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- Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish8 hours
In fact, as Copyright Lately‘s Aaron Moss points out, even the AI industry called the latest ruling a win, with tech industry group Chamber of Progress senior director of AI Adam Eisgrau tweeting that the ruling “implicitly confirms that highly transformative gen AI training to produce a hugely multi-purpose model with substantial public benefit is likely fair use!”
“We stole even more, so that makes it legal!”
- iuseasahibtw@ani.socialEnglish10 hours
>“How influential the latest appeals court ruling will be is debatable. The court found that Ross had effectively copy-pasted Thomson Reuters’ “headnotes,” or brief editorial summaries of legal issues, verbatim for its legal search engine, a practice that isn’t difficult to separate from fair use.”
>“In fact, as Copyright Lately‘s Aaron Moss points out, even the AI industry called the latest ruling a win, with tech industry group Chamber of Progress senior director of AI Adam Eisgrau tweeting that the ruling “implicitly confirms that highly transformative gen AI training to produce a hugely multi-purpose model with substantial public benefit is likely fair use!””
Looks like the company that got sued just copy pastaed protected content without making any type of change to make it fair use.
Not the “win” anti-AI people were looking for and the article seems to be misunderstood by most.
Seems as long as AI models use some form “transformative” method to train their AI, then it’s fair use.
- FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish11 hours
The headline isn’t correct. This ruling is about a specific element of Fair Use, not a blanket declaration that copyrighted data cannot be used to train models as the headline suggests.
Fair Use requires some conditions be met. The one that wasn’t met here was that the work you’re creating can’t compete with the copyright owner.
From the Reuters article:
“Ross took the headnotes to make it easier to develop a competing legal research tool,” the judge said. “So Ross’s use is not transformative.”
In other cases, for example the Author’s Guild lawsuit against Meta/Anthropic/etc courts have ruled that using books to train LLMs is fair use because LLMs and books don’t compete.
They were required to pay for the books, but not prevented by copyright from using them to train a model.
There’s nothing novel happening in this case from a legal perspective. Maybe this is the first case where the defendant didn’t clear the elements of fair use but those elements predate AI by decades and have been uses in thousands of cases.
- Pacattack57@lemmy.worldEnglish14 hours
As much as I hate AI, current copyright laws are out of control and are extended well beyond what they should be used for.
- 11 hours
AI is way more out of control than copyright.
There’s simply no way to justify what the AI compies have been doing. As that one Microsoft exec said, it’s the “largest theft of labor” in modern history
- 12 hours
I hate them too but AI is more of a threat to all of us. Any chance at stopping the madness is good enough for me.
- 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish12 hours
As long as we live under capitalism, copyright protects small artists, writers, and creators as much as it protects large shitty corporations who weaponize it.
I’d love to be rid of all intellectual property, but we have a lot to fix before that can become reality without punishing people who rely on it.
I’m down with some huge reforms though.
- Doomsider@lemmy.worldEnglish12 hours
No, not at all. Do you have any idea of how expensive it is to bring a lawsuit? What you are saying about protecting small artists is pure propaganda. Furthermore, this only matters for commercial artist as copyright is never used in 99.999% of real life cases
We will never move forward as long as we allow all of our modern culture and technology to be locked up by corporations through imaginary property rights.
- KeithD@lemmy.nzEnglish11 hours
It also costs money to register a copyright. And if it’s not registered when the copyright infringement happens, statutory damages don’t apply and you need to prove actual damages instead.
- Funkt4st1c@lemmy.worldEnglish11 hours
Its actually mainly used to bully small creators so they can have precedent to go after larger ones.
- pidgey@lemmy.worldEnglish11 hours
I mean Disney’s lawyer game is top notch. I would love to see the mouse vs AI battle.
- skibidi@lemmy.worldEnglish16 hours
When peasants were able to copy ‘intellectual property’ for personal benefit and enjoyment, it was a massive crime. When the oligarchs can steal - everything - for the slight chance of paying less in wages, it is an innovation.
I think it is pretty much certain the model companies escape any penalty for their mass theft of IP. There will be some settlements and token penalties that sound big on paper, but are nothing compared to the market valuations.
- Grimy@lemmy.worldEnglish16 hours
Not really. We had collage and training any kind of AI was fine before all this. There’s blood in the water and copyright companies can smell it.
OpenAI is happy to give them a piece of the pie if that means they are the only ones allowed to sell it to consumers.
You are right about the penalty being pennys compared to their profits. It’s not meant to punish them but help them build a moat, the one that got destroyed by China a few months ago.
- limer@lemmy.mlEnglish15 hours
I’m cynically believing that this is the beginning of enforcing a copywrite use tax; when anyone generates something that is visual or audible.
