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Comment by Levitz | Hacker News Reader

>You don’t need to. It’s implicitly assumed, by virtue of publishing in a public forum, that the author is providing permission for people read their comments and ideas, and remix them as they wish. That permission doesn’t include exact replication, but reading and understanding is assumed, otherwise why did the author publish it?

Following this logic, isn't training AI on Github or Deviantart 100% fair game then? It's not like OpenAI is infiltrating computers and reading hidden away data.

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> Following this logic, isn't training AI on Github or Deviantart 100% fair game then?

Unlike forum comments, GitHub code generally has an explicit license attached which you'd have to respect - you know, for instance by giving attribution to every MIT-licensed source that was used.

And even then, let's say someone releases a book with all your HN comments: you are definitely entitled to sue them for copyright. Here's some info from the BBS era, which is still relevant today: https://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html

But you can still see the code and learn generally how to write code. Maybe you see a style of unit testing in a library, and decide to incorporate the techniques into your own code. This is not a copyright violation. It can't be, or all creative expression would be dead.

Don't be so sure of that: in music it's now established that getting too close from the "style" of another musician is a copyright violation: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/what-s-going-on-another-ma...

and this ruling will prove to be a disaster for music creation as there will be fewer copyright free spaces for music as time goes on.

a similar ruling will also be a disaster for software as our tools of expression are very restricted. code is based on boolean algebra and predicate calculus, practice guides like design patterns and books teaching algorithms and data structures.

there are lots of ways to write bad code and only a few for good, correct code. Recognizing this led me to replicating known working code, code I had created, for multiple employers. so who's copyright did I intentionally violate?

I think we are attacking the wrong problem WRT ML and copyright. to me, ML shows the foundation on which copyright is built is a lie. we should use ML to break copyright for code.

To hell with only focusing on code. We should break copyright completely and take back the intellectual landscape.

Important distinction - these lawsuits are about copying the "style" of a single song, not a musician's entire output.

This does not universally hold, though.

For example, the "clean-room design" method of copying a work exists precisely to avoid potential copyright issues. One team reads the original work and writes a description in such a way that it cannot possibly be infringing, and a second team reads the description and creates the new work. This avoids any chance of someone reading the original work and incorporating potentially infringing aspects into the new work.

Only if you assume that ML models should be treated as though they have the same rights and privileges as humans.

Personally I reject that. ML needs to be restricted heavily.

Why does it need to? It's just the agent of a human.

Sounds like an option instead of a need.

You're saying this as though we don't already have lots of regulations on tools to ensure that people use them appropriately.

Forklifts are "agents of humans" but you still need a license to drive one.

It's pretty obvious to me at least that AI bros are using these tools recklessly and inappropriately, without regard for licensing or copyright, and therefore I am proposing that the tools need to be regulated.

Simple as that.

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