The ruling is fine. The judge is not Alsop but he’s not technically incompetent either, which is good.
The torrent comments in general are nothing to get het up about; in summary
1) Meta wanted to download but not upload libgen and Anna’s after they couldn’t find anyone with rights to license that would talk to them.
2) they didn't want to distribute; just download. An engineer put in evidence that they restricted seeding successfully.
3) late in the case Silverman et al claimed while they hadnt been seeding they had been leeching and that counts as distribution (?!)
Judge commented as follows
1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing
2. Nobody could get llama to spit out more than a 60 token quote from a plaintiff book; thus llama is not made for infringement
3. We will need more briefing on this leeching thing which it is alleged is a form of distribution.
The judge lays out what he thinks a workable claim to get to the supreme court would be, which is that these llms defeat the purpose of our copyright laws by reducing the amount of human creativity and expression available to those who want to create economic value through creativity. Eg where will the jobs for biographers go?
I will say that debate is an active topic worldwide right now and a good question, with answers ranging from: “this maximizes human creativity bro” to “laser printers disrupted lead type foundries, that was great” to “nobody will ever write again and we are murdering our creative class and burning down their craftsman mid century modern homes.”
It seems to me this will get taken up next session with SCOTUS but also that it’s a little early; we just don’t know where this is going exactly. Either way, I expect our current judge will learn that leeching is precisely NOT seeding once the defense legal team has time to brief him.
> 1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing
This smells a bit strange to me, it's a "for-profit" company.. Fair use is a bit of pipe-dream here. Also there is no conditions on the source of the content ? If the source was obtained from illegal sources IE illegal distribution of copyrighted materials does that not play a part ?
Also will this set a precedent that if I download HBO's collection but don't seed or use for any commercial reasons it will be considered Fair Use ?
This whole thing just reeks of "rules for thee but not for me".
> This smells a bit strange to me, it's a "for-profit" company.. Fair use is a bit of pipe-dream here
Why do you think that? For-profit companies use fair use all the time. Its not unusual.
Yes, a usage being non-commercial can be a factor in favour of fair use, but its just one factor. Its definitely not a neccesary condition nor is it a sufficient condition.
> If the source was obtained from illegal sources IE illegal distribution of copyrighted materials does that not play a part ?
Why would it? That isn't really how copyright works. Its about the right to "copy" (or not to), not about distribution methods.
> Also will this set a precedent that if I download HBO's collection but don't seed or use for any commercial reasons it will be considered Fair Use ?
No. That's not the reason this is potentially fair use.
[Although as an aside it uses to be in Canada that only uploading was illegal].
> Why would it? That isn't really how copyright works. Its about the right to "copy" (or not to), not about distribution methods.
Okay, but if there was no permission to "copy" the content by the owners. I wish I knew more about it all, but seems to me that quoting a snippet from a book while offering comment on it would be classic fair use. Consuming the entire collection for free to charge for transformative services really doesn't feel 'fair'.
And again I can't shake the feeling that if I did this, was brought to court. I would be laughed at for claiming fair use.
I'm not sure how llms count as fair use.
It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use? Or that statistical representations are fair use? Or is it the generation aspect? I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself?
I feel like this has really blown a hole in copyright.
> It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use?
Describing training as “encoding them in the model” doesn’t seem like an accurate description of what is happening. We know for certain that a typical copyrighted work that is trained on is not contained within the model. It’s simply not possible to represent the entirety of the training set within a model of that size in any meaningful way. There are also papers showing that memorisation plateaus at a reasonably low rate according to the size of the model. Training on more works doesn’t result in more memorisation, it results in more generalisation. So arguments based on the idea that those works are being copied into the model don’t seem to be founded in fact.
> I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself?
That’s the reason why cases like this are doomed to fail: No model can output any of the Harry Potter books. Memorisation doesn’t happen at that scale. At best, they can output snippets. That’s clearly below the proportionality threshold for copyright to matter.
Copyright was build to protect the artist from unauthorized copy by a human not by a machine (a machine wildly beyond their imagination at the time I mean), so the input and output limitations of humans were absolutely taken into account when writing such laws, if LLMs were treated in similar fashion authors would have had a say in wether their works can be used as inputs in such models or if they forbid it.
Same. If I invented a novel new way of encoding video and used it to pack a bunch of movies into a single file, I would fully expect to be sued if I tried distributing that file, and equally so if I let people use a web site that let them extract individual videos from that file. Why should text be treated differently?
You are allowed to quote from copyrighted works without needing permission. Trying to assert copyright because of a quote of, say, a mere 60 words in length would get you thrown out of any judge’s court.
