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I feel like when confronted about a "stolen comedy bit" a lot of these people complaining would also argue that "no work is entirely unique, everyone borrows from what already existed before." But now they're all coming out of the woodwork for a payday or something... It's kinda frustrating especially if they kill any private use too...
I’m a teacher and the last half of this school year was a comedy of my colleagues trying to “ban” chat GPT. I’m not so much worried about students using chat GPT to do work. A simple two minute conversation with a student who creates an excellent (but suspected) piece of writing will tell you whether they wrote it themselves or not. What worries me is exactly those moments where you’re asking for a summary or a synopsis of something. You really have no idea what data is being used to create that summary.
The issue isn't that people are using others works for 'derivative' content.
The issue is that, for a person to 'derive' comedy from Sarah Silverman the 'analogue' way, you have to get her works legally, be that streaming her comedy specials, or watching movies/shows she's written for.
With chat GPT and other AI, its been 'trained' on her work (and, presumably as many other's works as possible) once, and now there's no 'views', or even sources given, to those properties.
And like a lot of digital work, its reach and speed is unprecedented. Like, previously, yeah, of course you could still 'derive' from people's works indirectly, like from a friend that watched it and recounted the 'good bits', or through general 'cultural osmosis'. But that was still limited by the speed of humans, and of culture. With AI, it can happen a functionally infinite number of times, nearly instantly.
Is all that to say Silverman is 100% right here? Probably not. But I do think that, the legality of ChatGPT, and other AI that can 'copy' artist's work, is worth questioning. But its a sticky enough issue that I'm genuinely not sure what the best route is. Certainly, I think current AI writing and image generation ought to be ineligible for commercial use until the issue has at least been addressed.
Damn did they already start implanting DRM bio-chips in people?
Please explain why you cannot download a movie/episode/ebook illegally and then directly derive from it.
The law does not prohibit the receiving of an unauthorized copy. The law prohibits the distribution of the unauthorized copy. It is possible to send/transmit/upload a movie/episode/ebook illegally, but the act of receiving/downloading that unauthorized copy is not prohibited and not illegal.
You can't illegally download a movie/episode/ebook for the same reason that you can't illegally park your car in your own garage: there is no law making it illegal.
Even if ChatGPT possesses an unauthorized copy of the work, it would only violate copyright law if it created and distributed a new copy of that work. A summary of the work would be considered a "transformative derivation", and would fall well within the boundaries of fair-use.
I mean, you can do that, but that's a crime.
Which is exactly what Sarah Silverman is claiming ChatGPT is doing.
And, beyond a individual crime of a person reading a pirated book, again, we're talking about ChatGPT and other AI magnifying reach and speed, beyond what an individual person ever could do even if they did nothing but read pirated material all day, not unlike websites like The Pirate Bay. Y'know, how those website constantly get taken down and have to move around the globe to areas where they're beyond the reach of the law, due to the crimes they're doing.
I'm not like, anti-piracy or anything. But also, I don't think companies should be using pirated software, and my big concern about LLMs aren't really for private use, but for corporate use.
Consuming content illegally is by definition a crime, yes. It also has no effect on your output. A summary or review of that content will not be infringing, it will still be fair use.
A more substantial work inspired by that content could be infringing or not depending on how close it is to the original content but not on the legality of your viewing of that content.
Nor is it relevant. If you have any success with your copy you are going to cause way more damage to the original creator than pirating one copy.
I can assure you that The Pirate Bay is quite stable. I would like to point out that none of AI vendors has been actually convicted of copyright infringement yet. That their use is infringing and a crime is your opinion.
It also going to be irrelevant because there are companies that do own massive amounts of copyrighted materials and will be able to train their own AIs, both to sell as a service and to cut down on labor costs of creating new materials. There are also companies that got people to agree to licensing their content for AI training such as Adobe.
So copyright law will not be able to help creators. So there will be a push for more laws and regulators. Depending on what they manage to push through you can forget non major corp backed AI, reduced fair use rights (as in unapproved reviews being de-facto illegal) and perhaps a new push against software that could be used for piracy such as non-regulated video or music players, nevermind encoders etc.
"My opinion"? have you read the headline? Its not my opinion that matters, its that of the prosecution in this lawsuit. And this lawsuit indeed alleges that copyright infringement has occurred; it'll be up to the courts to see if the claim holds water.
I'm definitely not sure that GPT4 or other AI models are copyright infringing or otherwise illegal. But, I think that there's enough that seems questionable that a lawsuit is valid to do some fact-finding, and honestly, I feel like the law is a few years behind on AI anyway.
But it seem plausible that the AI could be found to be 'illegally distributing works', or otherwise have broken IP laws at some point during their training or operation. A lot depends on what kind of agreements were signed over the contents of the training packages, something I frankly know nothing about, and would like to see come to light.
No, the opinion that matters is the opinion of the judge. Before we have a decision, there is no copyright infringement.
I 've said in my previous post that copyright will not solve the problems, what you describe as it being behind AI. Considering how the laws regarding copyright 'caught up with the times' in the beginning of the internet.. I am not optimistic the changes will be beneficial to society.
What law makes it illegal to consume an unauthorized copy of a work?
That's not a flippant question. I am being absolutely serious. Copyright law prohibits the creation and distribution of unauthorized copies; it does not prohibit the reception, possession, or consumption of those copies. You can only declare content consumption to be "illegal" if there is actually a law against it.
