[zizee]

It doesn't seem unreasonable. If you train a model that can reliably reproduce thousands/millions of copyrighted works, you shouldn't be distributibg it. If it were just regular software that had that capability, would it be allowed? Just because it's a fancy Ai model it is ok?

[Aurornis]

> that can reliably reproduce thousands/millions of copyrighted works, you shouldn't be distributibg it. If it were just regular software that had that capability, would it be allowed?

LLMs are hardly reliable ways to reproduce copyrighted works. The closest examples usually involve prompting the LLM with a significant portion of the copyrighted work and then seeing it can predict a number of tokens that follow. It’s a big stretch to say that they’re reliably reproducing copyrighted works any more than, say, a Google search producing a short excerpt of a document in the search results or a blog writer quoting a section of a book.

It’s also interesting to see the sudden anti-LLM takes that twist themselves into arguing against tools or platforms that might reproduce some copyrighted content. By this argument, should BitTorrent also be banned? If someone posts a section of copyrighted content to Hacker News as a comment, should YCombinator be held responsible?

[zizee]

Then they should easily fall within the regulation section posted earlier.

If you cannot see the difference between BitTorrent and Ai models, then it's probably not worth engaging with you.

But Ai model have been shown to reproduce the training data

https://gizmodo.com/ai-art-generators-ai-copyright-stable-di...

https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188

[Jensson]

> LLMs are hardly reliable ways to reproduce copyrighted works

Only because the companies are intentionally making it so. If they weren't trained to not reproduce copyrighted works they would be able to.

[cultureswitch]

It is entirely unreasonable to prevent a general purpose model to be distributed for the largely frivolous reason that maybe some copyrighted works could be approximated using it. We don´t make metallurgy illegal because it's possible to make guns with metal.

When a model that has this capability is being distributed, copyright infringement is not happening. It is happening when a person _uses_ the model to reproduce a copyrighted work without the appropriate license. This is not meaningfully different to the distinction between my ISP selling me internet access and me using said internet access to download copyrighted material. If the copyright holders want to pursue people who are actually doing copyright infringement, they should have to sue the people who are actually doing copyright infringement and they shouldn't have broad power to shut down anything and everything that could be construed as maybe being capable of helping copyright infringement.

Copyright protections aren't valuable enough to society to destroy everything else in society just to make enforcing copyright easier. In fact, considering how it is actually enforced today, it's not hard to argue that the impact of copyright on modern society is a net negative.

[CamperBob2]

I have a Xerox machine that can reliably reproduce copyrighted works. Is that a problem, too?

Blaming tools for the actions of their users is stupid.

[threetonesun]

If the Xerox machine had all of the copyrighted works in it and you just had to ask it nicely to print them I think you'd say the tool is in the wrong there, not the user.

[zeta0134]

Helpfully the law already disagrees. That Xerox machine tampers with the printed result, leaving a faint signature that is meant to help detect forgeries. You know, for when users copy things that are actually illegal to copy. Xerox machine (and every other printer sold today) literally leaves a paper trail to trace it back to them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots

[fodkodrasz]

According to the law in some jurisdictions it is. (notably most EU Member States, and several others worldwide).

In those places actually fees are included ("reprographic levy") in the appliance, and the needed supply prices, or public operators may need to pay additionally based on usage. That money goes towards funds created to compensate copyright holders for loss of profit due to copyright infringement carries out through the use of photocopiers.

Xerox is in no way singled out and discriminated against. (Yes, I know this is an Americanism)

[saghm]

If I've copied someone else's copyrighted work on my Xerox machine, then give it to you, you can't reproduce the work I copied. If I leave a copy of it in the scanner when I give it to you, that's another story. The issue here isn't the ability of an LLM to produce it when I provide it with the copyrighted work as an input, it's whether or not there's an input baked-in at the time of distribution that gives it the ability to continue producing it even if the person who receives it doesn't have access to the work to provide it in the first place.

To be clear, I don't have any particular insight on whether this is possible right now with LLMs, and I'm not taking a stance on copyright law in general with this comment. I don't think your argument makes sense though because there's a clear technical difference that seems like it would be pretty significant as a matter of law. There are plenty of reasonable arguments against things like the agreement mentioned in the article, but in my opinion, your objection isn't one of the.