John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R

John Grisham, George R.R. Martin and more authors sue OpenAI for copyright infringement::John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
    42·
    1 year ago

    Please, articulate that difference, focusing specifically on what copyright actually protects.

    That’s not a flippant statement. That’s an open, honest request.

    I do not see any relevant difference between hiring a person to read and discuss a bunch of books, and a program built to read and discuss a bunch of books.

    • FireTower@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      1 year ago

      I’d argue that the scenario where someone is paying someone to intentionally replicate others work shares the same problems I see with a program doing the same. There’s a difference IMO from the man who wants to write a fantasy story because he loved GRRM’s work and the man who is being payed to analyze the works of GRRM to create a product.

      As for copyright protections, I’d recommend Tom Scott’s video on the subject. There’s a number of factors considered when deciding fair use and there’s no clear line in the sand. The important things to consider is how and why a source material was used. If this program was made to solely produce a parody of GRRM’s world or writing style that’d be a strong fair use argue IMO.

      Here’s the factors for fair use:

      1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; 2)the nature of the copyrighted work;
      2. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and 4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

      I would say that the kind of use they engage in is commercial. Their source material here is a commercial fiction property, which doesn’t help them as much as it would in the case of say something non-commercial and nonfiction. I’ll assume they used all his written work to train the algorithms but little shows in the output product, this does help the fair use case. But doing well on one pillar of the fair use test doesn’t mean the work qualifies. Lastly IMO again an algorithm can produce fantasy books at a rate which GRRM can not compete and might impact the larger market for fantasy literature.

      https://youtu.be/1Jwo5qc78QU?si=OKqxTjJ7gavCs2N4

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.todayEnglish
        11·
        1 year ago

        I’d argue that the scenario where someone is paying someone to intentionally replicate others work

        I’m going to stop you right there. Your argument seems to rest on the idea that knowledge and discussion of a book constitutes “replication”. I don’t concede this. I don’t think we even get to the question of “fair use” because I don’t see how knowledge and discussion can be considered copying that book.

        If we were taking direct quotes from the book, we could get into copyright and fair use issues, sure. But I have never seen these AIs produce a direct quote from any source.

        I don’t think what the AI is doing with its knowledge of the book is sufficiently close enough to the book to be considered a derivation or replication. Can you show me otherwise?

        Lastly IMO again an algorithm can produce fantasy books at a rate which GRRM can not compete and might impact the larger market for fantasy literature.

        Having the capacity to produce a derivative work is not the same thing as actually producing a derivative work. Copyright may prohibit the derivation itself, but it certainly does not prohibit the capability of creating such a derivation.