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Trying to protect a particular style is just unworkable for obvious reasons. The only solution I can think of is requiring AI companies to license all of the co

Trying to protect a particular style is just unworkable for obvious reasons. The only solution I can think of is requiring AI companies to license all of the content they have in their training set so artists get paid for the training rather than trying to work out which source material links to which outputs which is impossible.

spudlyo 8mo ago
When I buy a book, I don't buy a license to read it, I don't sign an EULA that says I won't scan it, digitize it, or write a program to analyze the word frequencies it contains. Do you want buy a license to read a book, because this is how you get there.
- Gigachad 8mo ago
  The old rules were built on based on old capabilities and and old reality which no longer exists.
  - squidbeak 8mo ago
    This is a deceptive line of dismissal. Sound principles needs to be figured out before imposing any kind of restriction on art - "things have changed" doesn't cut it.
    - Gigachad 8mo ago
      Figuring things out is exactly what needs to happen. I think it is valid to dismiss arguments of “this is how copyright has always worked” when those rules were written before AI completely changed the game.
- squokko 8mo ago
  The law has always been able to recognize a distinction between Hunter S. Thompson reading Ernest Hemingway and learning from his style and a billion GPUs reading a billion books to be able to produce it on demand. It takes time for the law to catch up to the technology but it will.
- add-sub-mul-div 8mo ago
  Perhaps it's that the transaction for you, an individual not explicitly profiting from the work, should be treated differently than a corporation using a work solely to profit from it.
- aerhardt 8mo ago
  In Spain books include a copyright notice explicitly prohibiting reproduction and digitalization and alluding to article 270 of the Spanish criminal code.
  - franciscop 8mo ago
    The book can say anything it wants, whenever it's true and/or applicable in court later on is a very different matter. Spain's SGAE is a very powerful lobby but still needs to follow the law. Edit: haven't followed the law in a while, but you could definitely copy, digitalize and scan documents for yourself and your friends (copia privada).
    - aerhardt 8mo ago
      In Spain EULAs cannot infringe upon the law either.
- tdb7893 8mo ago
  You don't sign an EULA saying you can't do those things because scanning then distributing is already prohibited by copyright. The way to start a license war is to keep the status quo of these companies being able to ingest and essentially reproduce human work for free. One of my big worries about AI is that it will accelerate companies locking everything down and hoarding their own data.
  - pastel8739 8mo ago
    I suspect it’s already has a dampening effect on individuals sharing. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth to know that anything you share intending to help fellow humans will immediately be ripped and profited from by companies that want to take your job and profit from it.
- esafak 8mo ago
  It is not an individual buying the book but a corporation, with the purpose of being able to create imitations of it, and all other books.
- throwawaysoxjje 8mo ago
  Of course you don’t, because it’s not the EULA that enforces the copyright. Copyright law is what enforces the EULA. It’s right there in the fact it’s a Licensing Agreement.
- mitthrowaway2 8mo ago
  When I buy a patented product I don't sign an EULA that says I can't manufacture and sell a copy, but I still can't manufacture and sell a copy.
- croes 8mo ago
  The problem isn’t the reading. The problem is the output based on somebody’s other work. There is a reason why we call it styles, because it’s a recognizable pattern someone came up with maybe after decades of work.
  - JAlexoid 8mo ago
    The "funny" thing is that we absolutely allow people to copy style... but somehow software isn't allowed to do that? You don't even need to have a legally acquired source material to produce work in a certain style. The new reality allows for original creators to actually track the chain, so we're in this situation.
    - croes 8mo ago