The tax will be collected by the government and put into a slush fund that mostly goes to corporations and wealthy, while ostensibly supposed to go fairly to all creators
- Grimy@lemmy.worldEnglish13 hours
I’m guessing it’s going to be a system where a company like Spotify doesnt let you upload generated music unless it has the metadata from the “legal” music generators so they can automatically send most of the profits to the shareholders.
Universal already owns Udio, Suno will follow soon. I wish it was an actual tax.
20 hoursAI companies spent years treating copyright like a Terms of Service box nobody reads. Now a court has suggested that »we copied it to build a competing product« may not magically become fair use because you sprinkle AI on top. Turns out disruption is slightly less fun when the disrupted people have lawyers.
- schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish20 hours
Unfortunately, Congress will end up doing whatever its paid to do.
- 19 hours
As far as I can tell, the 3rd circuit is just one step below the Supreme Court. So unless they take the case it’s pretty stuck. Congress would have to go above and beyond to change the existing laws to allow it.
Also with midterms coming up congress is going to have a harder time passing a law. Especially if the republicans lose the house or the senate. Then they’d have to get the democrats and the republicans to play ball, vs just one currently.
- 19 hours
IMO Disney and other copyright holders have more lobbying power than AI companies at this time.
That said, damages of a winning suit will end up being minuscule compared the revenue these companies have made from said piracy.
- Xerxos@lemmy.mlEnglish1 hour
Big copyright companies are powerful, but the AI bubble is currently holding up the American economy, and there is the AI race with China. Hard to tell how that goes. If Trump wins/cheats his way to a win in the midterms it’s going to be more in favor of AI.
- Nobody@anarchist.nexusEnglish14 hours
It’s hilarious that the final boss for AI could end up being The Mouse and Associates.
It feels disgusting to root for the copyright legions. Sign of the times.
- schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish19 hours
Remember, Congress makes the laws that courts rule on.
Congress does change legislation for its buddies to get around the court system.
Gun manufacturers have their own little Congressional immunity from lawsuits, for instance, (PLCAA).
- testaccount372920@piefed.zipEnglish6 hours
It’s too late to change the legislation now. The piracy was commited under current law.
- errer@lemmy.worldEnglish15 hours
Yeah…no. This is going to the Supreme Court and there’s zero chance their right wing, Trump-choad-gargling asses don’t rule in favor of AI companies.
- edgesmash@lemmy.worldEnglish14 hours
For those (like me) who don’t know what Betteridge’s Law of Headlines is: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
- danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish20 hours
I think this should be the reasoning politicians use to make AI companies owned by the public.
These AI models are nothing without all the data they were trained on. All this data is content produced by humans throughout history. AI is the ultimate product of thousands of years of human progress. Why should we allow corporations to be the primary beneficiaries of this?
AI companies are burning money pits… don’t make me the tax payer the patsy who pays off the unimaginable debts of AI companies.
Given the size of this bubble (WAY bigger than 2007), the taxpayers are going to hold the bag. We might as well force the companies to share the benefits (if any) as well.
Currently, there are no profits, tho.
Either the entire tech industry, and any business that relies on the tech industry (read: most businesses) explode and take modern human society with it… or every human the world over contributes in some part toward letting them continue their death march towards human extinction. What a choice.
Socialise the costs, privatise the gains. Bail me out, daddy!
- Cheebus@lemmy.worldEnglish18 hours
but think of the CEOs for a minute, they still gotta run the AI, whether through predatory government contracts or predatory private business
how are they gunna afford their 4th house they visit one week a year?
4th house…? What are you, some kind of shit eating peasant…?
- 20 hours
Agreed… the problem is that the damage is already done and there’s no way to really make it right to the copyright holders so mandating that all AI models and their weights should be treated as public domain would at least help a bit.
- NaibofTabr@infosec.pubEnglish19 hours
It actively prevents companies like Disney from using AI generation tools to stamp out movies like assembly line products. They can’t afford to have their movies become public domain at release.
It won’t protect jobs in advertising, because a lot of companies won’t care if their ads become public domain. This might be a problem because a lot of actors get their start in ad bits, and a lot of graphic artists make a living on ad images.
- danc4498@lemmy.worldEnglish19 hours
Ii think it’s an issue so long as private companies are profiting off the works of other people. If this is public (like a utility of some sort), I’m not sure the copyright claim means as much. I’m sure it would need to be handled in a way still.
- 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish17 hours
The AI isn’t very useful, that’s a problem. The government will make them public, then the public will own their huge dept. the oligarchs will receive golden parachutes in the form of a buyout and we will get stuck with the bill. Fuck that, make the technofeudalists liquidate at reasonable prices. Give people their homes back. Make them pay to supply clean water everywhere an open-loop DC was constructed. Jail them for terrorism after polluting our skies and attempting to corner the market on information in order to control the populace.
- kungen@feddit.nuEnglish17 hours
Don’t you mean “could be the reasoning”? AI companies aren’t profitable, they would want to be “publicly owned” so that everyone else will be holding their bags. They’re already trying to hedge it into everyone’s retirement funds etc. It would not be in our best interests to be even more exposed to this.
