Comment by lmm
6 months ago
> the copyright holder’s tort would be with the source of the infringing distribution, not the people who read the material.
Someone who just reads the material doesn't infringe. But someone who copies it, or prepares works that are derivative of it (which can happen even if they don't copy a single word or phrase literally), does.
> would I then owe the authors of the books I learned from a fee to apply that knowledge?
Facts can't be copyrighted, so applying the facts you learned is free, but creative works are generally copyrighted. If you write your own book inspired by a book you read, that can be copyright infringement (see The Wind Done Gone). If you use even a tiny fragment of someone else's work in your own, even if not consciously, that can be copyright infringement (see My Sweet Lord).
Right, but the onus of responsibility being on the end user publishing the song or creative work in violation of copyright, not the text editor, word processor, musical notation software, etc, correct?
A text prediction tool isn’t a person, the data it is trained on is irrelevant to the copyright infringement perpetrated by the end user. They should perform due diligence to prevent liability.
> A text prediction tool isn’t a person, the data it is trained on is irrelevant to the copyright infringement perpetrated by the end user. They should perform due diligence to prevent liability.
Huh what? If a program "predicts" some data that is a derivative work of some copyrighted work (that the end user did not input), then ipso facto the tool itself is a derivative work of that copyrighted work, and illegal to distribute without permission. (Does that mean it's also illegal to publish and redistribute the brain of a human who's memorised a copyrighted work? Probably. I don't have a problem with that). How can it possibly be the user's responsibility when the user has never seen the copyrighted work being infringed on, only the software maker has?
And if you say that OpenAI isn't distributing their program but just offering it as a service, then we're back to the original situation: in that case OpenAI is illegally distributing derivative works of copyrighted works without permission. It's not even a YouTube like situation where some user uploaded the copyrighted work and they're just distributing it; OpenAI added the pirated books themselves.
If the output of a mathematical model trained on an aggregate of knowledge that contains copyrighted material is derivative and infringing, then ipso facto, all works since the inception of copyright are derivative and infringing.
You learned English, math, social studies, science, business, engineering, humanities, from a McGraw Hill textbook? Sorry, all creative works you’ve produced are derivative of your educational materials copyrighted by the authors and publisher.
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Those software tools don't generate content the way an LLM does so they aren't particularly relevant.
It's more like if I hire a firm to write a book for me and they produce a derivative work. Both of us have a responsibility for guard against that.
Unfortunately there is no definitive way to tell if something is sufficiently transformative or not. It's going to come down to the subjective opinion of a court.
Copyright law is pretty clear on commissioned work, you are the holder, if your employee violated copyright and you failed to do your due diligence before publication, then you are responsible. If your employee violated copyright and fraudulently presented the work as original to you then you would seek compensation from them.
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How is the end user the one doing the infringement though? If I chat with ChatGPT and tell it „give me the first chapter of book XYZ“ and it gives me the text of the first chapter, OpenAI is distributing a copyrighted work without permission.
Can you do that though? Just ask ChatGPT to give you the first chapter of a book and it gives it to you?
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