I'm open to the argument that generators built with models that consumed copyrighted data may evade copyright obligations on their output, but surely the data sets themselves are bound by any copyright on their content?
Throw a dart at a wall filled with every notable author/publisher ever and whoever you hit probably owns some of this data.
Apparently you can just do whatever as long as you say it's for AI research, go post Blu-ray rips online, it's fine provided you have a .ai domain :^)
If you meant transcribing dialogue from a TV show is violating copyright, I'm not so sure, it's relatively common to quote dialogue for varied purposes, ex. TV critics
Definitely understand if you're saying the whole dialogue for a TV show is copyrighted, but I'm curious about the opensubtitles part, used to work in that area.
n.b. not being argumentative, please don't read it that way, I apologize if it comes off that way:
Not every derived work is a copyright violation, that's why subs and dubs don't get kicked around, you can quote dialogue in an article, etc.[^1]
Answering if it applies to AI is playing out in court currently with ex. NYT v. OpenAI[^2] and Sarah Silverman et al v. OpenAI[^3] and v. Meta.[^4]
[^1] "Copyright doesn't protect against all use of the work or use of derivative works. There are a few exceptions that fall under what's commonly known as the fair use doctrine:" (https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/what-are-derivative-works...)
[^2] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/27/business/media/new-york-t...
[^3] https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/13/24072131/sarah-silverman-...
[^4] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/sar...
There... is a torrent.
copyrights do expire, and any books older than Mickey Mouse are public domain, so it's not every notable author ever
Bram Stokers bones will be relieved to hear that their work isn't being misappropriated.
Which is all to say that information shouldn't be hoarded and guarded. If it can produce something more than the sum of its parts we should use it to do so. The result of that should, on the same grounds, not be hoarded and guarded, doubly so being based on the work of others.
The solution to wealth disparity cannot include "invent menial untalented high-paying labor for people to do".
There's no difference between a machine replacing a human writing a book and a machine replacing a human making a piece of wooden furniture. Literature and craftwork are equally rewarding and beneficial imo.
And people still make wooden furniture by hand even after IKEA. If someone wants cheap and uninteresting they'll buy IKEA, if someone wants an interesting and unique piece, or to support handmade things then they'll buy from a woodworker.
It might be something that's part of their job, requires citations since they value credit, optionally bans commercial use, and maybe has a patent. Arxiv papers are a mix of that. Many on StackOverflow and Hacker News want attribution with some asserting copyright in their comments. Film producers usually want the subtitles to accompany sales of their movies. For FreeLaw, the material is public by law about people who might have never even wanted to testify or be remembered. FreeLaw itself was seeking donations for its service with an additional request to protect the names of people in the dataset. StackOverflow's license explicitly bans copying their data without permission with many individual users also wanting self-promotion to happen side by side with their answers.
So, many things that are in The Pile are works people published hoping to gain some benefit in return. They often had terms that banned their reproduction in ways that prevented them from getting that benefit. They were just public for humans to read and learn from. Some allowed sharing but just wanted credit.
The A.I. users of these works ignore all of that by taking what they made conditionally available without meeting the conditions that benefit the authors. Whereas, if you got the same content on Hacker News or Arxiv, the authors might benefit from it. Even a pirate would benefit them more than A.I. companies because the users would often at least know the author or source site. So, the fruits of their labor were taken, not given, by those who are the least beneficial to them.
I will note that some people do publish truly free content that has no strings attached. Mostly public domain or CC-0. Those are exceptions that might fit your description.
Thank you. You know in some ways it's an honour and a privilege to live in such times of progress. The very act of publishing is to "let go", and hope that your words and ideas contribute to something bigger and beyond your life. I never believed much in "intellectual property" as it's all stuff that flows through us.
> I hope that the fruits of their labours are returned to them
They rarely are, because knowledge and creativity are not greatly valued in our time. But authors, artists and scientists go into that with eyes wide open these days. The rewards come in other ways, as the more you give and put into life the more you get out.
> rather than being selfishly hoarded by the few with the resources necessary to produce those fruits
This is not what we fear. Hoard away. We will simply take back what is ours, whenever we desire it. The hoarders will never win against what they call "piracy", because they have no moral right. In the long run, they are on the wrong side of history.
Far worse, and more likely is that the creative and technical works of generations of artists and scientists are going to be turned to exactly the opposite of what they would want. They will be used to harm and disempower humans, divide society instead of heal it, and even make the pursuits of art, science and knowledge irrelevant.
We cannot take back our words, or our formulas, or our paintings or our songs. But we can take back tech.
Sorry that's not how damages are calculated in the US tort system.
I also think that the case is different here, since in your example, there is a specific amount of money being stolen, while in the books3 case, there is an unspecified amount of money not being made by the authors.
1) pay the author,
2) implement guaranteed citation of the author any time the model gave an answer that was directly derivative, with an option to not do so if the summary was sufficiently vague, or
3) ignore the author's book completely as training data
we would all choose 3).