> And so far in the US, training and using an LLM has been ruled by the courts to be fair use so long as the materials used in the training were obtained legally.
Just like OpenAI is rightfully upset if their LLM output is used to train a competitor’s model and might seek to restrict it contractually, publishers too may soon have EULAs just for reading their books.
OpenAI's hypocrisy on this matter is precisely why hackers should be taking this as the best opportunity we've had in decades to scale back the massive expansions that Disney et al have managed to place on copyright. But instead of taking advantage of the fact that for once someone with funding and money can go toe to toe with the big publishers and that in doing so they will be hoist on their own petard, a lot of hackers appear to be circling the wagons and suddenly finding that they think this whole "IP" thing is good actually and maybe we should make copyright even stronger.
Surely making copyright even stronger (and even expanding it to cover style as some have argued in response to the Ghibli style stuff) will have no unintended consequences going forward into a future where more and more technology is locked down by major manufacturers with a strong incentive to use and abuse IP law to prevent competition and open alternatives... right?
That's certainly an argument often made about counterfeit goods, and it can certainly be true in cases (and counterfeiting has other problems, namely confusing the origin of a specific good when that matters to the consumer), but it's also not a universal truth either. Were it a universal truth, that would imply generally that open source can't work because anyone can make and distribute copies of the open material, but also it implies that Windows and macOS should not exist because of all the innumerable Linux clones.
Also instructive would be the IBM BIOS clone, it is perhaps true that the "IBM Compatibles" killed the market that existed for IBM machines at that moment in time, but it's also true that it opened whole new markets, both to the clone makers and the ancillary businesses, but also arguably IBM themselves.
3d printing and Arduino are probably other examples where "counterfeits" might have shrunk the market for the originals (Prusa is notably reducing how open their designs are, and Arduino themselves are not the healthiest, modulo being owned by Qualcom now), but the market for Aruduino projects and ancillary supplies and certainly the market for 3d printers is massively healthy, and arguably both are healthier than if Arduino or Prusa (or really Reprap) were the single and sole providers of their products.
And I think art has an even stronger bulwark in that a lot of the value of a given "art" comes not from the art itself, but from the artist. It's very possible many famous artist's works were actually made by their apprentices, but until someone proves that, the art will continue to have value as an original work of the artist. But art is also a dime a dozen (or less). The internet is full of free or dirt cheap art and today you can go on fiver or mechanical turk and commission any number of artworks for probably less than your day's wages. But no one is buying tickets to your Fiver concert. No one buys $1k per plate dinners at Deviant Art gallery showings. But they will pay many thousands of dollars for a piece of artwork that might destroy itself because the person who produced that artwork is named Banksy.
I don't think they are rightfully upset at all. Yeah, no kidding. Everyone becomes pro rent seeker when it suits them. Which is the exact reason we must rain it in
Just like OpenAI is rightfully upset if their LLM output is used to train a competitor’s model and might seek to restrict it contractually, publishers too may soon have EULAs just for reading their books.