It was shown, in this case, that the llms wouldn’t generate accurate quotes more than 60 words in length.
This is not comparable to encoding a full video file.
People can process only fraction of that while using much more time to do that. And I'm using 'process' here to meet you in your nihilist argument that these algorithms are same as humans. Which is pretty strange because people barely acknowledge similarities with other mammals but suddenly software is equal.
The word transformative was put there in a time of manual transformative processes, like when you paint something similar to what you saw in a painting by another artist, with all the implied limitations that entails, like the time it took from you to watch that painting, and the time it takes you to create that new painting, nothing to do at all with the way LLMs operate, an honest assessment would have found that the word was meant for a wildly different use case and therefore it required a bigger and more nuanced discussion.
> The word transformative was put there in a time of manual transformative processes, like when you paint something similar to what you saw in a painting by another artist
Do you have any citation that that is how the word "transformation" was understood historically? Because what your suggesting seems to be the opposite of what i've read.
My understanding is even back in the 1800s (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folsom_v._Marsh ) your example would not be considered transformative, if your intention was to make a similar painting to serve a similar purpose.
The judge is claiming that because the use is of the books are “so transformative,” the usage of these books to train an llm is fair use.
I’m not familiar with the facts of the case and IANAL, and its late, but how did the plaintiffs determine their books were being used for training of the llm? Was the model spitting out language that was similar or verbatim to their works?
> Maybe I'm mistaken but shouldn't the source come from a legal source
There is no such thing as a legal or illegal source, only legal or illegal uses.
If the use was legal, then it doesn't matter where you got the material from. Similary if you got the material via more conventional means it would still be copyright infringement if you used it in an illegal way.
> Again if I download the entire works of HBO tv shows, then make a "transformative" version on my iphone, how can that be considered fair use?
That wouldn't be considered transformative. In this context "transformative" means you transformed it into something with a different purpose than the original.
However if you for example made a video essay for youtube talking about the themes (or whatever) of the tv show including clips from it, that would be transformative and probably fine.
>The judge is claiming that because the use is of the books are “so transformative,” the usage of these books to train an llm is fair use.
"you're doing something so critical to our (country's) success, that we're ok to waive copyright. I get that, if the US doesn't do it, then China will(is).
Interesting judgement, and it's implications, if you are correct haha.
That’s one hell of a headline for a story about Meta winning summary judgement for most of the claims against them. You’d be forgiven for thinking Meta lost this case, going by the headline.
It’s crazy, yet so predictable, that while the system tries to bankrupt individuals for torrenting a single book or movie in this case the excuse “it was just to train an LLM” will fly. Imagine a private individual would argue that in court.
So the argument is that by torrenting ebooks, meta provided bandwidth to the torrent network, and thus provided (financial??!) benefit to pirate sites?
I got to be honest, that sounds extremely weak to me. The benefit to the pirate site of joining the torrent swam seems like it would be extremely slight.
The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer.
If it’s fine for a large corp. like Meta to pirate books then it’s fine for everyone else. If it’s a crime for ordinary consumers then it’s a crime for Meta too.
Especially as Meta aren’t doing this for charity. They train LLMs for their own gain.
> The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer.
Or "shadow library" or whatever you want to call it. The argument according to the article is that the entity that created the torrent, which also as far as i understand also operates a traditional website, benefits from meta's actions.
Just read (most) of the ruling.
The ruling is fine. The judge is not Alsop but he’s not technically incompetent either, which is good.
The torrent comments in general are nothing to get het up about; in summary
1) Meta wanted to download but not upload libgen and Anna’s after they couldn’t find anyone with rights to license that would talk to them.
2) they didn't want to distribute; just download. An engineer put in evidence that they restricted seeding successfully.
3) late in the case Silverman et al claimed while they hadnt been seeding they had been leeching and that counts as distribution (?!)
Judge commented as follows
1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing
2. Nobody could get llama to spit out more than a 60 token quote from a plaintiff book; thus llama is not made for infringement
3. We will need more briefing on this leeching thing which it is alleged is a form of distribution.
The judge lays out what he thinks a workable claim to get to the supreme court would be, which is that these llms defeat the purpose of our copyright laws by reducing the amount of human creativity and expression available to those who want to create economic value through creativity. Eg where will the jobs for biographers go?
I will say that debate is an active topic worldwide right now and a good question, with answers ranging from: “this maximizes human creativity bro” to “laser printers disrupted lead type foundries, that was great” to “nobody will ever write again and we are murdering our creative class and burning down their craftsman mid century modern homes.”
