5 ms·

> but in this case the works in question were released under a license that allowed free duplication and distribution so no harm was caused. FSF licenses conta

> but in this case the works in question were released under a license that allowed free duplication and distribution so no harm was caused. FSF licenses contain attribution and copyleft clauses. It's "do whatever you want with it provided that you X, Y and Z". Just taking the first part without the second part is a breach of the license. It's like renting a car without paying and then claiming "well you said I can drive around with it for the rest of the day, so where is the harm?" while conveniently ignoring the payment clause. You maybe confusing this with a "public domain" license.

Dylan16807 7mo ago
They don't need the "do whatever" permission if everything they do is fair use. They only need the downloading permission, and it's free to download.
jcul 7mo ago
This article is talking about a book though, not software. "Sam Williams and Richard Stallman's Free as in freedom: Richard Stallman's crusade for free software" "GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL). This is a free license allowing use of the work for any purpose without payment." I'm not familiar with this license or how it compares to their software licenses, but it sounds closer to a public domain license.
- kennywinker 7mo ago
  It sounds that way a bit from the one sentence. But that’s not the case at all. > 4. MODIFICATIONS > You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version: Etc etc. In short, it is a copyleft license. You must also license derivative works under this license. Just fyi, the gnu fdl is (unsurprisingly) available for free online - so if you want to know what it says, you can read it!
  - mjg59 7mo ago
    And the judgement said that the training was fair use, but that the duplication might be an infringement. The GFDL doesn't restrict duplication, only distribution, so if training on GFDLed material is fair use and not the creation of a derivative work then there's no damage.
    - leni536 7mo ago
      Last time I checked online LLMs distribute parts of their training corpus when you prompt them.
    - kennywinker 7mo ago
      > The GFDL doesn't restrict duplication Right. I can publish the work in whole without asking permission. That’s unrestricted duplication. However, as i read it, an LLM spitting out snippets from the text is not “duplicating” the work. That would fall under modifications. From the license: > A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language. I read that pretty clearly as any work containing text from a gnu fdl document is a modification not a duplication.
      - mjg59 7mo ago
        There's three steps here: 1) Obtaining the copyrighted works used for training. Anthropic did this without asking for the copyright holders' permission, which would be a copyright violation for any work that isn't under a license that grants permission to duplicate. The GFDL does, so no issue here. 2) Training the model. The case held that this was fair use, so no issue here. 3) Whether the output is a derivative work. If so then you get to figure out how the GFDL applies to the output, but to the best of my knowledge the case didn't ask this question so we don't know.
  - onion2k 7mo ago
    For this to stand up in court you'd need to show that an LLM is distributing "a modified version of the document". If I took a book and cut it up into individual words (or partial words even), and then used some of the words with words from every other book to write a new book, it'd be hard to argue that I'm really "distributing the first book", even if the subject of my book is the same as the first one. This really just highlights how the law is a long way behind what's achievable with modern computing power.
- karel-3d 7mo ago
  FDL is famously annoying. wikipedia used to be under FDL and they lobbied FSF to allow an escape hatch to Commons for a few months, because FDL was so annoying.
mjg59 7mo ago
If what you do with a copyrighted work is covered by fair use it doesn't matter what the license says - you can do it anyway. The GFDL imposes restrictions on distribution, not copying, so merely downloading a copy imposes no obligation on you and so isn't a copyright infringement either. I used to be on the FSF board of directors. I have provided legal testimony regarding copyleft licenses. I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain.
- danlitt 7mo ago
  > I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain. Then why did you say "no harm was caused"? Clearly the harm of "using our copylefted work to create proprietary software" was caused. Do you just mean economic harm? If so, I think that's where the parent comments confusion originates.
  - mjg59 7mo ago
    No harm under copyright law
- snovv_crash 7mo ago
  Models, however, can reproduce copyleft code verbatim, and are being redistributed. Doesn't that count? Licences like AGPL also don't have redistribution as their only restriction.
  - shagie 7mo ago
    Stack Overflow has verbatim copied GPL code in some of its questions and answers. As presented by SO, that code is not under the GPL license (this also applies to other licenses - the BSD advertising clause and the original json will cause similar problems). Arguably, the use of the code in the Stack Overflow question and answer is fair use. The problem occurs not when someone reads the Q&A with the improperly licensed code but rather when they then copy that code verbatim into their own non GPL product and distribute that without adherence to the GPL. It's the last step - some human distributing the improperly licensed software that is the violation of the GPL. This same chain of what is allowed and what is not is equally applicable to LLMs. Providing examples from GPL licensed material to answer a question isn't a license violation. The human copying that code (from any source) and pasting it into their own software is a license violation. --- Some while back I had a discussion with a Swiss developer about the indefinite article used before "hobbit" in a text game. They used "an hobbit" and in the discussion of fixing it, I quoted the first line of The Hobbit. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." That cleared it up and my use of it in that (and this) discussion is fair use. If someone listening to that conversation (or reading this one) thought that the bit that I quoted would be great on a T-shirt and them printed that up and distributed it - that would be a copyright violation. Google's use of thumbnails for images was found to be fair use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc.#Ninth_Circuit_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com... The Ninth Circuit did, however, overturn the district court's decision that Google's thumbnail images were unauthorized and infringing copies of Perfect 10's original images. Google claimed that these images constituted fair use, and the circuit court agreed. This was because they were "highly transformative." If I was to then take those thumbnails from a google image search and distribute that as an icon library, I would then be guilty of copyright infringement. I believe that Stack Overflow, Google Images, and LLM models and their output constitutes an example of transformative fair use. What someone does with that output is where copyright infringement happens. My claim isn't that AI vendors are blameless but rather that in the issue of copyright and license adherence it is the human in the process that is the one who has agency and needs to follow copyright (and for AI agents that were unleashed without oversight, it is the human that spun them up or unleashed them).
ghighi7878 7mo ago
Telling mjg59 they are confused about a license is an audacious move. But I understand your question and I have the same question.

