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Comment by data-ottawa | Hacker News Reader

I can personally memorize and recite copyrighted works all I want, but when ChatGPT does it then it’s in a commercial context and they’re liable to be sued for infringement.

If you ask ChatGPT the rules for D&D, the private sourcebooks are all in there.

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> I can personally memorize and recite copyrighted works all I want,

Whoever told you that is lying to you. You are not legally allowed to personally memorize and recite copyrighted works all you want, any more than you're allowed to personally memorize, write down copyrighted works, and distribute them as much as you want.

All piracy is a process of computer-assisted remembering and reciting.

Well, you could memorize and recite copyrighted works all you want, as long as you're doing it in an empty room without anyone listening.

Would you say reading a book to my kids before bed is illegal?

Sorry, I was being a little flip. There's more to it than that, of course. Is the performance sufficiently transformative, is it educational, is it non-profit, etc.

Last I checked I can legally enter any bookstore with copyrighted books, pick up a book, and read it. And then tell anyone what I read.

I can't go write and commercialize what I learnt directly, but I'm not breaking the law by quickly seeing how some book I didn't buy ends so I can talk about it at a party - and then everyone knows how it ends which might affect whether they want to buy said book and upset the author. But, tough shit, what I did was legal. I can even use the ending as one set of input from dozens of inspirations for my own book where the end result is transformative enough where the sources are unrecognizable. And if I had learnt about the endings from a dozen books without buying those books I didn't break any laws even though I am now commercializing something in being inspired by them all to make something new.

Maybe it would be useful what "tell anyone what I read" means. Because if you mean 1 to some in a room, then most likely. If you use any type of broadcasting then most definitely no. Try reading outloud a script from a recent movie on twitch/youtube/radio/tv and whether it gets DMCA'd or not. Same for books, songs I guess... not? But not sure.

I just mean I can socialize and talk about it without the police telling me that's illegal because I didn't pay to be allowed to talk about said plot points

Not how copyright works.

Being non-commercial is not an automatic fair use exception. Being commercial does not preclude fair use. And rule concepts are not copyrightable, only the specific expression. Rules may have other IP protection, including patents.

> Rules may have other IP protection, including patents.

That's not even true in the US anymore. You'd have to convert those rules into some sort of device, or argue that the game is a business method.

Isn't that because a performance is different from the creation of a permanent copy? If you published an article and included a significant chunk of the copyrighted work, you'd be liable too unless it fell under fair use. Doesn't matter if you did it or ChatGpt. Commercial use would be one consideration, but not the only one, for both of you.

The rules of games cannot be copyrighted either. The artistic elements can be trademarked, but if ChatGpt merely explains the rules to you in different ways, that isn't infringement either.

> and recite copyrighted works all I want

...wait, isn't that false? legitimately asking.

or is it because it was done by a corporation that makes it illegal?

im thinking of how restaurants dont sing happy birthday and fair use restrictions etc

Like most things, it depends.

If I recite them to myself, in my home, it's fine. If I do it at a gathering at my house where we're playing D&D, fine. If I do it as a performance, in front of a crowd, or as a recording, now I'm no longer fine. Context matters in a copyright cases. Not to mention, to claim fair use, you do have to claim you violated copyright. Fair use is just an allowed violation.

As to Happy Birthday, that's actually ok for them to do now. The person/group that held the copyright to Happy Birthday was found to have not actually have held them in the first place. Happy Birthday is actually an older song called "Good Morning to All". Swap "Good Morning" with "Happy Birthday" and "children" with "dear [PERSON]" and you have the lyrics. This was not deemed a substantive change. And since the copyright on "Good Morning to All" has lapsed, Happy Birthday is in the public domain.

Yes, I was overly broad and there are restrictions on saying/copying memorized material.

I don’t get your point. Whether you use copyrighted material in commercial context or not always matters. That’s one of the most important aspects of different open source licenses.

A license does not redefine copyright law.

I can give you a rock that I own, which I hope we all agree is not copyrightable, and ask you to sign a license that you will keep it indoors. If you put it in your yard, you are breaking the license and potentially liable. This has nothing to do with copyright.

No OSI-approved open source license prohibits the commercial use of software. In fact, the Open Source Definition expressly forbids discriminating on the basis of how the software will be used.

This is not true for copyright law (the 4-factor test[0]) or for OSI licenses (they almost universally place no restrictions on commercial use). The only exception that comes to mind right now is the Creative Commons NC, which is generally recognized as being unsuitable for software[1].

[0]: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ [1]: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-comm...

Thanks you’re right. I was thinking about the license changes Elastic made to stop cloud providers from redistributing their products as a managed service.

And CC-NC isn't considered an open source license by the FSF or OSI anyway. And IMO the NC clause is pretty much impossible to define for non-trivial use and Creative Commons basically came up. Not sure non-derivatives is a lot better especially given remixing was one of the original drivers behind CC but it's at least less controversial.

Has this been decided by the courts?

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