Comment by almatabata
7 months ago
If a publisher adds a "no AI training" clause to their contracts, does this ruling render it invalid?
7 months ago
If a publisher adds a "no AI training" clause to their contracts, does this ruling render it invalid?
You don't need a license for most of what people do with traditional, physical copyrighted copies of works: read them, play a DVD at home, etc. Those things are outside the scope of copyright. But you do need a license to make copies, and ebooks generally come with licensing agreements, again because to read an ebook, you must first make a brand new copy of it. Anyway as a result physical books just don't have "licenses" to begin with and if they tried they'd be unenforceable, since you don't need to "agree" to any "terms" to read a book.
> If a publisher adds a "no AI training" clause to their contracts?
This ruling doesn't say anything about the enforceability of a "don't train AI on this" contract, so even if the logic of this ruling became binding prcecednet (trial court rulings aren't), such clauses would be as valid after as they are today. But contracts only affect people who are parties to the contract.
Also, the damages calculations for breach of contract are different than for copyright infringement; infringement allows actual damages and infringer's profits (or statutory damages, if greater than the provable amount of the others), but breach of contract would usually be limited to actual damages ("disgorgement" is possible, but unlike with infringer's profits in copyright, requires showing special circumstances.)
Fair Use and similar protections are there to protect the end user from predatory IP holders.
First, I dont think publishers of physical books in the US get the right to establish a contract. The book can be resold for instance and that right cannot be diminished. But secondly adding more cruft to the distribution of something that the end user has a right to transform, isn't going to diminish that right.
Fair use overrides licensing
Fair use "overrides" licensing in the sense that one doesn't need a copyright license if fair use applies. But fair use itself isn't a shield against breach of contract. If you sign a license contract saying you won't train on the thing you've licensed, the licensor still has remedies for breach of contract, just not remedies for copyright infringement (assuming the act is fair use).
I am not going to sign a contract at the bookstore. Anyone who tries to get me to sign a contract at the bookstore is just going to lose book sales. IIRC the case involved Anthropic literally feeding physical books into scanners. Your proposed solution sounds like its just going to make books worse, not AI better.
2 replies →
thanks for clarifying.
what contract? with who?
Meta at least just downloaded ENGLISH_LANGUAGUE_BOOKS_ALL_MEGATORRENT.torrent and trained on that.
I know, but the article mentions that a separate ruling will be made about that pirating.
quote: “We will have a trial on the pirated copies used to create Anthropic’s central library and the resulting damages,” Judge Alsup wrote in the decision. “That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages.”
This tells me Anthropic acquired these books legally afterwards. I was asking if during that purchase, the seller could add a no training close to the sales contract.
What contracts? And would it run afoul of first sale doctrine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-sale_doctrine
> The doctrine was first recognized by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1908 (see Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus) and subsequently codified in the Copyright Act of 1909. In the Bobbs-Merrill case, the publisher, Bobbs-Merrill, had inserted a notice in its books that any retail sale at a price under $1.00 would constitute an infringement of its copyright. The defendants, who owned Macy's department store, disregarded the notice and sold the books at a lower price without Bobbs-Merrill's consent. The Supreme Court held that the exclusive statutory right to "vend" applied only to the first sale of the copyrighted work.
> Today, this rule of law is codified in 17 U.S.C. § 109(a), which provides:
> Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106 (3), the owner of a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without the authority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that copy or phonorecord.
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If I buy a copy of a book, you can't limit what I can do with the book beyond what copyright restricts me.