Which legal system?
She's an American actor, suing an American company, so I think we should discuss the laws of Botswana, Mozambique, and Narnia. /s
The copying part. Yes, you can conceive a theoritical example where you can consume the content without reproducing it but it's not what happened in this case.
Or any AI case. There are AI trained outside of the US but they all download the data to train on. They delete it after. What makes it not infringing in AI training is fair use exception for research.
The uploader is the only person/entity that qualifies as infringing under copyright law. The downloader does not. The downloader is merely receiving the copy; the uploader is the one who producing the copy.
Fair use exemptions are only necessary for producing a copy without permission. No fair use exemption is necessary for either receiving a copy, or for consuming or otherwise using that copy.
Where does it say that in US copyright law? Downloading is making a copy.
Title 17 of US Code
I agree that after a download is complete, a copy has come into existence, and it is located on the downloader's computer. But, the downloader did not have the work prior to downloading. How can he make a copy of something he does not yet possess? What is the "original" from which this copy came to exist? Who had any obligations under copyright law regarding that original?
The answer, of course, is that the "original" was located on the uploader's computer. He is responsible for the actions of that machine. He controls it. He decides to whom to send it. He decides how many people it will be sent to. He is fully and solely responsible for distributing the work in his possession.
Every prohibited act is performed by the uploader, not the downloader.
No, Silverman's argument is not that the mere possession of the work by ChatGPT violates copyright, because yhat question has long since been answered: the artist controls the work, not the audience. The artist cannot decide who is and is not allowed to consume the work. Regardless of how someone came to consume the work, they are fully entitled to speak about it.
Instead, her argument is that the summaries produced by ChatGPT violate the copyright of her work. She is trying to argue that these summaries are merely derivative works, rather than "transformative derivations". She's trying to argue that you can't summarize her work; that your summary of her work violates her copyright.
She is wrong.
Unless you can point where the law says you have to make the copy from a copy you posses it is irrelevant.
But we do actually have precedent where there was creation of copies out of thin air. VHS recordings of broadcast, Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios. It was actually settled on time-shifted of free-aired material being fair use. Nobody argued that the VCR owners having no copy before recording did not make a copy.
I will concede that there are situations where you can just consume copyrighted material without copying them (which downloading is). That would be if you I downloaded a movie and invited you to watch it, or a sports bar showing illegal streams.
My whole point is that it does not matter if you have committed copyright infringement, you can always make fair use derivative works such as reviews. I could get DVDs from a friend in the 00s and copy them to a my own disc before watching the copy. That would mean I infringed even in your wrong understanding of copyright. If it was worth it and there was evidence of it the copyright owner would be able to successfully sue me for copying them.
He could correctly argue that me copying the disc, infringing on his copyright, was necessary for me to write a review of his movie, a derivative work. It would not matter.
I could later make another film that is inspired by the movie whose copyright I infringed upon. If the movie is not too similar it would not be itself infringing. If it too similar it could be infringing but so would a movie made by someone who committed no copyright infringement to be able to watch the original.
This is what the discussions was about. AI opponents push the idea that if there was copyright infringement on the training process, any output of AI must be infringing or derivative of the original work. Which is bullshit.
I suppose you are not pro-copyright, same as me, but you are not helping any argument by making claims that are besides the point and wrong.
I am sorry, I cannot see your reply, it shows empty.
You're conflating the concept of "recording" with the concept of "copying". They weren't making a copy. They were making a recording. As your citation demonstrates, these two concepts are not the same thing.
Importantly, there is no difference in the legality of recording when we switch from an authorized broadcaster to a pirate transmitter. It is still perfectly lawful to create a recording of what was sent to you.
Even if you call up the pirate station and ask them to transmit the specific work that you want to receive, the transmitter is still exclusively responsible. Even if you call them up and ask them to retransmit those parts you didn't receive clearly, the infringement is theirs, not yours. You are free to receive and record whatever someone wants to send you.
Downloading is recording, not copying. You are receiving and saving the work that is being transmitted to you.
Fuck off mate, you are full of shit. The concept of recording is so different to copying according to my citation that the recording are made via 'copying devices'. It's also immaterial. RECORDINGS could infringe and thus the court therefore examines if the fair use exception applies.
I will no more argue with you, since you are dishonest.
They are technologically similar concepts, but there are distinct legal differences. When the act is performed by a single legal entity, it is "copying". Where the act is performed by two separate legal entities, the receiving entity is "recording". The transmitting entity is "distributing".
There can certainly be infringement involved in the complete act, but it is committed by the entity distributing the work without permission, not the entity receiving the work.
Recording could be infringing in certain special circumstances, where the rightsholder controls both the transmission of the work as well as the presence of the receiver. It could be infringement to record inside a theater, for example.
But they cannot prohibit me from putting up an antenna and recording what I hear; they cannot prohibit me from attaching a computer to a network and recording what is sent to me over that network.
That is not actually true.
I would violate copyright by making an unauthorized copy and providing it to you, but you do not violate copyright for simply viewing that unauthorized copy. Sarah can come after me for creating the cop[y|ies], but she can't come after the people to whom I send them, even if they admit to having willingly viewed a copy they knew to be unauthorized.
Copyright applies to distribution, not consumption.
I can also talk to a guy in a bar rambling about her work. That guy's name? ChatGPT.