      If people would have the same mass output as software we wouldn’t allow that too. If one or two people take an apple from your tree it’s not a big deal, if a machine takes 10,000 it is.
- saaaaaam 8mo ago
  Copyright quite literally protects the act of copying or reproducing a work protected by copyright. And you are technically entering into something akin to an end user licensing agreement when you buy a book, the only difference being that the EULA is incorporated into law on an international basis through reciprocal copyright treaties. So if scan a book you are making a copy. In some copyright jurisdictions this is allowed for individuals under a private copying exception - a copyright opt out, if you like - but the important thing is private use. In some jurisdictions there is also a fair use exception, which allows you to exploit the rights protected by copyright under certain circumstances, but fair use is quite specific and one big issue with fair use is that the rights you are exploiting cannot result in something that competes with the original work. Other acts restricted by copyright include distribution, adaptation, performance, communication and rental. So if you copy a book, digitize it, and write a program to analyze the word frequencies it contains you may, in some jurisdictions but not all, be allowed to do this. If you’re doing it locally on your own machine you are simply copying it. If you do it in the cloud you are copying it and communicating the copy. If you copy it, analyze it and train an AI model on it that could be considered fair use in certain jurisdictions. Whether the outputs are adaptations of the training data is a matter of debate in the copyright community. But importantly if you commercialise that model and the resulting outputs compete with the copyright protected material you used to train, your fair use argument may fail. So when you buy a book you are actually party to what is effectively a licence granted by the copyright holder, albeit it to the publisher. But as the end user of the book you are still restricted in what you can do with that copyright protected work, through a universal end user licence encoded in law.
- squidbeak 8mo ago
  It's even worse than that. You then have to pay an additional fee to use its ideas as inspiration for your own book.
numpad0 8mo ago
The cumulative license fees required to properly compensate all artists is so absurd that it will probably genuinely burn down the entirety of global economy if paid. The only solution I can think of is to burn down just the AI to be revisited later to be rebuilt as a tool that won't require absurd amount of training data, that also leave a lot more to its human operator beyond merely accepting literal categorical descriptions that are fundamentally tangential to artistic values of outputs. And I think same could happen to LLM. If it took all the fossil fuel on Earth just to barely able to drive a car to a car wash, there's more things wrong with the car than in the oil price.
- Retric 8mo ago
  > is so absurd that it will probably genuinely burn down the entire global economy if paid. Where did you get that idea. Global economy is ~200T/year PPP. 0.1% of that split across every artist you want the training data from would be insanely difficult for the vast majority of them to turn down. Which makes sense as art isn’t that big a percentage of the global economy compared to say housing, food, medical care, infrastructure, military spending etc. Obviously the incentive to take without compensation is far more appealing, but that doesn’t mean it was impossible to make a reasonable offer.
  - bjterry 8mo ago
    For all the people represented in the training data to receive royalties would be an incredible wealth transfer to the Extremely Online. My forum posts, StackOverflow answers etc are also contributing to the model outputs. The training data, by volume, mostly belongs to blog authors, redditors, Wikipedia editors, to us!
    - abustamam 8mo ago
      Hey finally my reddit and hn habit can be lucrative!
    - nneonneo 8mo ago
      The people in that counting to infinity subreddit would get compensated a lot if this were fully automated - their posts were so overrepresented in the training set that many of their usernames became complete tokens (e.g. SolidGoldMagikarp).

