[mjg59]

If what you do with a copyrighted work is covered by fair use it doesn't matter what the license says - you can do it anyway. The GFDL imposes restrictions on distribution, not copying, so merely downloading a copy imposes no obligation on you and so isn't a copyright infringement either.

I used to be on the FSF board of directors. I have provided legal testimony regarding copyleft licenses. I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain.

[danlitt]

> I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain.

Then why did you say "no harm was caused"? Clearly the harm of "using our copylefted work to create proprietary software" was caused. Do you just mean economic harm? If so, I think that's where the parent comments confusion originates.

[mjg59]

No harm under copyright law

[friendzis]

> The GFDL imposes restrictions on distribution, not copying, so merely downloading a copy imposes no obligation on you and so isn't a copyright infringement either.

The restrictions fall not only on verbatim distribution, but derivative works too. I am not aware whether model outputs are settled to be or not to be (hehe) derivative works in a court of law, but that question is at the vey least very much valid.

[mcherm]

It's the third sentence of the article:

> the district court ruled that using the books to train LLMs was fair use but left for trial the question of whether downloading them for this purpose was legal.

[friendzis]

No, those are separate issues.

The pipeline is something like: download material -> store material -> train models on material -> store models trained on material -> serve output generated from models.

These questions focus on the inputs to the model training, the question I have raised focuses on the outputs of the model. If [certain] outputs are considered derivative works of input material, then we have a cascade of questions which parts of the pipeline are covered by the license requirements. Even if any of the upstream parts of this simplified pipeline are considered legal, it does not imply that that the rest of the pipeline is compliant.

[superxpro12]

Consider the net effect and the answer is clear. When these models are properly "trained", are people going to look for the book or a derivative of it, with proper attribution?

Or is the LLM going to regurgitate the same content with zero attribution, and shift all the traffic away from the original work?

When viewed in this frame, it is obvious that the work is derivative and then some.

[limagnolia]

That is your opinion, but the judge disagreed with you. The decision may have been overturned on appeal, but as it stands, in that courtroom, the training was fair use.

[seba_dos1]

I can memorize a song and it will be fair use too, but it won't be anymore once I start performing it publicly. Training itself is quite obviously fair use, what matters is what happens next.

[integralid]

This is also, unfortunately, the only way this can be settled. Making LLM output legally a derivative work would murder the AI golden rush and nobody wants that

[protimewaster]

I'm also skeptical that it's impossible to get an LLM to reproduce some code verbatim. Google had that paper a while back about getting diffusion models to spit out images that were essentially raw training data, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same is possible for LLMs.

[snovv_crash]

Models, however, can reproduce copyleft code verbatim, and are being redistributed. Doesn't that count?

Licences like AGPL also don't have redistribution as their only restriction.

[shagie]

Stack Overflow has verbatim copied GPL code in some of its questions and answers. As presented by SO, that code is not under the GPL license (this also applies to other licenses - the BSD advertising clause and the original json will cause similar problems).

Arguably, the use of the code in the Stack Overflow question and answer is fair use.

The problem occurs not when someone reads the Q&A with the improperly licensed code but rather when they then copy that code verbatim into their own non GPL product and distribute that without adherence to the GPL.

It's the last step - some human distributing the improperly licensed software that is the violation of the GPL.

This same chain of what is allowed and what is not is equally applicable to LLMs. Providing examples from GPL licensed material to answer a question isn't a license violation. The human copying that code (from any source) and pasting it into their own software is a license violation.

---

Some while back I had a discussion with a Swiss developer about the indefinite article used before "hobbit" in a text game. They used "an hobbit" and in the discussion of fixing it, I quoted the first line of The Hobbit. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." That cleared it up and my use of it in that (and this) discussion is fair use.

If someone listening to that conversation (or reading this one) thought that the bit that I quoted would be great on a T-shirt and them printed that up and distributed it - that would be a copyright violation.

Google's use of thumbnails for images was found to be fair use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com...

    The Ninth Circuit did, however, overturn the district court's decision that Google's thumbnail images were unauthorized and infringing copies of Perfect 10's original images. Google claimed that these images constituted fair use, and the circuit court agreed. This was because they were "highly transformative."

If I was to then take those thumbnails from a google image search and distribute that as an icon library, I would then be guilty of copyright infringement.

I believe that Stack Overflow, Google Images, and LLM models and their output constitutes an example of transformative fair use. What someone does with that output is where copyright infringement happens.

My claim isn't that AI vendors are blameless but rather that in the issue of copyright and license adherence it is the human in the process that is the one who has agency and needs to follow copyright (and for AI agents that were unleashed without oversight, it is the human that spun them up or unleashed them).

[piker]

That's really interesting. I'm a lawyer, and I had always interpreted the license like a ToS between the developers. That (in my mind) meant that the license could impose arbitrary limitations above the default common law and statutory rules and that once you touched the code you were pregnant with those limitations, but this does make sense. TIL. So, thanks.

[graemep]

Does the reasoning in the cases where people to whom GPL software was distributed could sue the distributor for source code, rather than relying on the copyright holder suing for breach of copyright strengthen the argument that arbitrary limitations are enforceable?

[ronsor]

Licenses != contracts, and well, the FSF's position has always been that the GPL isn't a contract, and contracts are what allow you to impose arbitrary limitations. Most EULAs are actually contracts.

[piker]

Yes... a license can be granted via contract. I think the question here is whether posting a LICENSE.md file in a public github repo forms a contract (offer, acceptance, consideration) when a developer uses it. If so, I'm back to being unclear how "public domain" can really play a role. The developer is bound by the terms of that contract.

[pabs3]

The SFC thinks the GPL is both a license and a contract, see this lawsuit:

https://sfconservancy.org/copyleft-compliance/vizio.html

[dataflow]

Unrelated question regarding this part, since you seem to be an expert on this:

> If what you do with a copyrighted work is covered by fair use it doesn't matter what the license says - you can do it anyway.

How is it that contracts can prohibit trial by jury but they can't ban prohibit fair use of copyrighted work? Is there a list of things a contract is and isn't allows to prohibit, and explanations/reasons for them?

[AnthonyMouse]

The general answer is because there is a statute or court opinion that says so for one thing and a different one that says something else for the other thing.

It's also relevant that copyright (and fair use) is federal law, contracts are state law and federal law preempts state law.

[materialpoint]

This means that you can ignore any part of licenses you don't want to and just copy any software you want, non-free software included.

[mjg59]

No. The GFDL grants you permission to copy the work.

[mikkupikku]

This is in fact how I operate.

[thayne]

But fair use is dependent on you getting the work legally. Is downloading a book with the intention of violating the GFDL a legal way of acquiring it.