Keithereum
@keithereum
Alsup's opinions are always well-written and clear. I wouldn't go celebrating if I were Anthropic (or Open AI, etc). The recitation of facts, and the opinion itself, are actually quite damning of Anthropic's practice of wholesale piracy of copyrighted works, regardless of the use to which it puts it. Here are the short takeaways: 1/x
1 reply
1 recast
3 reactions
Keithereum
@keithereum
1. IF Anthropic buys a paperback legitimately, tears the binding apart, scans the words into digital, destroys the original, and uses that one digital copy to learn how to write effectively, compute how words go together, extract ideas that can be output in different ways, then YES, the use is transformative and therefore fair use. HOWEVER, 2/x
1 reply
0 recast
2 reactions
Keithereum
@keithereum
Anthropic wasn't doing a lot of that. They were pirating all the books they could find, no different than people who used Napster to download songs. (Remember all the people who got in trouble for that?) Yes, still illegal, even if you later go on to use them to train your AI. And NOT using those pirated works to train AI doesn't excuse HAVING PIRATED WORKS to refer to later or just store. 3/x
1 reply
0 recast
2 reactions
Keithereum
@keithereum
The act of using a copyrighted work, legitimately obtained, to train the AI on how to use words, isn't the same thing as OUTPUTTING copyrighted words of the author. That wasn't at issue. If Anthropic's AI publishes the content of what the author wrote, or a derivative of it, that could also be illegal (but was not at issue in this motion). 4/x
1 reply
0 recast
2 reactions
Keithereum
@keithereum
The only part of Anthropic's practices that were fair use was taking a) legitimately obtained copies of a work, and b) using that copy to teach your AI to extract things that aren't copyright protected (eg, the frequency with which certain words follow other words, versus say, substantive expressions like "Luke and Leia and Han Solo attacked the Death Star")
1 reply
0 recast
2 reactions
Keithereum
@keithereum
This is a limited opinion, and the fair use part actually still is groundbreaking because authors used to have the right to control the medium to which their works were reduced (eg, paper, not digital). Actors still have contracts that say they get paid for film, but not for streaming, etc. It is novel that Alsup would say that authors don't really have an interest in charging different amounts for different mediums. There was some bending over backwards to excuse the core AI training piece, but a whole lot of bright lines around how limited that is. /end
0 reply
0 recast
2 reactions