"Copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression" and cannot be avoided.

Apparently, stealing other people’s work to create product for money is now “fair use” as according to OpenAI because they are “innovating” (stealing). Yeah. Move fast and break things, huh?

“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” wrote OpenAI in the House of Lords submission.

OpenAI claimed that the authors in that lawsuit “misconceive[d] the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”

    •  t3rmit3   ( @t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
      20•4 months ago

      IP law used to stop corporations from profiting off of creators’ labor without compensation? Yeah, absolutely.

      IP law used to stop individuals from consuming media where purchases wouldn’t even go to the creators, but some megacorp? Fuck that.

      I’m against downloading movies by indie filmmakers without compensating them. I’m not against downloading films from Universal and Sony.

      I’m against stealing food from someone’s garden. I’m not against stealing food from Safeway.

      If you stop looking at corporations as being the same as individuals, it’s a very simple and consistent viewpoint.

      IP law shouldn’t exist, but if it does it should only exist to protect individuals from corporations. When that’s how it’s being used, like here, I accept it as a necessary evil.

      •  jarfil   ( @jarfil@beehaw.org ) 
        4•4 months ago

        IP law used to compensate creators “until their death + 70 years”… you can spin it however you want, that’s just plain wrong.

        If you stop looking at corporations as being the same as individuals

        That’s a separate bonkers legislation. Two wrongs don’t make one right.

        •  t3rmit3   ( @t3rmit3@beehaw.org ) 
          12•4 months ago

          I never said I like IP law. I explicitly said it shouldn’t exist. I wish they’d strip out any post-humous ownership, absolutely. But I’m fine beating OpenAI over the head with that or any other law. Whether I advocate for or against copyright law will ultimately have no impact on its existence, so I may as well cheer it on when it’s used to hurt corporations, and condemn it when it’s used to protect corporations over individuals.

          That’s a separate bonkers legislation

          I’m not talking about the legislation, I’m talking about the mindset, which is very prevalent in the pro-AI tech spaces. Go to HackerNews and see just how hard the AI-bros there will fellate each other over “corporate rights”.

          My whole point is that there is nothing logically inconsistent with being against IP law, but also understanding that since its existence is reality, leveraging it as best as possible (i.e. to hurt corporations).

    •  Mnglw   ( @mnglw@beehaw.org ) 
      18•4 months ago

      I’m not so much in favor of IP law as I am in favor of informed consent in every aspect of the word.

      when posting photos, art and text content years ago, I was not able to imagine it might be trained off by an AI. As such I was not able to make a decision based on informed consent if I agreed to that or not.

      Even though quotes such as “once you post it, its on the internet forever” were around, I was not aware the extend to which this reached and that had my art been vacuumed by a generative AI model (it hasnt luckily) people could create art that pretends to be created by me. Thus I could not consent

      I think this goes for a lot of artists actually, especially those who exist far more publicly than I do, who are in those databases and who are a keyword to be used in prompts. There is no possible way they could have given informed consent to that at the time they posted art/at the time they started that social media profile/youtube channel etc.

      To me, this is the real problem. I could care less about corporations.