Funny how all of these social media platforms that were so happy to describe themselves as “the public town square of the internet” or whatever are now claiming that they own everything that everyone ever posted. So, which is it? Because it obviously cannot be both.
I think you’re conflating two very different things here.
The DMCA covers hosting and dissemination. If a user submits copyrighted data to Reddit that they do not own and Reddit unknowingly (because, to be fair, they can’t know what is or isn’t owned or by who), then Reddit is not liable for copyright infringement as long as they comply with DMCA takedown requests from people who claim to own the original IP.
But again, none of that implies that Reddit themselves (or Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, etc.) can realistically claim ownership over all of the data that is on their website. The reason they are subject to DMCA at all is because there is a globally shared assumption that data that users submit may or may not be owned by some other party, and while the DMCA protects them from being held liable for simply hosting and disseminating that data, it does not magically make them the owner of all data that hasn’t had a DMCA claim made against it.
In other words, if I post a picture of Homer Simpson on Reddit (and there are many), it is ridiculous for anyone to suggest that they have any intellectual property rights over that picture, that character, any trademarks, etc., whether someone has made a formal DMCA take down request or not. And if they don’t own the picture, the character, the trademark, etc., when what exactly are they selling (licensing) and where did they get the right to sell it?
They might not be liable for just hosting/distributing it, but just like you can’t sell someone else’s car, you can’t license out someone else’s IP.
And yet that exact kind of data is all over reddit in ways that are impractical to enforce by case by case DMCA. How many memes are there using footage from popular shows? How much fanart?
More importantly, is that stuff not included as part of the data that reddit “owns” when they sell their data to tech companies? Because whether a DMCA takedown has been requested on that kind of data or not, doesn’t change the fact that they don’t hold the copyright in the first place. How can they sell things that they don’t even own?
Something smells. The logic of this entire industry doesn’t add up.
Their TOS says they own your content in any current or future formats or derivative works.
Their ToS could say they own you and your children and grandchildren, but that doesn’t make it enforceable.
If I post a frame from the movie Akira on Reddit would any reasonable person suggest that they own not only that frame, but also the entire movie that it came from as a derivative work? There is a glut of second-hand data just like that all over Reddit, Twitter, and every other social media network, and I’m willing to bet that’s also part of what’s being sold.
But hey… I’m not saying you’re wrong, just that the idea that they automatically “own” the things that people post on their website is ridiculous. It’s a bit like UPS or FedEx saying they own the contents of your package while delivering it.
“its data”.
Ah yes… of course.
Well if you really want me to buy even more shit online (let’s be real, from Amazon) this is a good way to do it.
At best I don’t like small talk or dealing with other people through meaningless interactions. At worst I might have minor social anxiety. I hugely prefer to just walk into a shop, grab what I need, check myself out, and leave.
At this point I’m also just as fast (if not faster) than the paid cashiers and baggers (who need and deserve chairs or stools by the way).
So yeah, if self checkout goes away, I’m buying as much stuff online as possible and generally making fewer trips to the store.
I’m a Linux guy and I don’t really care about Windows, but I’m glad to see this happening and every day I thank Europe for being the main entity fighting for regulation of big tech monopolies, because America is really failing.
I have a Steam Deck and I don’t even own a PS5, so I’m probably way outside of the market for the Portal…
But I’m really finding it hard imagine this device finding a broad audience, since even in a hypothetical best case we’re talking about a subset of a subset of PS5 owners. From what I understand the new PSVR sold pretty badly despite being a pretty solid piece of VR hardware, this feels like a very niche and underwhelming piece of hardware and so I really can’t imagine it performing any better.
Someone will buy a PS Portal, and hopefully they like it, but when the smoke clears I don’t see it being a big hit.
The Steam Deck OLED on the other hand, I suspect will sell out fast. It seems like there is a pretty big chunk of people who were interested in the first gen Steam Deck but opted for the wait and see approach, and I can imagine a lot of those people jumping on the Steam Deck OLED now that they know the device has lasting power. Personally I probably can’t justify the cost of upgrading from the LCD model right now, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to…
This thing is gonna flop hard.
Copyright is an artificial restriction
All laws are artificial restrictions, and copyright law is not exactly some brand new thing.
AI either has to work within the existing framework of copyright law OR the laws have to be drastically overhauled. There’s no having it both ways.
What you should be advocating for instead is something like a mandatory GPL-style license, where anybody who uses the model or contributed training data to it has the right to a copy of it that they can run themselves.
I’m a programmer and I actually spend most of my week writing GPLv3 code.
Any experienced programmer knows that GPL code is still subject to copyright. People (or their employer in some cases) own the code the right, and so they have the intellectual right to license that code under GPL or any other license that happens to be compatible with their code base. In other words I have the right to license my code under GPL, but I do not have the right to apply GPL to someone else’s code. Look at the top of just about any source code file and you’ll find various copyright statements for each individual code author, which are separate from the terms of their open source licensing.
