mfryd

CheeseFreeze said:

I don’t find this very plausible. 

They could perhaps create a better “iPad + keyboard” combo that offers an attractive package.  But Apple already sells three kinds of laptops and three kinds of iPads. Why confuse the consumer with another one that overlaps both classes?

foregoneconclusion said:

mfryd said: I am not a lawyer, however this is my understanding of what someone can do without violating copyright law.

Yes, a person can do that without violating copyright. But AI doesn't work like the human mind. AI requires the complete works of Stephen King to be copied into a database. If it's done without permission, then it's a violation of copyright. 

danox said:

mfryd said:

danox said:

mfryd said:

It's a complicated topic.

There are good points on both sides of the training question.  On one hand, AI programs are being trained based on the hard work of previous human artists.  The AI companies are profiting, but the original artists get nothing. 

On the other hand, the AI is not doing anything new.  It's common for individuals to study the work of others, and use that study to inform their work.  When interviewed, great directors often discuss how they have studied the works of great directors to learn their techniques and style.  The AI programs are simply really good at this.

My understanding, is that an art student can study the works of a current artist, and produce new works in that style.   I don't believe an artist's style is protectable by copyright.  What an artist can't do, is to produce work that is essentially a copy of an existing copyrighted work, or that contains copyrighted elements (including copyrighted characters).  An artist also has to be careful that work done in someone else's style is not represented as being that artist's work.  If I were to write a book in the style of Dr. Seuss, I would need to make it very clear that the book was *not* a work by Dr. Seuss. 

Copyright allows control over making copies of a creative work.  It does not allow control over works that were "inspired" by a copyrighted piece.

An issue with current AI, is that it doesn't understand the limitations of copyright law, and can sometimes produce results that would typically be considered copyright infringement.  

It's going to take a while to sort out what rights various parties should have.   There is more than one reasonable way to resolve the legal issues.  It will be interesting to see how Congress and the courts resolve these issues.

Disclaimer: I am not an attorney, and this is not legal advice.  It is merely my imperfect understanding of some of the issues.

AI can’t think and it can’t reason and because of that it knows no limitations today, however one day it will, but that day is decades away, but that does not mean you should get to scrape all of the copyrighted material since 1920 at your leisure but the protected class gets to do so.

People are allowed to scrape as much copyrighted material as they like.  Machines are simply better at it.

This is a common challenge with new technology.  In the past, certain activities were limited by the technology of the time.  Therefore, certain activities could not rise to the level where they were a common issue.  As technology improves, so do various abilities.

For instance, 50 years ago we didn't really need laws governing the ability for private companies to track people.  If they wanted to track someone, they hired a private investigator, and he would follow the person of interest.  If you wanted to track 50 people, you would need 50 private investigators.  The available technology limited the collection of tracking data.   If a company wanted to track someone, and sell that information, they could.  It just wasn't a common thing.

Today, the three major cellular companies maintain a real time database of where just about every adult is currently located.  They have to.  They need to know where you are so when someone calls you the signal only needs to go to the cell tower closest to you.  That data is extremely valuable.  Knowing where you are, and where you have been, makes it possible to make some very good guesses about your likes and dislikes.  That makes it possible to target you with ads, that are designed to appeal to your personal preferences, or feed off your personal fears.

Once it becomes trivial to track people, we need to think about whether and how to regulate tracking.

In the past, it wasn't possible to read a large percentage of what gets published.  It was even less possible to memorize every passage of every book you have ever read.   Now that computers are doing this, it's important that we consider whether we need new regulations and what should they be?

People are not allowed to scrape if scraping means reading something once or twice or thrice, then write a thesis/paper at a university, but later on become famous/prominent, see if you’ll be allowed to get away with copying/scraping (remembering it too well) it once again if you have all the knowledge before 1920 which is in the public domain shouldn’t that not be enough? And everything afterwards in the last 125 years, you pay for? How difficult is that? 

And the way the court systems work if you don’t raise a fuss now you will never get satisfaction similar to trade marks if you don’t keep on top of it, if you don’t try to enforce it, the court system say’s too bad.

Greedy, AI companies all of civilized (dawn of agriculture) human history 11,000 B.C. approximately until 1920 free and it still isn’t enough…. The kicker in this is Apple being sought out and sued, for scraping in the next five years despite this ruling.

foregoneconclusion said:

mfryd said: I am merely pointing out that these are a complicated issues.

"Fair use" isn't really complicated. I'll provide an example that applies to myself. I like to design my own graphics for movies and TV shows that I have ripped from discs and stream from a home media server. To create the graphics, I typically go to the internet and look at a variety of posters and packaging that exist for that particular movie/show and choose the images and typographic treatments I like best and then digitally edit those elements into a new composition. This approach is "fair use" ONLY because the copyrighted material that I'm using without permission will not appear anywhere other than on my home Apple TV. In other words, it's purely for personal use. It has no commercial or professional application.

However, if I put those same graphic treatments into a professional portfolio to try and get a job designing those kinds of graphics, it wouldn't be "fair use" anymore. I would be violating copyright because I had never received permission to use any of the material professionally. 

So you can see how the ruling by this particular judge is ignoring a very obvious copyright issue in regards to permissions. The only way an AI program that was trained on copyrighted material without the appropriate permissions could be considered "fair use" would be if the AI program was never made available to the public. Literally like if Sam Altman was the only person that could use ChatGPT. Because once it's publicly available as a product of a professional organization, it can't possibly be considered personal use anymore...just like the example of putting my home ATV graphics that used copyrighted material without permission into a professional portfolio.