News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:OpenAI's justification for why training data is fair use,... by dragonwriter on Thursday October 05, 2023 @12:32PM (#37780718)
The first examples that comes to mind is reproducing an entire copyright-protected article, either a single copy for personal use by a researcher or multiple copies for classroom use.
Re:OpenAI's justification for why training data is fair use,... by jazzyjackson on Thursday October 05, 2023 @02:23PM (#37782125)
Right, determined fair use by the supreme court in Williams & Wilkins Co. v. United States. You can walk into a library and make a wholesale copy for research purposes. The case involved a medical journal publisher suing medical doctors, who made a strong argument that their ability to make copies was a matter of life and death. Winner: Xerox.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_%26_Wilkins_Co._v._...

Re:OpenAI's justification for why training data is fair use,... by DoughnutHole on Thursday October 05, 2023 @02:37PM (#37782317)
That's an interesting example because it illustrates out how fair use is in part defined by its effect on the market.

A teacher copying a New York Times article verbatim and distributing it to a classroom for the purpose of analysis or criticism is likely to be held by the courts as fair use. On the other hand a teacher photocopying an entire textbook (or distributing a PDF) would probably not be considered fair use.

Both are copying educational material in full, but they have a different impact on the market. Distributing copies of an old news article to 30 students realistically isn't a direct substitute for 30 subscriptions to The New York Times. But a textbook publisher's business model specifically revolves around selling its textbooks to students - the teacher is distributing their copyrighted material to their target market and removing any incentive for the students to pay the publisher.

Re:OpenAI's justification for why training data is fair use,... by pclmulqdq on Thursday October 05, 2023 @05:32PM (#37784551)
Yes, the damage to the market of the original is a key factor in a fair use analysis.

It makes you wonder why "Open"AI started getting into legal trouble only when they closed everything down and became a commercial project. When they were a research project, stepping on copyrights was a lot more acceptible (both socially and legally).