Act requires that inventors must be natural persons; that is, human beings." The patent situation is that the Act says that inventor must be an individual, which the courts are interpreting to mean a human, so the LLM cannot be named as the inventor. So, in this case, yes, this is just saying that an LLM cannot be named as the inventor of a patent. That's not the same thing as the courts are saying with copyrights.
  - AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
    > So they're saying that the LLM cannot be the author, because LLMs cannot claim copyright. They're saying that the LLM can't be the author. Now suppose you supply the LLM with a prompt that contains human creativity, it performs a deterministic mathematical transformation on the prompt to produce a derivative text, and you want to copyright that, claiming yourself as the author. What happens then? If you think the answer is that you can't, how do you distinguish that from what happens when someone writes source code and has a compiler turn it into a binary computer program? Or do you think that e.g. Windows binaries can't be copyrighted because they were compiled by a machine?
wk_end 7mo ago
Is Pierre Menard really the author of his Quixote?

What if you used the LLM to generate works that were already copyrighted?

by lurk2 7mo ago

What if you used the LLM to generate works that were already copyrighted?

IMO the bigger question is how would you even tell if a work was generated by an LLM? There's a ton of code being written out there; the folks who generated it are going to claim they authored it for copyright purposes, and those who want to use it are going to claim it was LLM-generated. So what happens?

terminalshort 7mo ago
That code isn't going to be open source. And if you use someone else's closed source code you are violating laws that have nothing to do with copyright.
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago
  Can you expand on that, please? Which other laws are infringed if you use someone else's closed source code?
  - LtWorf 7mo ago
    You used an illegal leak to train your llm
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      What makes the leak illegal other than copyright? The occasional piece of software might be a trade secret, but a person downloading a preexisting leak isn't affected by those laws.
      - dataflow 7mo ago
        > What makes the leak illegal other than copyright? The occasional piece of software might be a trade secret, but a person downloading a preexisting leak isn't affected by those laws. I think 18 U.S.C. § 1832 (a) (3) might answer your question? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1832 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1832
        marcus_holmes 7mo ago
        To qualify as a trade secret, you have to actually register it as a trade secret. Closed-source code is not automatically a trade secret.
        dataflow 7mo ago
        That's completely false as far as I'm aware. Where did you see this? A simple web search shows numerous sources to the contrary. Are you confusing them with patents by any chance? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret
        marcus_holmes 7mo ago
        Huh, TIL something new. I was sure they had to be registered. Thanks for the correction :)
- dataflow 7mo ago
  I'm not sure I understand. I'm not talking about stolen/leaked code here. I'm saying: imagine you claim you're the author of some piece of code. You may or may not have written it with an LLM, but even if so, assume you have the full rights to all the inputs. You post it publicly on GitHub. You don't attach a license, or perhaps you attach a restrictive license that doesn't permit much beyond viewing. Someone comes across your code, finds it brilliant, and wants to use it. If that code was non-copyrightable (such as generated via an LLM), then they're fine doing it without your permission, no? But if that code was copyrightable, then they're not permitted to do so, correct? So now consider two questions: 1. You actually didn't use an LLM, but they believe & claim you did. Who has the burden of proof to show that you actually own the copyright, and how do they do so? 2. They write new code that you feel is based on yours. They claim they washed it through an LLM, but you don't believe so. Who has the burden of proof here and how do they do so?
  - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
    Good questions. My take on the answers (I am not a lawyer): 1. You copy their code. They bring a copyright claim (let's assume this isn't a DMCA thing and they're actually bringing a claim to court). Your defence is "the LLM wrote it so no copyright attaches". Since they're asserting their copyright claim, they would have to provide evidence for that claim (same as in any other copyright case), including providing evidence that a human wrote it (which is new, and required to defeat your defence). 2. They copy your code. You bring a copyright case. Their defence is "I used an LLM to wash the code without copying". Since they're not disputing your copyright claim to the original code, you don't have to defend or prove your copyright. But you do have to prove that their code infringes on your copyright, which would mean proving that the LLM copied your code when creating the new code. This has been done before by demonstrating similarity.
greyface- 7mo ago
The alleged author, when bringing a copyright infringement suit, will submit testimony claiming they wrote it. Parties to the suit will have a chance to present arguments and evidence. Then, the claim will be adjudicated by a judge and/or jury.

AnthonyMouse 7mo ago

There was a recent case that everyone has been describing as "LLM output can't be copyrighted" but what it actually said was you can't register the AI as the author.

bdowling 7mo ago
Powerful interests want it to be true.
marcus_holmes 7mo ago
This is not true, and I'd love to see some actual citation here. The courts have repeatedly said that copyright only applies to human creativity. The Supreme Court explicitly said this when they refused to hear the appeal: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Thaler_v._Perlmutter,_Refusal_of_First_Request_for_Reconsideration https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Thaler_v._Perlmutter,_Refusal... > "We affirm our decision to refuse registration for the Work because it lacks the human authorship necessary to be eligible for copyright protection." So they're saying that the LLM cannot be the author, because LLMs cannot claim copyright. The related case about patents is more supportive of the narrative that AIs cannot be authors (see https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINION.8-5-2022_1988142.pdf https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/21-2347.OPINIO...), specifically: "Here, there is no ambiguity: the Patent Act requires that inventors must be natural persons; that is, human beings." The patent situation is that the Act says that inventor must be an individual, which the courts are interpreting to mean a human, so the LLM cannot be named as the inventor. So, in this case, yes, this is just saying that an LLM cannot be named as the inventor of a patent. That's not the same thing as the courts are saying with copyrights.
- AnthonyMouse 7mo ago
  > So they're saying that the LLM cannot be the author, because LLMs cannot claim copyright. They're saying that the LLM can't be the author. Now suppose you supply the LLM with a prompt that contains human creativity, it performs a deterministic mathematical transformation on the prompt to produce a derivative text, and you want to copyright that, claiming yourself as the author. What happens then? If you think the answer is that you can't, how do you distinguish that from what happens when someone writes source code and has a compiler turn it into a binary computer program? Or do you think that e.g. Windows binaries can't be copyrighted because they were compiled by a machine?

wk_end 7mo ago

Is Pierre Menard really the author of his Quixote?