Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jillesvangurp | Hacker News Reader

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US copyright law only applies in the US. AI can be developed outside of the US where other laws apply. So, the US using the straight jacket of copyright law to stifle innovation would only cause AI companies to move their business; or non US companies stepping up. I don't think that's actually going to happen though. The stakes are too high for that and this case seems quite weak.

Copyright law has its limitations. But it also has a long history of being applied and interpreted that you can't just wish away. New legal interpretations have to be reconciled with that. So, any radical changes in that are not very likely to happen. Nor will politicians step up and change the law. First of all, few of them actually care or even understand most of this stuff. And secondly, they have plenty of other distractions and a worse attention span than a toddler. Mostly they just do what big companies tell them to do.

So, the most likely outcome here is that these cases won't get very far. At best it might drag on for a few years while nothing really changes. During that time, AI will continue to develop and will get more embedded in society.

And lets face it, this is not Oracle with really deep pockets unleashing an army of lawyers against the likes of Google but some isolated individuals. As legal cost ramps up, their enthusiasm might suffer a bit. Especially if they start losing cases.

>> US copyright law only applies in the US

This isn't entirely true, due to various entangled trade agreements that require countries to respect each other's intellectual property as a prerequisite.

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berne_Convention

They require countries to respect each other's copyrights, not each other's copyright law. The US, for example, does not enforce EU database rights. Moreover, you can in EU copy a book made by a US author who died 80 years ago even if that copyright is still valid in the US. Local laws are enforced by local courts.

What the Berne Convention requires is that if I have a copyright in US it will be recognised in France, etc without having to re-register it in every country in the world.

There is no part of the Berne convention that will prevent people from training models on US copyrighted works outside of the US. That is entirely a matter for local jurisdiction.

Trade agreements have been used to require other nations to extend their copyright terms to match the US, eg Canada:

https://cassels.com/insights/copyright-term-extension-in-can...

database rights are not copyrights but a new sui generis monstrosity, but this comment is otherwise correct

More legislatures ought to repudiate the treaties their predecessors blindly signed.

Where? Even Afghanistan’s joined the WTO. Wouldn’t the US file a WTO dispute if that’s the way the wind blows? The harm to US industries would be enormous.

I'd say China is an obvious candidate. They already have a fair bit of AI infrastructure and tech. Europe, India, and a few other places also could step up. That's where a lot of the AI researchers in Silicon Valley come from. The harm to US companies would only be enormous if anything actually happens. And precisely because of that, it likely won't. These companies can move some serious amounts of lobby power and historically the US doesn't like to constrain its own industry with arbitrary laws. So, this will likely just fizzle out with a nice court ruling.

And good luck filing a court case under US law in Afhanistan. That's not how trade agreements work. They'd be applying Afhan law (i.e. Sharia law as of recent changes of power). In China it's Chinese law. And in Germany it would be German law. All trade agreements govern is the notion that people need to have some notion of law that applies to things like intellectual property and a way to take legal action when they feel their rights have been infringed. But you get to do that under the local law whatever it is and in the local courts. And of course some countries like China have historically not really done more than pay lip service to such notions. Whereas other countries in the EU have strict laws related to e.g. privacy that don't really apply in the US.

Belarus. Haven't you seen the news of this month?

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