Dylan16807 7mo ago

They don't need the "do whatever" permission if everything they do is fair use. They only need the downloading permission, and it's free to download.

jcul 7mo ago

This article is talking about a book though, not software. "Sam Williams and Richard Stallman's Free as in freedom: Richard Stallman's crusade for free software" "GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL). This is a free license allowing use of the work for any purpose without payment." I'm not familiar with this license or how it compares to their software licenses, but it sounds closer to a public domain license.

kennywinker 7mo ago
It sounds that way a bit from the one sentence. But that’s not the case at all. > 4. MODIFICATIONS > You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version: Etc etc. In short, it is a copyleft license. You must also license derivative works under this license. Just fyi, the gnu fdl is (unsurprisingly) available for free online - so if you want to know what it says, you can read it!
- mjg59 7mo ago
  And the judgement said that the training was fair use, but that the duplication might be an infringement. The GFDL doesn't restrict duplication, only distribution, so if training on GFDLed material is fair use and not the creation of a derivative work then there's no damage.
  - leni536 7mo ago
    Last time I checked online LLMs distribute parts of their training corpus when you prompt them.
  - kennywinker 7mo ago
    > The GFDL doesn't restrict duplication Right. I can publish the work in whole without asking permission. That’s unrestricted duplication. However, as i read it, an LLM spitting out snippets from the text is not “duplicating” the work. That would fall under modifications. From the license: > A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language. I read that pretty clearly as any work containing text from a gnu fdl document is a modification not a duplication.
    - mjg59 7mo ago
      There's three steps here: 1) Obtaining the copyrighted works used for training. Anthropic did this without asking for the copyright holders' permission, which would be a copyright violation for any work that isn't under a license that grants permission to duplicate. The GFDL does, so no issue here. 2) Training the model. The case held that this was fair use, so no issue here. 3) Whether the output is a derivative work. If so then you get to figure out how the GFDL applies to the output, but to the best of my knowledge the case didn't ask this question so we don't know.
- onion2k 7mo ago
  For this to stand up in court you'd need to show that an LLM is distributing "a modified version of the document". If I took a book and cut it up into individual words (or partial words even), and then used some of the words with words from every other book to write a new book, it'd be hard to argue that I'm really "distributing the first book", even if the subject of my book is the same as the first one. This really just highlights how the law is a long way behind what's achievable with modern computing power.
karel-3d 7mo ago
FDL is famously annoying. wikipedia used to be under FDL and they lobbied FSF to allow an escape hatch to Commons for a few months, because FDL was so annoying.

mjg59 7mo ago

If what you do with a copyrighted work is covered by fair use it doesn't matter what the license says - you can do it anyway. The GFDL imposes restrictions on distribution, not copying, so merely downloading a copy imposes no obligation on you and so isn't a copyright infringement either. I used to be on the FSF board of directors. I have provided legal testimony regarding copyleft licenses. I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain.

danlitt 7mo ago
> I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain. Then why did you say "no harm was caused"? Clearly the harm of "using our copylefted work to create proprietary software" was caused. Do you just mean economic harm? If so, I think that's where the parent comments confusion originates.
- mjg59 7mo ago
  No harm under copyright law
snovv_crash 7mo ago
Models, however, can reproduce copyleft code verbatim, and are being redistributed. Doesn't that count? Licences like AGPL also don't have redistribution as their only restriction.
- shagie 7mo ago
  Stack Overflow has verbatim copied GPL code in some of its questions and answers. As presented by SO, that code is not under the GPL license (this also applies to other licenses - the BSD advertising clause and the original json will cause similar problems). Arguably, the use of the code in the Stack Overflow question and answer is fair use. The problem occurs not when someone reads the Q&A with the improperly licensed code but rather when they then copy that code verbatim into their own non GPL product and distribute that without adherence to the GPL. It's the last step - some human distributing the improperly licensed software that is the violation of the GPL. This same chain of what is allowed and what is not is equally applicable to LLMs. Providing examples from GPL licensed material to answer a question isn't a license violation. The human copying that code (from any source) and pasting it into their own software is a license violation. --- Some while back I had a discussion with a Swiss developer about the indefinite article used before "hobbit" in a text game. They used "an hobbit" and in the discussion of fixing it, I quoted the first line of The Hobbit. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." That cleared it up and my use of it in that (and this) discussion is fair use. If someone listening to that conversation (or reading this one) thought that the bit that I quoted would be great on a T-shirt and them printed that up and distributed it - that would be a copyright violation. Google's use of thumbnails for images was found to be fair use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com,_Inc.#Ninth_Circuit_opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com... The Ninth Circuit did, however, overturn the district court's decision that Google's thumbnail images were unauthorized and infringing copies of Perfect 10's original images. Google claimed that these images constituted fair use, and the circuit court agreed. This was because they were "highly transformative." If I was to then take those thumbnails from a google image search and distribute that as an icon library, I would then be guilty of copyright infringement. I believe that Stack Overflow, Google Images, and LLM models and their output constitutes an example of transformative fair use. What someone does with that output is where copyright infringement happens. My claim isn't that AI vendors are blameless but rather that in the issue of copyright and license adherence it is the human in the process that is the one who has agency and needs to follow copyright (and for AI agents that were unleashed without oversight, it is the human that spun them up or unleashed them).

ghighi7878 7mo ago

Telling mjg59 they are confused about a license is an audacious move. But I understand your question and I have the same question.