[penguin_booze]

So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use?

It's funny that crimes can be settled in cash. IOW, everything has a price; and the price is always right. Settlement ought to be the euphemism for blood money.

In addition to the settlement, what I'd consider fair is to have these companies pay royalties in perpetuity. Of course, that's not tractable.

[shakna]

> So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use?

No, that's what they got in trouble for - a lack of consent.

If the author consents, it would have been fine. If they bought the books, then it is fine. Digitisation through destruction, like most book scanning systems. As long as the original work is destroyed during the process, and you actually paid for it, then it is fair use.

If it regurgitates, then the author can sue you again. So you are incentivised to make damn sure it doesn't. That's not covered by fair use.

Its only if the original cannot be accessed anymore, and you paid to get the original. Both must be true, for fair use to hold.

[whateverboat]

So, they can bu ya book and format shift it, but when I do it, it's piracy? Looking at all DMCA/DRM systems.

[shakna]

Format shifting has a DMCA carveout. It is 100% allowed. Since around 2000, the rule has permitted it for:

> Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsoleteness.

DRM being covered under other laws, and being gross, still applies. And still applies to industry giants, too. Which is why most who do this, like Google, actually buy physical copies and scan it destructively, so they don't have to deal with it.

[kmeisthax]

Yes, it's legal to format-shift DRM protected media, but it is not lawful. Someone has to break the law to provide me with a decryption tool.

If you asked the right politician when all these rules were being written, the intent was that each person who needs to format-shift their media would independently write their own decryption tools, use them for lawful purposes only, and then dutifully delete them the moment they were no longer needed. This is, of course, laughable.

Of course, if Anthropic was, say, buying and decrypting Kindle books TODAY; they probably could get Claude to vibe-code a DRM decryption tool[0]. That would actually be within the bounds of this asinine law. If Anthropic started off by doing this, however, they probably would have just used a decryption tool found on the Internet, and that would have invited different legal challenges. Like, is it legal to use an unlawful tool to accomplish something otherwise legally protected? The courts so far have been very hostile to ANY attempt to tie the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA to fair use. They could easily say "No, you only get to format shift with your own tools".

[0] Related note: I really wish I had Mythos access, just so I could jailbreak my iPad on modern iPadOS. No other reason.

[maccard]

That’s what the got a _slap on the wrist for_. 1.5 Billion of a payout to effectively cement themselves as one of the only orgs that can ever create one of these models because the ladder is pulled up behind them.

[visarga]

> So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use?

Yeah, you are right. Have you been paying your dues to the authors of your math books in first 4 grades? I think 15% of your wages as an engineer would suffice. These kids continue to profit for years, and they are so many. Gotta pot a stop to that IP theft.

In my mistake I thought copyright was about copying rights, not paying for using ideas themselves. If just being downstream from a copyrighted work is infringement even without substantial similarity, then it's more like patents that expire in lifetime + a million years.

[itemize123]

once you read the book, and learn from it and use the knowledge in your livelihood - you have to perpetually pay the author? Doesn't sound right.

[inigyou]

Why is everyone talking about human analogies when LLMs are not humans?

[derrasterpunkt]

Because the process is the same. When you read a book you don‘t save it as a brain file, you form memories from it. Some people can recall verbatim bits here and there but I have never met someone regurgitating a book word for word. And I‘m pretty sure I can not ask ChatGPT to output the first chapter of Moby Dick word for word. I think that would be, rightfully, considered copyright infringement.

[umpalumpaaa]

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.02671

[satvikpendem]

Why is it different other than, "just cause?" No one seems to have actual reasoning to back it up while it feels very similar the other way around, is human brains and neural nets (notwithstanding that they're both called neurons) seem to learn similarly and can act on similar classes of problems like language and mathematics.

[greycol]

There are several distinct differences, I think the most pertinent one is that you can create seperate instances of the LLM that ingested that media without reingesting the media (i.e. you can copy the LLM but you can't copy a human). Copright law is screwed up for multiple reasons but it makes sense to treat LLM as different than a human consuming the media, especially if the LLM is created for profit (e.g. movie owner selling tickets to a dvd he bought in the store vs a home viewing is treated differently).

[satvikpendem]

I don't understand how the first pertinent one is relevant, when the LLM can't recreate verbatim at length an entire work anyway. It is literally unable to based on information entropy, it is not big enough to contain all of the bits of the training data at maximum theoretical compression.

[greycol]

But if a single person "can't recreate verbatim at length an entire work anyway" why does copyright law treat playing music to guests in your house differently to playing it to a classroom? I'm not saying that copyright law isn't stupid I'm saying that these distinctions make a difference and the fact that you can't copy humans is a pertinent distinction. LLMs would be treated very differently if like humans you had to spend the training costs of each model for each running instance of that model, the fact that models can be copied is a core feature of these models and makes them distinct from showing 'training data' to a human.