I’m also an artist and musician and, under the current laws as they exist today, I own the copyright to any artwork or music that I happen to create by default. If someone wants to use my artwork or music they can either (a) get a license from me, which will likely involve some kind of payment, or (b) successfully argue that the way they are using my work is considered a “fair use” of copyrighted material. Otherwise I can publish my artwork under a permissive license like public domain or creative commons, and AI companies can use that as they please, because it’s baked into the license.
Long story short, whether it’s code or artwork, the person who makes the work (or otherwise pays for the work to be made on the basis of a contract) owns the rights to that work. They can choose to license that work permissively (GPL, MIT, CC, public domain, etc.) if they want, but they still hold the copyright. If Entity X wants to use that copyrighted work, they either have to have a valid license or be operating in a way that can be defended as “fair use”.
tl;dr: Advocate for open models, not copyright
TLDR: Copyright and open source/data are not at odds with each other. FOSS code is still copyrighted code, and GPL is a relatively restrictive and strict license, which in some cases is good and in other cases not depending on how you look at it. This is not what I’m advocating, but the current copyright framework that everything in the modern world is based on.
If you believe that abolishing copyright entirely to usher in a totally AI-driven future is the best path forward for humanity, then you’re entitled to think that.
But personally I’ll continue to advocate for technology which empowers people and culture, and not the other way around.
But then you need to factor in that the rights holders would need to agree to that. AI companies don’t get to simply decide what peoples work is worth, they need a licensing agreement. (Otherwise they need to successfully argue that what they’re doing is fair use.)
And when you add it up and realize that “AI” is a black box based off a training dataset of thousands (if not millions) of pieces of copyrighted artwork, all the sudden you start to see the profit margins on your magical art machine (POOF!) disappear. Oh, won’t someone think about the tech venture capitalists?!
If you look at a hundred paintings of faces and then make your own painting of a face, you’re not expected to pay all the artists that you used to get an understanding of what a face looks like.
That’s because I’m a human being. I’m acting on my own volition and while I’ve observed artwork, I’ve also had decades of life experience observing faces in reality. Also importantly, my ability to produce artwork (and thus my potential to impact the market) is limited and I’m not owned or beholden to any company.
“AI” “art” is different in every way. It is being fed a massive dataset of copyrighted artwork, and has no experiences or observations of its own. It is property, not a fee or independent being. And also, it can churn out a massive amount of content based on its data in no time at all, posing a significant challenge to markets and the livelihood of human creative workers.
All of these are factors in determining whether it’s fair to use someone else’s copyrighted material, which is why it’s fine for a human being to listen to a song and play it from memory, but it’s not fine for a tape recorder to do the same (bootlegging).
Btw, I don’t think this is a fair use question, it’s really a question of whether the generated images are derivatives of the training data.
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Whether something is derivative or not is one of the key questions used to determine whether the free use of someone else’s copyrighted work is fair, as in fair use.
AI training is using people’s copyrighted work, and doing so almost exclusively without knowledge, consent, license or permission, and so that’s absolutely a question of fair use. They either need to pay for the rights to use people’s copyright work OR they need to prove that their use of that work is “fair” under existing laws. (Or we need to change/update/overhaul the copyright system.)
Even if AI companies were to pay the artists and had billions of dollars to do it, each individual artist would receive a tiny amount, because these datasets are so large.
The amount that artists would be paid would be determined by negotiation between the artist (the rights holder) and the entity using their work. AI companies certainly don’t get to unilaterally decided what people’s art licenses are worth, and different artists would be worth different amounts in the end. There would end up being some kind of licensing contract, which artists would have to agree to.
Take Spotify for example, artists don’t get paid a lot per stream and it’s arguably not the best deal, but they (or their label) are still agreeing to the terms because they believe it’s worth it to be on those platforms. That’s not a question of fair use, because there is an explicit licensing agreement being made by both parties. The biggest artists like Taylor Swift negotiate better deals because they make or break the platform.
So back to AI, if all that sounds prohibitively expensive, legally fraught, and generally unsustainable, then that’s because it probably is–another huge tech VC bubble just waiting to burst.
Well, why shouldn’t they have to pay artists a license to use their work, especially in ways that could drastically affect the market?
There is a thing called copyright, and the exception to that rule is called fair use.
Artwork is copyrighted by default and, under the law, to use someone else’s copyrighted works requires a license (that is usually bought). Whether AI training counts as fair use is the question and ultimately that is the point that will need to be proved/justified.
So again, what makes AI “fair use” and why shouldn’t companies have to pay a license for their use of copyrighted artwork?
What they should really do is pay musicians more.
I mean, I get you, but personally I don’t really like the idea of millions of innocent people losing their homes and most of their savings because some fucking dweebs decided to put all of our collective wealth in legally dubious automatic junk “content” generators. I’ve lived through enough crashes to know that it’s never the big guys that get fucked when everything goes tits up, it’s us, our parents, our grandparents, etc.
AI as a business is already running on fumes, and it’s going to become even more expensive once intellectual property law catches up to them. We can only hope that the AI bubble bursting doesn’t take the entire market economy down with it…
For fucks sake… AI continues to usher in a new age of human horror.
They’re gonna be in even bigger trouble when it’s determined that AI training, especially for content generation, is not fair use and they have to pay each and every person whose data they’ve used.
He lets the worm do the thinking.