spudlyo 8mo ago

When I buy a book, I don't buy a license to read it, I don't sign an EULA that says I won't scan it, digitize it, or write a program to analyze the word frequencies it contains. Do you want buy a license to read a book, because this is how you get there.

Gigachad 8mo ago
The old rules were built on based on old capabilities and and old reality which no longer exists.
- squidbeak 8mo ago
  This is a deceptive line of dismissal. Sound principles needs to be figured out before imposing any kind of restriction on art - "things have changed" doesn't cut it.
  - Gigachad 8mo ago
    Figuring things out is exactly what needs to happen. I think it is valid to dismiss arguments of “this is how copyright has always worked” when those rules were written before AI completely changed the game.
squokko 8mo ago
The law has always been able to recognize a distinction between Hunter S. Thompson reading Ernest Hemingway and learning from his style and a billion GPUs reading a billion books to be able to produce it on demand. It takes time for the law to catch up to the technology but it will.
add-sub-mul-div 8mo ago
Perhaps it's that the transaction for you, an individual not explicitly profiting from the work, should be treated differently than a corporation using a work solely to profit from it.
aerhardt 8mo ago
In Spain books include a copyright notice explicitly prohibiting reproduction and digitalization and alluding to article 270 of the Spanish criminal code.
- franciscop 8mo ago
  The book can say anything it wants, whenever it's true and/or applicable in court later on is a very different matter. Spain's SGAE is a very powerful lobby but still needs to follow the law. Edit: haven't followed the law in a while, but you could definitely copy, digitalize and scan documents for yourself and your friends (copia privada).
  - aerhardt 8mo ago
    In Spain EULAs cannot infringe upon the law either.
tdb7893 8mo ago
You don't sign an EULA saying you can't do those things because scanning then distributing is already prohibited by copyright. The way to start a license war is to keep the status quo of these companies being able to ingest and essentially reproduce human work for free. One of my big worries about AI is that it will accelerate companies locking everything down and hoarding their own data.
- pastel8739 8mo ago
  I suspect it’s already has a dampening effect on individuals sharing. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth to know that anything you share intending to help fellow humans will immediately be ripped and profited from by companies that want to take your job and profit from it.
esafak 8mo ago
It is not an individual buying the book but a corporation, with the purpose of being able to create imitations of it, and all other books.
throwawaysoxjje 8mo ago
Of course you don’t, because it’s not the EULA that enforces the copyright. Copyright law is what enforces the EULA. It’s right there in the fact it’s a Licensing Agreement.
mitthrowaway2 8mo ago
When I buy a patented product I don't sign an EULA that says I can't manufacture and sell a copy, but I still can't manufacture and sell a copy.
croes 8mo ago
The problem isn’t the reading. The problem is the output based on somebody’s other work. There is a reason why we call it styles, because it’s a recognizable pattern someone came up with maybe after decades of work.
- JAlexoid 8mo ago
  The "funny" thing is that we absolutely allow people to copy style... but somehow software isn't allowed to do that? You don't even need to have a legally acquired source material to produce work in a certain style. The new reality allows for original creators to actually track the chain, so we're in this situation.
  - croes 8mo ago
    If people would have the same mass output as software we wouldn’t allow that too. If one or two people take an apple from your tree it’s not a big deal, if a machine takes 10,000 it is.
saaaaaam 8mo ago
Copyright quite literally protects the act of copying or reproducing a work protected by copyright. And you are technically entering into something akin to an end user licensing agreement when you buy a book, the only difference being that the EULA is incorporated into law on an international basis through reciprocal copyright treaties. So if scan a book you are making a copy. In some copyright jurisdictions this is allowed for individuals under a private copying exception - a copyright opt out, if you like - but the important thing is private use. In some jurisdictions there is also a fair use exception, which allows you to exploit the rights protected by copyright under certain circumstances, but fair use is quite specific and one big issue with fair use is that the rights you are exploiting cannot result in something that competes with the original work. Other acts restricted by copyright include distribution, adaptation, performance, communication and rental. So if you copy a book, digitize it, and write a program to analyze the word frequencies it contains you may, in some jurisdictions but not all, be allowed to do this. If you’re doing it locally on your own machine you are simply copying it. If you do it in the cloud you are copying it and communicating the copy. If you copy it, analyze it and train an AI model on it that could be considered fair use in certain jurisdictions. Whether the outputs are adaptations of the training data is a matter of debate in the copyright community. But importantly if you commercialise that model and the resulting outputs compete with the copyright protected material you used to train, your fair use argument may fail. So when you buy a book you are actually party to what is effectively a licence granted by the copyright holder, albeit it to the publisher. But as the end user of the book you are still restricted in what you can do with that copyright protected work, through a universal end user licence encoded in law.
squidbeak 8mo ago
It's even worse than that. You then have to pay an additional fee to use its ideas as inspiration for your own book.

numpad0 8mo ago

The cumulative license fees required to properly compensate all artists is so absurd that it will probably genuinely burn down the entirety of global economy if paid. The only solution I can think of is to burn down just the AI to be revisited later to be rebuilt as a tool that won't require absurd amount of training data, that also leave a lot more to its human operator beyond merely accepting literal categorical descriptions that are fundamentally tangential to artistic values of outputs. And I think same could happen to LLM. If it took all the fossil fuel on Earth just to barely able to drive a car to a car wash, there's more things wrong with the car than in the oil price.

Retric 8mo ago
> is so absurd that it will probably genuinely burn down the entire global economy if paid. Where did you get that idea. Global economy is ~200T/year PPP. 0.1% of that split across every artist you want the training data from would be insanely difficult for the vast majority of them to turn down. Which makes sense as art isn’t that big a percentage of the global economy compared to say housing, food, medical care, infrastructure, military spending etc. Obviously the incentive to take without compensation is far more appealing, but that doesn’t mean it was impossible to make a reasonable offer.
- bjterry 8mo ago
  For all the people represented in the training data to receive royalties would be an incredible wealth transfer to the Extremely Online. My forum posts, StackOverflow answers etc are also contributing to the model outputs. The training data, by volume, mostly belongs to blog authors, redditors, Wikipedia editors, to us!
  - abustamam 8mo ago
    Hey finally my reddit and hn habit can be lucrative!
  - nneonneo 8mo ago
    The people in that counting to infinity subreddit would get compensated a lot if this were fully automated - their posts were so overrepresented in the training set that many of their usernames became complete tokens (e.g. SolidGoldMagikarp).