[delecti]

What's the difference between humans and LLMs? The difference is that the creators of laws are humans, and the purpose of laws is for humans. Authors write books with the expectation that they will be read by humans, and copyright law was written with unstated assumptions, like the fact that books have an effect on a person's mind after reading it.

IMO the spirit of the law would prohibit LLMs from training, and the letter of the law leaves room for that only because nobody thought to write down "books are for people to read".

[satvikpendem]

Laws are not only for humans, there are laws for bots as well, like anti spam, but that's besides the point because in reality behind LLMs there are humans and so humans still control them, therefore laws target them too, and now it looks like humans using LLMs to train via ingestion of books is deemed fair use.

[delecti]

I agree that laws don't only apply to humans, but they are only for humans. The legal system is for our benefit.

> therefore laws target them too, and now it looks like humans using LLMs to train via ingestion of books is deemed fair use

Which is orthogonal to my point.

[inigyou]

are you asking what the diff is between a human and an LLM?

[rpdillon]

LLMs are just tools wielded by humans. There's always a human behind whatever is done.

[satvikpendem]

I asked why, not what.

[inigyou]

why is there a difference between a teapot and an old lady?

[sdenton4]

I dunno, ever used a thing you learned from a textbook in your job? Did you have to continue paying for the copy of that knowledge speed on your brain? No, because that's not what copyright is about.

Learning from and building on previous work is civilization. Copyright maximalism is a plague.

[calgoo]

Yes but does the computer actually learn? Is the computer a person that read a book and remembered, a part and used that to create a novel idea or is it just cioy pasting the answer and then reselling that

[Lutger]

A computer not, but a LLM model does learn. The original text in no way exists 'in the model', and the model does not copy-paste it and resell the original text. Not the same, but reasonably similar to a human.

We may need some new legislation. An LLM is not a person, but its also not just a storage solution.

[shakna]

Well, as not every book is a textbook, I'd say quite a lot of what I've read never went to any kind of knowledge in my head at all. But I reckon the author still deserves to eat.

[TeMPOraL]

You too deserve to eat. Does it mean we're all supposed to pay you in perpetuity for that HN comment you just posted, because we read it and it's encoded in our brains now?

[shakna]

No... But as we're discussing people who tried to pay nothing... Maybe they should have just bought the books in the first place. And comparing my single sentence on HN, to the hundreds of millions ingested, does suggest that maybe scale changes something.

Like most things said on social media, not being copyrightable.

[pishpash]

Does buying the book not count? Why in perpetuity? Even patents expire after 17 years.

[inigyou]

Am I an LLM?

[HDThoreaun]

Why does that matter?

[gspr]

> I dunno, ever used a thing you learned from a textbook in your job? Did you have to continue paying for the copy of that knowledge speed on your brain?

They are, presumably, human. We can perfectly well say that humans have certain rights without needing to give machines those same rights.

For example, we've more or less all agreed that it's fine for a human to watch a movie and enjoy the memories forever, and be inspired by it forever. But we've also more or less all agreed that that doesn't mean that a human can use a machine to record that movie and keep it forever.

> Learning from and building on previous work is civilization. Copyright maximalism is a plague.

The debate has existed for several generations at this point. You may disagree with the mainstream opinion, but it's disingenuous to frame it as "copyright maximalism".

[pishpash]

If you buy the movie you most definitely have a copy that some machine made and you can keep it forever.

[gspr]

Yes. But you can't redistribute it. Which is what the AI companies are doing.

[simoncion]

> I dunno, ever used a thing you learned from a textbook in your job? Did you have to continue paying for the copy of that knowledge speed on your brain?

Those regulations and principles are for humans.

Either the major LLMs are software tools deployed by ostensibly-profit-seeking companies, and regulations based on the notion that "making humans pay to make use of the things they've learned is profoundly antisocial" don't apply, or the LLM companies have a bigass swarm of unpaid -er- "servants", and labor laws and other human rights regulations do apply.

[HDThoreaun]

> So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use?

Yes, that is the entire history of humanity. People steal the last generations works and build something from it to make it their own.

[simianwords]

Why do they need prior consent? What sort of rent seeking do you want?

[gspr]

Are you saying that if someone writes a book or records a song, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent?

How does intellectual work get funded in this insane world if yours, pray tell?

[piltdownman]

Intellectual property protections have a finite lifespan to begin with, and as a tenet of Western Civilization are barely 300 years old.

For works published before copyright laws existed or after property protections expire, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent.

