Yeah, I guess the debate is which is the lesser evil. I didn't make the original comment but I think this is what they were getting at.

Absolutely. The current copyright system is terrible but an AI replacement of creators is worse.

It is entirely possible that the entire construct of copyright just isn't fit to regulate this and the "right to train" or to avoid training needs to be formulated separately.

The maximalist, knee-jerk assumption that all AI training is copying is feeding into the interests of, ironically, a bunch of AI companies. That doesn't mean that actual authors and artists don't have an interest in regulating this space.

The big takeaway, in my book, is copyright is finally broken beyond all usability. Let's scrap it and start over with the media landscape we actually have, not the eighteenth century version of it.

IMO the focus should have always been on the potential for AI to produce copyright-violating output, not on the method of training.

If you try to sell "the new adventures of Doctor Strange, Jonathan Strange and Magic Man." existing copyright laws are sufficient and will stop it. Really, training should be regulated by the same laws as reading. If they can get the material through legitimate means it should be fine, but pulling data that is not freely accessible should be theft, as it is already.

That "freely" there really does a lot of hard work.

To anyone who is reading this comment without reading through the article. This ruling doesn't mean that it's okay to pirate for building a model. Anthropic will still need to go through trial for that:

But he rejected Anthropic's request to dismiss the case, ruling the firm would have to stand trial over its use of pirated copies to build its library of material.

Because books are used to train both commercial and open source language models?

Did you read the actual order? The detailed conclusions begin on page 9. What specific bits did he get wrong?

I'm fairly certain this is the correct answer here. Also there is a seperation between judicative and legislative. It's the former which is involved, but we really need to bother the latter. It's the only way, unless we want to use 18th century tools on the current situation.

Yes. But then do something about it. Regulate the market. Or pass laws which address this. I don't really see why we should do something like this then, it still kind of contributes to the problem as free reign still advantages big companies.

(And we can write in law whatever we like. It doesn't need to be a stupid and simplistic solution. If you're concerned with big companies, just write they have to pay a lot and small companies don't. Or force everyone to open their models. That's all options which can be formulated as a new rule. And those would address the issue at hand.)

I've been pirating since Napster, never have hidden shit. It's usually not a crime, except in America it seems, to download content, or even share it freely. What is a crime is to make a business distributing pirated content.

I know but you see what they're doing with ai, a small server used for piracy and sharing is punished, in some cases, worse than a theft. AI business are making bank (or are they? There is still no clear path to profitability) on troves pirated content. This (for small guys like us) is not going to change the situation. For instance, if we used the same dataset to train some AI in a garage and with no business or investor behind things would be different. We're at a stage where AI is quite literally to important to fail for somebody out there. I'd argue that AI is, in fact going to be shielded for this reason regardless of previous legal outcomes.

Agreed. And even if it were, it's always like this. Anthropic is a big company. They likely have millions available for good lawyers. While the small guy hasn't. So they're more able to just do stuff and do away with some legal restrictions. Or just pay a fine and that's pocket change for them. So big companies always have more options than the small guy.

I'm on page 12 and I already saw a false equivalence between human learning and AI training.

Is it this?

First, Authors argue that using works to train Claude’s underlying LLMs was like using works to train any person to read and write, so Authors should be able to exclude Anthropic from this use (Opp. 16).

That's the judge addressing an argument that the Authors made. If anyone made a "false equivalence" here it's the plaintiffs, the judge is simply saying "okay, let's assume their claim is true." As is the usual case for a preliminary judgment like this.

The lawsuit would not have benefitted their fellow authors but their publishing houses and the big ai companies.

Yes precisely.

I don't see a situation where the actual content creators get paid.

We either get open source ai, or we get closed ai where the big ai companies and copyright companies make bank.

I think people are having huge knee jerk reactions and end up supporting companies like Disney, Universal Music and Google.

Because of the vast amount of data needed, there will be no competitive viable open source solution if half the data is kept in a walled garden.

This is about open weights vs closed weights.

The companies like record studio who already own all the copyrights aren't going to pay creators for something they already owned.

All the data has already been signed away. People are really optimistic about an industry that has consistently fucked everyone they interact with for money.