[coldpie]

I agree theft isn't a good analogy, but there is something similar going on. I put my words out into the world as a form of sharing. I enjoy reading things others write and share freely, so I write so others might enjoy the things I write. But now the things I write and share freely are being used to put money in the bank accounts of the worst people on the planet. They are using my work in a way I don't want it to be used. It makes me not want to share anymore.

[gruez]

>but there is something similar going on [...]

No, what you're basically describing is "I shared something but then I didn't like how it ended up being used". If you put stuff out in public for anyone to use, then find out it's used in a way you don't like, it's your right to stop sharing, but it's not "similar" to stealing beyond "I hate stealing"

[SlinkyOnStairs]

This will slightly overlap with the other replies, but to be concise:

> If you put stuff out in public for anyone to use, then find out it's used in a way you don't like, it's your right to stop sharing

Yes. The entire point of Copyright and the reason it was invented is to ensure people will keep sharing things. Because otherwise people will just stop publishing things, which is a detriment to all. (Including AI companies, who now don't get new training data)

We have collectively decided that we will give authors some power to say "I don't like how my work is being used" to ensure they don't just "stop sharing".

Fair Use is an exception to that, where the public good does outweigh an individual author's objections. But critically, not such that authors stop publishing. Hence the 4th "factor" in US copyright law (which is one of the most expansive on fair use), where the "effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work" is evaluated. Fair use isn't supposed to obliterate the value of the original work, or people will stop publishing again.

This is what makes AI training's status so contentious. In terms of direct copyright it is a very weak case. It is incredibly hard to prove a direct 1:1 copy from AI training data into the model and into the output, you have to argue about the architecture of LLMs, and it's incapability of separating copyrightable expressions from uncopyrightable facts.

Yet in spirit, AI training clearly violates copyright. The explicit stated purpose is to copy the works for training data, oft without any compensation or even permission, in order to create a machine that will annihilate the market for all works used.

People already are pulling back on the amount of works they share.

[Hendrikto]

> If you put stuff out in public for anyone to use, then find out it's used in a way you don't like

Nope. Copyright is a thing, licenses are a thing. Both are completely ignored by LLM companies, which was already proven in court, and for which they already had to pay billions in fines.

Just because something is publicly accessible, that does not mean everybody is entitled to abuse it for everything they see fit.

[gruez]

>Nope. Copyright is a thing, licenses are a thing. Both are completely ignored by LLM companies, which was already proven in court,

...the same courts that ruled that AI training is probably fair use? Fair use trumps whatever restrictions author puts on their "licenses". If you're an author and it turned out that your book was pirated by AI companies then fair enough, but "I put my words out into the world as a form of sharing" strongly implied that's not what was happening, eg. it was a blog on the open internet or something.

[FromTheFirstIn]

I never understand why anyone wants authors to not be able to enforce copyright and licensing laws for AI training. Unless you are Anthropic or OAI it seems like a wild stance to have. It’s good when people are rewarded for works that other people value. If trainers don’t value the work, they shouldn’t train on it. If they do, they should pay for it.

[FeepingCreature]

My own view is, I thought we were all agreed that the idea that Microsoft can restrict Wine from even using ideas from Windows, such that people who have read the leaked Windows source cannot contribute to Wine, was a horrible abuse of the legal system that we only went along with under duress? Now when it's our data being used, or more cynically when there's money to be made, suddenly everyone is a copyright maximalist.

No. Reading something, learning from it, then writing something similar, is legal; and more importantly, it is moral. There is no violation here. Copyright holders already have plenty of power; they must not be given the power to restrict the output of your brain forever more for merely having read and learnt. Reading and learning is sacred. Just as importantly, it's the entire damn basis of our profession!

If you do not want people to read and learn from your content, do not put it on the web.

[FromTheFirstIn]

If you want people to read and learn from each other, you should incentivize people to make content worth reading and learning from. Making LLM training a viable loophole for copyright law means there won’t be incentives to produce such work.

[davemp]

> No. Reading something, learning from it, then writing something similar, is legal; and more importantly, it is moral.

Machines aren’t human. Don’t anthropomorphize them. The same morals and laws don’t apply.

[FromTheFirstIn]

Re-reading your comment, I think we’re both generally anti-corporate-fuckery. I view the current batch of copyright pearl clutching to be an argument about if VCs are allowed to steal books to make their chatbots worth talking to, and the Wine/MSoft debate about if it should be legal to engage in anticompetitive behavior by restrictive use of copyright. In both of these cases the root of the issue isn’t really the copyright as an abstract- it’s the bludgeoning of the person with less money by use of overwhelming legal costs to have a day in court.

[gruez]

>I never understand why anyone wants authors to not be able to enforce copyright and licensing laws for AI training.

Fair use is part of "copyright and licensing laws".

[grumbelbart]

Would using an actors face and voice as training data be fair use?

What it the model then creates a virtual actor that is very close to the real actor?

[kmeisthax]

If you want a good analogy, try the enclosure of the commons in the British countryside. Communally managed grasslands were destroyed by noblemen with massive herds of cattle overgrazing the land, kickstarting a land grab that effectively forced people to enclose or be left behind themselves. Property is a virus that destroys all other forms of allocation.

[tasuki]

> But now the things I write and share freely are being used to put money in the bank accounts of the worst people on the planet.

I don't think that's the case. I'm not even arguing they aren't the worst people on the planet - might as well be. But all is see them doing is burning money all over the place.

[FromTheFirstIn]

They’re getting the money to burn, though

[Lerc]

It sounds like you wanted to believe you were sharing freely while sharing conditionally.

[emkoemko]

yea since it's like that i stopped sharing when i was shown my work in those data sets :(