Google fined €250M in France for breaching intellectual property deal

[shubhamjain]

> The competition authority said Google’s AI-powered chatbot Bard – since rebranded as Gemini – was trained on content from publishers and news agencies without notifying them.

An important reason—amongst others—why projects like ChatGPT cannot be conceived inside Google anymore. Yeah, it's sad how legal, privacy, and compliance teams have expanded to obstruct any significant engineering project, but there are genuine reasons why.

[josefx]

So why does Google seem to have such significant issues trying to catch up despite violating these laws and agreements at every chance it can? Apparently using all this data does not help them all that much.

[nickpsecurity]

A big part of the problem might be that Google tries to do everything in house. Many companies use contractors or third-party software to reduce the risk in these areas. Most of the innovative work is also being done outside of Google. Cheaper, too. One of Google’s own AI researchers said as much.

Imagine Google investing in a huge ecosystem of 3rd party tools that could solve their problems with the deal being OSS or shared-source deliverables they could use. That they’re independent puts most liability on them. For whatever is shared, Google could still support their managers, lawyers, etc in situations of mutual interest.

If Google wasn’t so focused on control and ego, then they could take advantage of such strategies to receive all their benefits. Google is suffering strictly because of their operational choices that increase liability, not E.U. regulations. They could suffer for E.U. regulations in a future situation where they’re doing their best but E.U. bullied them anyway. We’re not there yet.

[ApolloFortyNine]

Interesting, the title should probably be changed to something more related to them being fined for training on copyrighted data.

That's the more interesting part here, they've essentially banned developing ai in France with this (though maybe they just won't go after their own ai companies).

[wongarsu]

Developing AI with news articles. It doesn't stop you from e.g. licensing reddit data and training on that.

And it's unclear if other companies would actually run afoul of this at all, or whether this is just applicable because of the terms Google agreed to in the 2022 settlement about using news articles in their search engine. For a settlement agreement to make sense at all they obviously had to agree to stricter terms than what the regulation itself demands.

[worksonmine]

> they've essentially banned developing ai in France

This is hyperbole. Intellectual property laws have existed longer than AI, they're being enforced on AI companies. These companies can pay to use the data, just like I would have to pay for server time with those same companies. They are richer than some countries, not students experimenting in a basement.

And don't give me the "nobody lost anything" bullshit argument. I pirate heavily myself but I'm not a hypocrite pretending that I'm not taking something I should've paid for.

[isodev]

Anyone is welcome to pay a publication or an author (for books/magazines etc) in order to use their data for training. Companies are also welcome to request consent from individuals to use their online posts for this purpose.

Otherwise, what OpenAI/Gemini are doing is, simply put, "theft".

[louison11]

I'm French. It's important to understand that France has been very bitter about missing the tech train with its failed "Minitel." And since, instead of making necessary changes to become more business-friendly and technologically relevant, they've just remained bitter and try to tax/punish US giants any way they can.

Thus, instead of becoming the type of places where the next Google or OpenAI could be incorporated, they're promoting the brand of a country that loves playing the Robinhood for its corporate friends in the newspaper business. I get the logic of the fine, and it's also sad to see them be proud of fining these foreign companies, instead of actually doing anything to change the fact that the country is becoming increasingly irrelevant in the modern technological age.

[artninja1988]

I wonder through what mechanism they were able to fine them for bard/ Gemini, since it's not really clear that training an LLM is a copyright violation. Is it through those prior commitments made in 2019 or whatever?

[voxic11]

Its because the EU has something called "neighbouring rights" which are an additional right to the usual form of copyrights.

> To tackle this, the EU created a form of copyright called “neighbouring rights” that allows print media to demand compensation for using their content.

[dboreham]

Because laws are "just your opinion, man" and their opinion is that they violated their laws.

[franczesko]

Imo the definition of piracy is rather clear - illegally copying of protected content that infringes the owner's copyright.

If not training, then possession perhaps?

[bionhoward]

“Which way the wind will blow” — as if it ever blew in the direction of ripping people off. Google still says you can’t use their ML stuff for anything related to ML, which smells like a noncompete foisted on customers.

[karolist]

What does this really accomplish, will the newspapers get any of that money or will it just be thrown into country's budget pot, as a side effect alienating France further from possible tech investments? The French Google office is tiny for such a big country, at some point it's just not worth to navigate these political waters I assume.

[thefounder]

>> The French Google office is tiny for such a big country,

And that may be part of the issue. Milking billions and having a postal box as office doesn’t look good for the government.