It seems to me this will get taken up next session with SCOTUS but also that it’s a little early; we just don’t know where this is going exactly. Either way, I expect our current judge will learn that leeching is precisely NOT seeding once the defense legal team has time to brief him.
> 1. just downloading is probably fine because it could be for purposes of fair use, and fair use concerns generally trump even good faith and fair dealing
This smells a bit strange to me, it's a "for-profit" company.. Fair use is a bit of pipe-dream here. Also there is no conditions on the source of the content ? If the source was obtained from illegal sources IE illegal distribution of copyrighted materials does that not play a part ?
Also will this set a precedent that if I download HBO's collection but don't seed or use for any commercial reasons it will be considered Fair Use ?
This whole thing just reeks of "rules for thee but not for me".
> This smells a bit strange to me, it's a "for-profit" company.. Fair use is a bit of pipe-dream here
Why do you think that? For-profit companies use fair use all the time. Its not unusual.
Yes, a usage being non-commercial can be a factor in favour of fair use, but its just one factor. Its definitely not a neccesary condition nor is it a sufficient condition.
> If the source was obtained from illegal sources IE illegal distribution of copyrighted materials does that not play a part ?
Why would it? That isn't really how copyright works. Its about the right to "copy" (or not to), not about distribution methods.
> Also will this set a precedent that if I download HBO's collection but don't seed or use for any commercial reasons it will be considered Fair Use ?
No. That's not the reason this is potentially fair use.
[Although as an aside it uses to be in Canada that only uploading was illegal].
> Why would it? That isn't really how copyright works. Its about the right to "copy" (or not to), not about distribution methods.
Okay, but if there was no permission to "copy" the content by the owners. I wish I knew more about it all, but seems to me that quoting a snippet from a book while offering comment on it would be classic fair use. Consuming the entire collection for free to charge for transformative services really doesn't feel 'fair'.
And again I can't shake the feeling that if I did this, was brought to court. I would be laughed at for claiming fair use.
> This smells a bit strange to me, it's a "for-profit" company.. Fair use is a bit of pipe-dream here
Fair use can be for profit.
> if I download HBO's collection but don't seed or use for any commercial reasons it will be considered Fair Use
No, seeding is automatically not fair use. Leeching does not automatically mean its not fair use, just that it might be.
I'm not sure how llms count as fair use. It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use? Or that statistical representations are fair use? Or is it the generation aspect? I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself?
I feel like this has really blown a hole in copyright.
> It's just that we can't show HOW they've been encoded in the model, means it's fair use?
Describing training as “encoding them in the model” doesn’t seem like an accurate description of what is happening. We know for certain that a typical copyrighted work that is trained on is not contained within the model. It’s simply not possible to represent the entirety of the training set within a model of that size in any meaningful way. There are also papers showing that memorisation plateaus at a reasonably low rate according to the size of the model. Training on more works doesn’t result in more memorisation, it results in more generalisation. So arguments based on the idea that those works are being copied into the model don’t seem to be founded in fact.
> I can't sell you a Harry potter book, but I can sell you some service that let's you generate it yourself?
That’s the reason why cases like this are doomed to fail: No model can output any of the Harry Potter books. Memorisation doesn’t happen at that scale. At best, they can output snippets. That’s clearly below the proportionality threshold for copyright to matter.
Copyright was build to protect the artist from unauthorized copy by a human not by a machine (a machine wildly beyond their imagination at the time I mean), so the input and output limitations of humans were absolutely taken into account when writing such laws, if LLMs were treated in similar fashion authors would have had a say in wether their works can be used as inputs in such models or if they forbid it.
This reply doesn’t seem to relate to either of the points I made.
Yes it does, the spirit of the law matters in many one cases.
I made two points:
- It is not accurate to describe training as “encoding works into the model”.
– A model cannot recreate a Harry Potter book.
Neither of these have anything to do with “the spirit of the law”.
Same. If I invented a novel new way of encoding video and used it to pack a bunch of movies into a single file, I would fully expect to be sued if I tried distributing that file, and equally so if I let people use a web site that let them extract individual videos from that file. Why should text be treated differently?
You are allowed to quote from copyrighted works without needing permission. Trying to assert copyright because of a quote of, say, a mere 60 words in length would get you thrown out of any judge’s court.
It was shown, in this case, that the llms wouldn’t generate accurate quotes more than 60 words in length.
This is not comparable to encoding a full video file.
One should also keep in mind the countless people who got much of their education from pirated books.
