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> I can see how this might show that subtitles from online sub communities are used, or that maybe even original subtitles from e.g. DVDs are used.

Indeed, the captioning is copyrighted work and you are not legally allowed to copy and redistribute it.

> But isn't it already known and admitted (and allowed?)

No, and I don't see where you got that from. Meta [1], OpenAI [2] and everybody else is being sued as we speak.

1: https://petapixel.com/2025/01/10/lawsuit-alleges-mark-zucker...

2: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/openai-hit-with-new...

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> Indeed, the captioning is copyrighted work and you are not legally allowed to copy and redistribute it. Unless you qualify for one of the many exceptions, such as fair use

It’s not clear that training is fair use. That’s being contested in court I think.

Training isn’t recreating or distributing so copyright won’t apply if the ruling is actually consistent with the intention of the law, which it may not.

Using copyrighted materials and then meaningfully transforming it isn’t infringement. LLMs only recreate original work in the same way I am when I wrote the first sentence of this paragraph because it probably exists word for word somewhere else too

Thats your interpretation, not the law.

> I don't see where you got that from

It’s been determined by the judge in the Meta case that training on the material is fair use. The suit in that case is ongoing to determine the extent of the copyright damages from downloading the material. I would not be surprised if there is an appeal to the fair use ruling but that hasn’t happened yet, as far as I know. Just saying that there is good reason for them to think it’s been allowed because it kind of has; that can be reversed but it happened.

That was specifically involving 13 authors.

There hasn't been any trials yet about the millions of copyrighted books, movies and other content they evidently used.

There's no reason to think those cases will go any differently. As far as I know, the ruling would have to be appealed at this point. I am only commenting to say that there is reason to think this is true:

> But isn't it already known and admitted (and allowed?)

You seemed to be confused about why this person believed that:

> No, and I don't see where you got that from.

And I wrote a comment intended to dispel your confusion. The above commenter thought that it was allowed because a judge said it was allowed; that can be appealed but that's the reason someone thinks it's allowed.

> There's no reason to think those cases will go any differently. As far as I know, the ruling would have to be appealed at this point.

Trial court rulings aren't binding precedent even on the same court in different cases, so its quite possible that different cases at the trial level can reach different conclusions on fair use on fairly similar facts, given the lack of appellate precedent directly on point with AI training.

Yea, no. I don't think I am confused.

A single verdict about a specific case (13 authors vs META) does not mean it's legal for companies to steal IP from other companies which has evidently been going on for some years now.

Those other companies have lawyers powerful enough to change jurisdiction in many countries in order to "protect their IP".

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