5 ms·

I'm really confused by the FSF statement here. The court ruled that the use of copyrighted information is fair use. The issue is that Anthropic pirated (obtaine

by briandw 7mo ago

I'm really confused by the FSF statement here. The court ruled that the use of copyrighted information is fair use. The issue is that Anthropic pirated (obtained illegally) copyrighted work and that was the offense. FSF books are free to download and store etc. The license says: "This is a free license allowing use of the work for any purpose without payment." So how can they claim that their rights were infringed when the court ruled that the problem was the illegal downloading of copyrighted work? It's impossible to illegally download a FSF book.

aaaronic 7mo ago
I also found the statement bizarre. They don’t seem to have any argument for compensation of any kind unless the books were under a restrictive license that required derived works to also be open source.
- gpm 7mo ago
  No, even under such a restrictive license (which I think the GFDL is?) there's no argument. Their copyright was not violated by anthropic downloading the books, because anthropic had a license to do that. And their copyright was not violated by anthropic training on the books, because the court found that no ones copyright was violated by doing this. Antrhopic didn't need a license to do this. So the restrictive terms of the license can't prevent it. I mean they might have an argument for compensation based on "well the settlement Anthropic agreed to didn't exclude us even though they didn't violate our copyright"... but just for the compensation outlined in the settlement.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
motbus3 7mo ago
They said that the LLM can hold the information but can't produce it ipsis litteris. But if it produces a plagiarized version then it needs be settled with those who publish it. That said, one might say it was unintentional and it would be impossible to verify all llm work with that premise.
kube-system 7mo ago
1. There are some uses of the copies that were not granted summary judgement > And, as for any copies made from central library copies but not used for training, this order does not grant summary judgment for Anthropic. On this record in this posture, the central library copies were retained even when no longer serving as sources for training copies, “hundreds of engineers” could access them to make copies for other uses, and engineers did make other copies. Whether or not those other actions met the requirements of the FDL is untested and would be the subject of a trial, had this gone to trial, but it didn't. 2. The FDL does have requirements that must be met for the use of copies to be permissible -- it doesn't allow you to do anything you want.
- nativeit 7mo ago
  I interpreted this to be a class action to which they were a party, not something they principally launched themselves?
  - kube-system 7mo ago
    It is. I'm just commenting on why it isn't that straightforward that the FSF presumably wouldn't care. Copyleft is an exercise of copyright. The FSF doesn't believe in permissive use of works - they believe in using copyright licensing to force others to share the way they believe others should share.
- gpm 7mo ago
  While there are requirements on making copies in the FDL, I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that a court would find that a company making internal copies would violate the license when those restrictions are just along the lines of "and you must include a copy of the license". And the FSF would be extremely foolish to ever pursue such a suit, because extremely ordinary non-AI related activities involving working with internal local documents also make copies in a similar way. If OpenAI violated the FDL by doing so then the FDL is a foot gun of a license that companies would be well advised to avoid. The only suit that makes any sense would be the one against using the FDL licensed documents to train the not-FDL licensed AI... and the judge already rejected that in this case.
gwbas1c 7mo ago
I think they are implying that they believe models trained on their copyrighted information should be open-source.
- kube-system 7mo ago
  Not 'open source' but 'free', of which RMS has very strong feelings about the difference.
makz 7mo ago
Didn't understand it well, I thought it was because english is not my native language.

by briandw 7mo ago

aaaronic 7mo ago

I also found the statement bizarre. They don’t seem to have any argument for compensation of any kind unless the books were under a restrictive license that required derived works to also be open source.

gpm 7mo ago
No, even under such a restrictive license (which I think the GFDL is?) there's no argument. Their copyright was not violated by anthropic downloading the books, because anthropic had a license to do that. And their copyright was not violated by anthropic training on the books, because the court found that no ones copyright was violated by doing this. Antrhopic didn't need a license to do this. So the restrictive terms of the license can't prevent it. I mean they might have an argument for compensation based on "well the settlement Anthropic agreed to didn't exclude us even though they didn't violate our copyright"... but just for the compensation outlined in the settlement.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

motbus3 7mo ago

They said that the LLM can hold the information but can't produce it ipsis litteris. But if it produces a plagiarized version then it needs be settled with those who publish it. That said, one might say it was unintentional and it would be impossible to verify all llm work with that premise.

kube-system 7mo ago

1. There are some uses of the copies that were not granted summary judgement > And, as for any copies made from central library copies but not used for training, this order does not grant summary judgment for Anthropic. On this record in this posture, the central library copies were retained even when no longer serving as sources for training copies, “hundreds of engineers” could access them to make copies for other uses, and engineers did make other copies. Whether or not those other actions met the requirements of the FDL is untested and would be the subject of a trial, had this gone to trial, but it didn't. 2. The FDL does have requirements that must be met for the use of copies to be permissible -- it doesn't allow you to do anything you want.

nativeit 7mo ago
I interpreted this to be a class action to which they were a party, not something they principally launched themselves?
- kube-system 7mo ago
  It is. I'm just commenting on why it isn't that straightforward that the FSF presumably wouldn't care. Copyleft is an exercise of copyright. The FSF doesn't believe in permissive use of works - they believe in using copyright licensing to force others to share the way they believe others should share.
gpm 7mo ago
While there are requirements on making copies in the FDL, I think it is extraordinarily unlikely that a court would find that a company making internal copies would violate the license when those restrictions are just along the lines of "and you must include a copy of the license". And the FSF would be extremely foolish to ever pursue such a suit, because extremely ordinary non-AI related activities involving working with internal local documents also make copies in a similar way. If OpenAI violated the FDL by doing so then the FDL is a foot gun of a license that companies would be well advised to avoid. The only suit that makes any sense would be the one against using the FDL licensed documents to train the not-FDL licensed AI... and the judge already rejected that in this case.

gwbas1c 7mo ago

I think they are implying that they believe models trained on their copyrighted information should be open-source.

kube-system 7mo ago
Not 'open source' but 'free', of which RMS has very strong feelings about the difference.

makz 7mo ago

Didn't understand it well, I thought it was because english is not my native language.