Comment by DrammBA
5 months ago
I like the idea of AI-generated ~code~ anything being public domain. Public data in, public domain out.
5 months ago
I like the idea of AI-generated ~code~ anything being public domain. Public data in, public domain out.
This could be read as a reformulation of the old adage - "what's mine is mine, and what is yours, is mine too".
So, you can pilfer the commons ("public") but not stuff unavailable in source form.
If we expand your thought experiment to other forms of expression, say videos on YT or Netflix, then yes.
I don't think you can classify "public data in" as public domain. Public data could also include commercial licenses which forbid using it in any way other than what the license states. Just because the source is open for viewing does not necessarily mean it is OSL.
That's the core issue here. All models are trained on ALL source code that is publicly available irrespective of how it was licensed. It is illegal but every company training LLMs is doing it anyways.
> It is illegal
Only (?) in America. In the EU, scraping is legal by default unless explicitly opted out with machine-readable instructions like robots.txt. That covers "training input". For training output, the rule is: "if the output is unrecognizable to the input, the license of the input does not matter" (otherwise, any project X could sue project Y for copyright infringement even if the projects only barely resemble each other). The cases where companies actually got sued were where the output was a direct copy or repetition of the input, even if an LLM was involved.
There is, however, a larger philosophical divide between the US and the EU based on history and religion. The US philosophy is highly individualistic, capitalistic, and considers "first-order principles." Copyright is a "property right": "I own this string of bits, you used them, therefore you owe me" (principle of absolute ownership).
Continental philosophy is more social and considers "second-order / causal effects." Copyright is a "personality right" that exists within a social ecosystem. The focus is on the effect of the action rather than a singular principle like "intellectual property." If the new code provides a secondary benefit to society and doesn't "hurt" the original creator's unique intellectual stamp, the law is inclined to view it as a new work.
In terms of legal sociology, America and Britain are more "individual-property-atomistic" thanks to their Protestant heritage, focusing on the rights of the individual (sola me, and my property, and God). Meanwhile, Europe was, at least to a large part, Catholic (esp. France), which focuses more on works, results, and effects on society to determine morality. While the states are officially secular, the heritage of this echoes in different definitions of what is considered "legal" or "moral", depending on which side of the ocean you are on.
Copyright is not a blacklist but an allowlist of things kept aside for the holder. Everything else is free game. LLM ingestion comes under fair use so no worries. If someone can get their hand on it, nothing in law stops it from training ingestion.
We can debate if this law is moral. Like the GP I took agree public data in -> public domain out is what's right for society. Copyright as an artificial concept has gone on for long enough.
> LLM ingestion comes under fair use
I don't think so. It is no where "limited use". Entirety of the source code is ingested for training the model. In other words, it meets the bar of "heart of the work" being used for training. There are other factors as well, such as not harming owner's ability to profit from original work.
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There are hardly any rulings/laws about the topic, and it quite obviously changes the picture of licenses.
Lawyer here. Its not. This article is highly confused. The case was about whether an AI could be considered an author for copyright purposes. Mainly as a way of arguing for robot rights, not copyright. The person listed the AI as the sole author: On the application, Dr. Thaler listed the Creativity Machine as the work’s sole author and himself as just the work’s owner.
This is not the first time someone tried to say a machine is the author. The law is quite clear, the machine cant be an author for copyright purposes. Despite all the confused news articles, this does not mean if claude writes code for you it is copyright free. It just means you are the author. Machines being used as tools to generate works is quite common, even autonomously. ill steal from the opinion here:
In 1974, Congress created the National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works (“CONTU”) to study how copyright law should accommodate “the creation of new works by the application or intervention of such automatic systems or machine reproduction.”
...
This understanding of authorship and computer technology is reflected in CONTU’s final report: On the basis of its investigations and society’s experience with the computer, the Commission believes that there is no reasonable basis for considering that a computer in any way contributes authorship to a work produced through its use. The computer, like a camera or a typewriter, is an inert instrument, capable of functioning only when activated either directly or indirectly by a human. When so activated it is capable of doing only what it is directed to do in the way it is directed to perform.
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IE When you use a computer or any tool you are still the author.
The court confirms this later:
Contrary to Dr. Thaler’s assumption, adhering to the human-authorship requirement does not impede the protection of works made with artificial intelligence. Thaler Opening Br. 38-39. First, the human authorship requirement does not prohibit copyrighting work that was made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence. The rule requires only that the author of that work be a human being—the person who created, operated, or used artificial intelligence—and not the machine itself. The Copyright Office, in fact, has allowed the registration of works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence.
There are cases where the use of AI made something uncopyrightable, even when a human was listed as the author, but all of the ones i know are image related.
"the person who created, operated, or used artificial intelligence" so which one is it? because there the person(s) who created the ai is almost always different that the person who used it.
The user in basically all cases
> Lawyer here. Its not. This article is highly confused.
Did you reply to the wrong comment? I was just saying I like the idea of AI-generated anything being public domain, not that it currently is/isn't.
What about doing that with movies and music?
The results would be the same: AI generated music and movies will be public domain.
So you’d lose all rights on pictures of yourselves if they were generated by AI? Would this be true even for nudes?
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