In order to help train its AI models, Meta (and others) have been using pirated versions of copyrighted books, without the consent of authors or publishers. The company behind Facebook and Instagram faces an ongoing class-action lawsuit brought by authors including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden, and one in which it has already scored a major (and surprising) victory: The Californian court concluded last year that using pirated books to train its Llama LLM did qualify as fair use.
You’d think this case would be as open-and-shut as it gets, but never underestimate an army of high-priced lawyers. Meta has now come up with the striking defense that uploading pirated books to strangers via BitTorrent qualifies as fair use. It further goes on to claim that this is double good, because it has helped establish the United States’ leading position in the AI field.
Meta further argues that every author involved in the class-action has admitted they are unaware of any Llama LLM output that directly reproduces content from their books. It says if the authors cannot provide evidence of such infringing output or damage to sales, then this lawsuit is not about protecting their books but arguing against the training process itself (which the court has ruled is fair use).
Judge Vince Chhabria now has to decide whether to allow this defense, a decision that will have consequences for not only this but many other AI lawsuits involving things like shadow libraries. The BitTorrent uploading and distribution claims are the last element of this particular lawsuit, which has been rumbling on for three years now, to be settled.
I absolutely love the fact that all these companies are laying the legal groundwork to destroy intellectual property rights altogether. If they win enough of these cases, then every pirate on the open seas sails under a flag of amnesty.
Not all IP is self surviving. Even CopyRight isn’t always a bad thing, if you think of small artists, for example. My fear is about CopyLeft mainly as I feel it’s been incredible successful in pushing forwards openness. The megacorps hating it, tells you it is doing its job. Only of the things they love about LLM and code is it can license wash away CopyLeft.
No, I expect they’ll be more like “rules for thee but not for me”
I wouldn’t be so confident without a legal argument to support your opinion.
No legal argument is necessary. Just look at history. The rich and well connected have always lived by a different set of rules.
See below:
- Robert Richards (Du Pont heir): A 2014 Forbes article noted that a Du Pont heir, Robert Richards, pleaded guilty to raping his 3-year-old daughter in 2008 and received probation instead of jail time, which caused public outrage.
- August Busch IV: August Busch IV, a former Anheuser-Busch CEO, has been involved in past legal incidents, including a girlfriend’s overdose death at his house in 2010 and a car crash in 1983, but he was not charged with rape in these cases.
Copyrights over 5-10 years or not held by the creator are stealing from the commons/public domain and there is no moral obligation to follow those laws, and some would say a moral responsibility to share pirated copies of those works to everyone, not just corpo slop machines. Also good luck proving leading AI is a good thing and not destroying education and critical thinking skills.
It’s OK when corporations do it.
There are no rules. Everything is made up to their convenience.
Yup, that’s what I’m doing with all those audiobooks I torrented. Helping the US maintain the lead in AI 😂
Unironically may become a legitimate defense. Although in that case, indiscriminately bombing gas stations in your town and extorting their owners should also be allowed but…
La información debe ser libre.
En lo personal, no por defender las leyes estadounidenses, tampoco por defender a meta. Digo esto para que no caigan en opiniones vacias sobre lo que soy o dejo de ser.
A reasonable copyright is a good thing - it gives authors a limited period of exclusivity on their work, after which it becomes a part of our general culture. What people are upset about, I think, is how the biggest companies are "allowed’ to violate copyright in the name of business, while the rest of us are not.
Traducción automática porque mi nivel de español en DuoLingo es solo 35):
Un derecho de autor razonable es algo positivo: otorga a los autores un periodo limitado de exclusividad sobre su obra, tras la cual pasa a formar parte de nuestra cultura general. Lo que a la gente le molesta, creo, es cómo a las empresas más grandes se les “permite” violar los derechos de autor en nombre de los negocios, mientras que el resto de nosotros no.
So we subsidize these baby killing bastards and they pull the broke boy card. The united state is a brutal imperialist capitalist shithole …pffft fuck capitalism
So when this works for them it’ll be precedent to allow the fair use pirating of all media and software, right?
Oh never mind, I forgot that I don’t have billions of dollars to spend on lawyers. Never mind.
At this point I don’t understand pirating software.
He’s ex blizzard dev who opened his own indie studio
And he’s out of mana.
Looking forward to Jellyfin getting a LLM to train locally on movie preferences so everyone’s library is fair use. Wait, is this why LLMs are being shoehorned into everything? 🤔
“See your honour, I’m just training my AI with all these books, comics, movies, music, general software and games. Totally permissible. Go fine Lars retroactively for keeping interfering with our training”.
I saw this coming from 69 miles away
Just spitballing…
If you were to train a model on just one book, as long as you don’t prompt it to create an exact copy (maybe just some indiscernible differences) then presumably that’s fair use.
Then, since we know AI generated work can’t be copyrighted, does that essentially create a copyright-free version of the text which can be freely distributed?
So Anna’s Archive is legal now?
So we can pirate books as well as long as we aren’t able to reproduce them verbatim from memory as well?
Judge Vince Chhabria either accepts whatever bribes and offers he’s probably getting offered and sides with Meta, or it will eventually go on to the Supreme Court where they most definitely will. That’s the part of this that will work the most under an administration of no accountability.
Tell the judge you are training a neural network… it just happens to also be you.
Honestly I agree with Meta here but this should apply to everyone. I think most people here conflate their hate for Meta with the factual reality of intellectual property.
I can hate both.
People can also hate the fact that if you have enough money you can make everything legal.
What do you mean you can hate both? Whats the other of your hates? Disregard for copyright absolutism?