This seems to be a bad faith argument, although it would be amusing to see Facebook use it.
"Your honor, it's fair use because students have downloaded educational books for years."
That has nothing to do with whether LLMs are fair use.
People can process only fraction of that while using much more time to do that. And I'm using 'process' here to meet you in your nihilist argument that these algorithms are same as humans. Which is pretty strange because people barely acknowledge similarities with other mammals but suddenly software is equal.
The word transformative was put there in a time of manual transformative processes, like when you paint something similar to what you saw in a painting by another artist, with all the implied limitations that entails, like the time it took from you to watch that painting, and the time it takes you to create that new painting, nothing to do at all with the way LLMs operate, an honest assessment would have found that the word was meant for a wildly different use case and therefore it required a bigger and more nuanced discussion.
> The word transformative was put there in a time of manual transformative processes, like when you paint something similar to what you saw in a painting by another artist
Do you have any citation that that is how the word "transformation" was understood historically? Because what your suggesting seems to be the opposite of what i've read.
My understanding is even back in the 1800s (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folsom_v._Marsh ) your example would not be considered transformative, if your intention was to make a similar painting to serve a similar purpose.
The judge is claiming that because the use is of the books are “so transformative,” the usage of these books to train an llm is fair use.
I’m not familiar with the facts of the case and IANAL, and its late, but how did the plaintiffs determine their books were being used for training of the llm? Was the model spitting out language that was similar or verbatim to their works?
> but how did the plaintiffs determine their books were being used for training of the llm?
I think facebook admited this. I don't think the fact of this is under dispute.
> The judge is claiming that because the use is of the books are “so transformative,” the usage of these books to train an llm is fair use.
Maybe I'm mistaken but shouldn't the source come from a legal source ? This is not public domain material.
Again if I download the entire works of HBO tv shows, then make a "transformative" version on my iphone, how can that be considered fair use?
> Maybe I'm mistaken but shouldn't the source come from a legal source
There is no such thing as a legal or illegal source, only legal or illegal uses.
If the use was legal, then it doesn't matter where you got the material from. Similary if you got the material via more conventional means it would still be copyright infringement if you used it in an illegal way.
> Again if I download the entire works of HBO tv shows, then make a "transformative" version on my iphone, how can that be considered fair use?
That wouldn't be considered transformative. In this context "transformative" means you transformed it into something with a different purpose than the original.
However if you for example made a video essay for youtube talking about the themes (or whatever) of the tv show including clips from it, that would be transformative and probably fine.
It'll be, but in a slightly different way. As it will be considered _fair_ for the Warner Bros to sue you dry.
>The judge is claiming that because the use is of the books are “so transformative,” the usage of these books to train an llm is fair use.
"you're doing something so critical to our (country's) success, that we're ok to waive copyright. I get that, if the US doesn't do it, then China will(is).
Interesting judgement, and it's implications, if you are correct haha.
"Transformative" is a legal term with a specific meaning. The copyrighted work has to be transformed somehow rather than copied.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use
That’s one hell of a headline for a story about Meta winning summary judgement for most of the claims against them. You’d be forgiven for thinking Meta lost this case, going by the headline.
Surely it should be a whole separate copyright case with fines of up to $150,000 per work infringed.
It’s crazy, yet so predictable, that while the system tries to bankrupt individuals for torrenting a single book or movie in this case the excuse “it was just to train an LLM” will fly. Imagine a private individual would argue that in court.
Ironically, the Llama models enable people to fine-tune on their own material. A lot of people are doing exactly this.
When do the outputs cease to be a derived work?
When you're rich.
Sorta not really. They said the plaintiff had a non relevant argument or something.
So the argument is that by torrenting ebooks, meta provided bandwidth to the torrent network, and thus provided (financial??!) benefit to pirate sites?
I got to be honest, that sounds extremely weak to me. The benefit to the pirate site of joining the torrent swam seems like it would be extremely slight.
The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer.
If it’s fine for a large corp. like Meta to pirate books then it’s fine for everyone else. If it’s a crime for ordinary consumers then it’s a crime for Meta too.
Especially as Meta aren’t doing this for charity. They train LLMs for their own gain.
> The pirate sites? There is no pirate site hosting files here, BitTorrent is peer to peer.
Or "shadow library" or whatever you want to call it. The argument according to the article is that the entity that created the torrent, which also as far as i understand also operates a traditional website, benefits from meta's actions.
I think that is really far fetched.
The argument is that distribution is the infringement. This is basically the only thing torrenters get charged with.
That does not seem to be the argument that was presented in the article.
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