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by DirkH 1091 days ago
This is a fantastic point. I can legally go pick up any strictly copyrighted book at a store and read parts of it for free which I will then have learnt and have in my brain to share with to anyone else. If I happen to have a superintelligent brain I can potentially gain a lot more and make a lot more inferences from this one outing and consequently add a lot of value to others I share my info to.

But telling me it is illegal to share what I learnt because the original source is copyrighted... doesn't sit right with me.
2 comments
H8crilA 1091 days ago
Copyright just doesn't protect such cases. There's a funny exaggeration that is very illustrative: copyright protects the bugs in the code. I.e. the specific way in which code was written. Reading it and getting inspired was never meant to break copyright.

What protects particular solutions is patents. For example if someone were to obtain a patent for computing GCD of large integers the usual fast way, well then everyone else would have to use a different solution.

This analogy to someone reading a book, perhaps peppered with lots of legalese to the point of being hardly recognizable, will definitely be used in courts at some point. And I can't see how it wouldn't stand as a valid argument.

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chasing 1091 days ago
If you go read a book, memorize it, write it down later in a substantively similar form, and share it freely or sell it — yes, you might get into copyright trouble. It has happened before and it is at best a tricky gray area.

If you pick up a book and learn a fact, then yeah, you’re allowed to share that fact.

It’s weird that this topic keeps devolving into a form of “so what, it’s illegal for me to learn things?” Because: no, it’s not. And: You and a piece of software are treated differently under the law. You have a different set of rights than ChatGPT.

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DirkH 1090 days ago
Everything ChatGPT seems gray area and might which is probably why we are where we are.
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H8crilA 1091 days ago
> You have a different set of rights than ChatGPT.

Gods, no. Where did you get that from?

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Levitz 1091 days ago
Are you a human being? A citizen of some country? If so you definitely have a different set of rights than ChatGPT.

Those might not be a problem regarding this specific case, but the case can easily be made that it ought to be.

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DirkH 1090 days ago
I don't think ChatGPT has any rights yet... And a person using it has the exact same rights as someone not using it.
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H8crilA 1090 days ago
?

I don't understand your point. Do you think it makes any difference whether I use my laptop, or a pen, or ChatGPT to violate copyright?

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