Intellectual work still manages to get funded in this 'insane world' - although given the classical artist/patron system has given way to state-based grants and a select capitalisation of Art post-Warhol, the concept of Universal Basic Income tends to be promoted the desired successor.

Speaking of insane worlds, how does the concept of the Public Domain work in yours?

[gspr]

Are you really saying that because IP protections are (and should be, I agree) time-limited, they're not doing anything in the first place? This is patently ridiculous.

> Speaking of insane worlds, how does the concept of the Public Domain work in yours?

Can you elaborate on what you're asking? I don't understand your question.

[piltdownman]

Your contention was that it was an insane position that anyone should be able to use a piece of literature or a song for anything forever without consent. I simply highlighted the absurdity of that based on the fact that:

1. Copyright protections as a concept are an incredibly modern phenomenon, mostly limited in practice to Western Capitalist Democracies. 2. Outside of a short monetisable window (albeit one extended and irrevocably marred by Disney/Sonny Bono) your 'insane' hypothesis is in fact the status quo 3. Much intellectual work is published into the Public Domain, and all copyrighted work eventually ends up in the Public Domain. Your position appears to presuppose a world without such an entity.

As to what copyright actually achieves? It's mostly a mechanism by which the media gatekeepers and owners of capital use legislative and social imbalance of power to deny artist the rights and royalties for mechanical reproduction and otherwise impose financial serfdom.

This is achieved mainly by Copyright Enclosure, whereby musicians are typically pressured or contractually obligated to surrender their master recordings and intellectual property, and by contractual clauses like Controlled Composition Clauses, whereby Labels reduce the mechanical royalties they pay to artists who write their own songs, often paying below the standard statutory rate.

[pishpash]

Lots of ways. Selling author signings, talks, authorized copies, subscriptions/merch, sponsorships. How do newfangled "content creators" fund their work? We already live in this world.

Maybe not all creative works are deserving of monopoly profits just by sitting on the ass in any case, and should stand on their own merits by producing downstream value that can be sold for whatever they can be sold for, by whoever puts in the work to deliver the value to the end user in a competitive manner. You know, open markets.

Attribution I can see. Consent or payment beyond market value, why? Just because you put in a billion hours to make a shitty $1 value output I should pay you a billion hours worth of labor?

[gspr]

> Selling author signings, talks, authorized copies, subscriptions/merch, sponsorships.

Most of these turn intellectual work into that of indie musicians, or outright beggars. You are stepping dangerously close to stripping people rights in favour of giant AI companies.

> How do newfangled "content creators" fund their work? We already live in this world.

"Content creators" heavily rely on IP protections. You could always try taking some youtube videos with 100M views, altering them a bit an using them as your own and seeing how that goes down. Do let me know!

> Maybe not all creative works are deserving of monopoly profits just by sitting on the ass in any case, and should stand on their own merits by producing downstream value that can be sold for whatever they can be sold for, by whoever puts in the work to deliver the value to the end user in a competitive manner. You know, open markets.

And open market is not one where I can say that you are just sitting on your ass, so I'll take your stuff and sell it.

> Attribution I can see. Consent or payment beyond market value, why?

Because it's my stuff of course! And why should one even pay market value in your world? Why not always 0?

> Just because you put in a billion hours to make a shitty $1 value output I should pay you a billion hours worth of labor?

What in the world are you on about? If the price someone puts on their IP seems too high to you, you should not pay that price. We wholeheartedly agree. Where we disagree is where you from this conclude that you can just choose the price yourself and take it anyway!

[0x3f]

You assume your premise. But plenty of "intellectual work" is already done without legal cover. It just typically attracts normal profits, rather than super-normal rent-seeking ones.

[gspr]

I, too, hate rentseeking. Owning one's intellectual output, however, is not in and of itself rentseeking.

[0x3f]

Rents are just amounts beyond what's needed to cause the thing to exist. At the point of copying something, it already exists.

So payments for the right to do so aren't payments required to bring anything new into existence at that point, save for the legal fiction.

Now you might argue that the future copy-licencing rents are necessary to bring the _original_ creation into being. But that doesn't make them _not rents_.

But I would say that's the second assumption you're baking in here.

As in, we live in a world where e.g. the movie Toy Story exists. Now, certainly Toy Story does provide some good or value to the world. But I don't think you can assume such things provide more value than e.g. open science, free transformation of works, etc.

I get that people enjoy our current IP culture but saying certain things wouldn't exist in an IP-free world is just an argument from consequences that doesn't even really compare consequences between the two.

[owenfi]

Yeah, I feel like penalties here should be something like 10% of revenue in perpetuity. Then companies might think twice about asking forgiveness instead of permission.