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Comment on Meta admits using pirated books to train AI, but won't pay for it

SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

So why are Meta, and say, Sci-Hub are treated so differently? I don’t necessarily disagree, but it’s interesting that we legally attack people who are sharing data altruistically (Sci-Hub gives research away for free so more research can be done, scientific research should be free to the world, because it benefits all of mankind), but when it comes to companies who break the same laws to just make more money, that’s fine somehow.

It’s like trying to improve the world is punished, and being a selfish greedy fucking pig is celebrated and rewarded.

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SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
To me it always seems to come back to nobility. Big corpo is the new nobility and they have certain privileges not available to the common folk. In theory it shouldn’t exist but in practice it most certainly does.

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- SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The aristocracy never died, it just got a new name.
  
  I mean the US is literally built on the fact that the aristocracy in the US didn’t actually want to lose station, so they included many anti-democratic measures from the Senate to the Electoral College to only allowing land-owning white men to vote.
  
  How people do not see this is a complete farce.
  
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General_Effort@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

So why are Meta, and say, Sci-Hub treated so differently?

They are not. Meta is being sued, just like Sci-Hub was sued. So, one difference is that the suit involving Meta is still ongoing.

In any case, Meta did not create the dataset. IDK if they even shared it. The researcher who did is also being sued. The dataset has been taken down in response to a copyright complaint. IDK if it is available anywhere anymore. So the dataset was treated just like Sci-Hub. The sharing of the copyrighted material was stopped.

Meta downloading these books for AI training seems fairly straight-forward fair use to me. I don’t see how what Meta did is anything like what Sci-Hub did.

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- SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  So ISPs are blocking Meta because of their breaking copyright?
  
  Because ISPs block Sci-Hub.
  
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  - General_Effort@lemmy.world ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    ISPs may block sites to prevent unauthorized copying. It’s not a punishment for past wrong-doing. I’m not sure about the details, I think this differs a lot between jurisdictions. But basically, as ISPs they are involved in the unauthorized act of copying. Their servers copy the data to the end user/customer. So, they may be on the hook for infringement themselves if they don’t act.
    
    Again, I am not aware of Meta sharing the copyrighted books in question. So, I don’t know what the legal basis for blocking Meta would be. If ISPs block a site without a legal basis, they are probably on the hook for breach of contract.
    
    IDK on what basis the sharing of Meta’s LLMs could be stopped. If anyone could claim copyright it would be Meta itself and they allow sharing them. (I have doubts if AI models are copyrightable under current US law.)
    
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    SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    nytimes.com/…/openai-new-york-times-lawsuit.html
    
    In its lawsuit Wednesday, the Times accused Microsoft and OpenAI of creating a business model based on “mass copyright infringement,” stating that the companies’ AI systems were “used to create multiple reproductions of The Times’s intellectual property for the purpose of creating the GPT models that exploit and, in many cases, retain large portions of the copyrightable expression contained in those works.”
    
    Publishers are concerned that, with the advent of generative AI chatbots, fewer people will click through to news sites, resulting in shrinking traffic and revenues.
    
    The Times included numerous examples in the suit of instances where GPT-4 produced altered versions of material published by the newspaper.
    
    In one example, the filing shows OpenAI’s software producing almost identical text to a Times article about predatory lending practices in New York City’s taxi industry.
    
    But in OpenAI’s version, GPT-4 excludes a critical piece of context about the sum of money the city made selling taxi medallions and collecting taxes on private sales.
    
    In its suit, the Times said Microsoft and OpenAI’s GPT models “directly compete with Times content.”
    
    If the New York Times’ evidence is true, then you can recreate copyrighted works with LLMs, and as such, they’re doing the same thing as the Pirate Bay, distributing copyrighted works without authorization and making money off the venture.
    
    So far, no ISPs are blocking Meta for this.
    
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- antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨10⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Meta downloading these books for AI training seems fairly straight-forward fair use to me.
  
  They pirated the books. Is that not legally relevant?
  
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