- Grimy@lemmy.worldEnglish17 hours
Best case scenario but that’s not the one we will be getting.
Copyright juggernauts and data brokers, the ones that actually own all the data like Reddit and universal records, will get paid.
Open weight models won’t be allowed in business contexts or to be served online, OpenAI and company get a fat monopoly which suits them.
People are cheering for their own doom. The handful of big AI company are going to end up owning a solid chunk of the economy. It’s basically going to be an AI tax.
You will be replaced by an agent, OpenAI will only sell them to your employer in bulk at a stupid price so you can’t turn around and compete. That bulk price per agent will still be cheaper than your monthly wage.
Find me one politician that even mentioned forcing these models public. It’s a fantasy.
- schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish16 hours
The current copyright system is a artifact of US-dominated systems the world is rapidly disassociating itself from.
The worst case scenario is American companies are able to lock down the United States, but the rest of the world will ignore it.
- GMac@feddit.orgEnglish17 hours
Do you mean compelling them to operate on a completely open source basis?
If you mean as in government owned/controlled, considering the primary thieves are US corporations, that would be the equivalent of the american government laundering stolen goods and compounding the theft from the rest of the world.
This is your reminder that in 2026 absolutely ZERO court rulings matter long term except the Supreme Court, which is captured for life by conservatives.
No matter who wins the midterms or even the next election, that is with us for the rest of most of our lives.
What a time to be alive.
- 12 hours
This is why the court MUST be packed. FDR threatened to do it 90 years ago, and the Dems better do it this time or else face another Trump again.
- HasturInYellow@lemmy.worldEnglish16 hours
It very much is not. It is in effect until the end of the United States. This will be long before most of us die.
The future will be getting very bad very fast and most nation states will collapse in a few decades.
So there’s that I guess.
I think you are DRASTICALLY underestimating how durable fascist regimes are. Without external intervention they can continue for DECADES. Societies don’t just collapse when people get fed up.
- Zink@programming.devEnglish11 hours
Maybe they meant the end of “the United States as we know it,” which could be right. Or, arguably, already is.
But as a lifelong resident of the US, your point about how long regimes can last is extra scary. Two of the biggest facets of this country’s identity have been that we have a lot of money/resources and that we have a lot of weapons. Plus we have our special brand of “fuck y’all; got mine” culture.
It seems like a nasty recipe for a fascist regime to isolate and turtle up and just grind along for half a century.
- HasturInYellow@lemmy.worldEnglish11 hours
I don’t mean when people are fed up. I mean when millions are starving to death and the firestorms are ravaging our croplands. When the hurricanes give us a Katrina level disaster 6 times a year. When it becomes literally impossible for organized society to maintain itself.
This is happening sooner than you think.
- 8 hours
Modern nation states are a hell of a lot more resilient than what you give them credit for. Look at some of the hardships nations survived during WW2. States can survive even mass famines. How? Simple rule. The police and the army eat first.
- schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksEnglish16 hours
If it’s any comfort, there’s a good chance the sunlight won’t be reaching the suface of the earth for much of 2027, so we won’t be alive for too much longer.
I don’t care if copyright holders win I just want AI to lose.
- Mister_Hangman@lemmy.worldEnglish11 hours
I ficking hope so. Either all profits aren’t privatized and distributed socially or blow the whole thing up.
- 12 hours
Still doesn’t prevent data mining of forums for, “training.” Still doesn’t give people who’s contributed on forums a check for being of value to big tech. If they cared at all they’d be paying us money to train AI until it’s established. Google is offering points for data rather than money (https://deviceusagestudy.google/signup/invitecode) I only know that because I got a flier in the mail which means they’re desperate to get people to sign up.
- grue@lemmy.worldEnglish18 hours
All LLM code output is now copyleft because there was GPL stuff in the training data, LOL!
spoiler
(Actually it’s probably all just copyright infringement and not usable at all because of all the conflicting licenses, but a guy can dream…)
I think LLM code output is already copyleft because non-humans legally can not hold copyrights.
- grue@lemmy.worldEnglish11 hours
Copyleft is a way of leveraging copyright against itself to ensure nobody else can make a proprietary version of the thing. It is not the same as Public Domain/lack of copyright.
LLM output doesn’t automatically get a copyright. But, if it is (part of) a work that includes “human creative effort” (prompts don’t count), the human(s) can hold a copyright on that work.
In addition, the output can still be a derivative work in violation of the copyrights of (some of) the training data, whether or not there are copyrights on that output. It would have to have sufficient similarity to some work in the training data, but that’s not too uncommon.
And, GPL and CC-SA works are known to be in the training data of most models, including Apertus.
- dgdft@lemmy.worldEnglish20 hours
Worth reading the original opinion appealed here: great technical writing and explanation of reasoning by the judge