[crowcroft]

I'm in two minds with these kinds of fines (maybe not super relevant for this specific fine).

1. Do these big megacorps just not care about rules, and they look at fines as a cost of doing business while the steam roll through industries.

2. Have lawmakers completely failed for the past decades to effectively referee tech, and so instead of having sane regulation and clear rules everything has to get decided in courts with fines.

Probably both are true, and the real losers are small businesses trying to get started.

[m00x]

The laws around training an LLM on publicly accessible IP have never been developed and haven't been developed, so the judge has to decide from common law. It's the same issue as crypto <> SEC. Companies ask lawmakers to set the rules, but they drag their feet, they release their products, and end up getting sued.

It has been decided already in more technically knowledgeable countries that training on data is not the same as copying the data. It's obvious if you understand the concept of data compression, but judges don't always see it that way.

[piokoch]

I see more and more AI solutions to be simply not available in European Union. EU is a big market, true, but apparently not big enough to justify all the hassle, risks of handling random bureaucrats who want to become famous because they managed to fine some rich company. EU managed to enforce GDPR to some extent (still many parties are practically ignoring it by making refusal for tracking really annoying), question how it will play out with AI.

[bjornsing]

I tried to sign up for Claude 3 the other day but was met with a message that it’s not available in Sweden (which is a EU member state). It was available in Suriname though, so it’s not just a “US only for now” policy.

Really irritating. But yes, we deserve it.

[sofixa]

> risks of handling random bureaucrats who want to become famous because they managed to fine some rich company

Do list the names of famous bureaucrats that got famous because they fined rich companies. There's Margrethe Vestager who is the commissioner for competition, and is neither famous nor famous for finning rich companies.

Also, do you have any actual criticism of specific legislation or is this a generic "laws bad because they make it harder for business which is bad" rant without any substance?

[Ragnarork]

What is it with making this a bureaucracy problem before addressing the fact that AI models are often fed data that doesn't belong to the company training the model, which has usually been gathered with methods that would be considered outright theft or corporate espionage in other industries?

Of course there are bureaucracy issues, and there always will be, but I think it's absolutely not the main topic here.

[estebarb]

The saddest part is that many legislations in other parts of the world try to blindly copy the european legislation, without any effort in thinking if it makes sense or not.

[dehrmann]

The EU is also going to miss out on new AI companies, so no only are they at a competitive disadvantage because they're using less AI, they also aren't getting the job and tax benefits from the new companies that will form.

[dotnet00]

It's not the EU's fault that the US government has been completely useless for so long that big tech thinks they have a right to trample all over society to make an extra buck.

[musicale]

I can't help but wonder if AI companies are another example of "regulatory entrepreneurship" where things go great until the law catches up.

[tempodox]

€250M is a rounding error for Google. It won't change how they are doing business.

[rldjbpin]

it is interesting to see for which parties these actions are taken on. they appear more like the protectionist actions that governments take in other business domains.

[FrozenTransform]

If they want to access that market they have to play by their rules. Along the same tangent, the EU appears to be concerned with the intent/spirit of their laws and will amend them when anyone tries to side step them. It seems Apple and Google are not used to that.

[dahdum]

> intent/spirit of their laws

As inconsistently interpreted by the member states, each with their own political biases and concerns. It’s a complicated, increasingly risky, and unpredictable market for tech firms.

Ultimately that’s fine, it’s not a necessity the EU be a leader in AI (except perhaps in defense).

[andy99]

This does nothing for real people, it's just big companies fighting to get money while doing as little as possible. It would be much better to see a crackdown on all the harmful stuff big tech does to individuals rather than use public resources to shift around who benefits from rent seeking.

[mdrzn]

Great! More fines, sooner or later they'll have to start complying.

[shubhamjain]

Because most of those comments are unoriginal, one lined, and low on substance. Realize that “boooooo! mega corp” is not a valuable opinion in any discussion.

[spacebanana7]

People can favour corporate accountability, and even dislike Google, whilst still being annoyed at these laws & rulings.

The concept of having to pay somebody for linking out to their content is hostile to the open internet.

Imagine if you had to pay Pearson every time you cited ‘their’ research?

[archerx]

It’s Sundar’s personal account and he’s feeling salty and taking it out on the comments*

*this is a joke, just in case

[tyingq]

This is on top of an earlier €500m fine in 2021. And I'm guessing the total bill of €750m does at least far exceed what it would have cost to comply in the first place. Regardless of percentages, I'm guessing this does change Google's approach, at least in France.

[LoganDark]

You're right. AFAIK Google has never once cared about a fine, they only comply for PR reasons.