Re: OT: The AIs have it...

On 2025-02-27 16:50:35 +0000, moviePig said:

On 2/26/2025 9:29 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

On Feb 26, 2025 at 4:40:52 PM PST, "shawn" <nanoflower@notforg.m.a.i.l.com>
wrote:

On Thu, 27 Feb 2025 00:34:00 -0000 (UTC), BTR1701 <atropos@mac.com>
wrote:

On Feb 26, 2025 at 3:06:45 PM PST, "Alan Smithee" <alms@last.inc> wrote:
 

1,000 artists release a silent album to protest AI taking their works...
 https://www.techspot.com/news/106909-over-1000-musicians-release-silent-album-protest-ai.html 

 I've never understood the claim that training AI systems on books, music,
etc. is a copyright violation in the first place.
 The AI isn't making an unauthorized copy of the work. It's reading (or
listening to ) the work and learning from it. This isn't any different than a human being reading a book and learning from it.
 Some have said, well, the AI makes a copy of the work in its brain while it's learning but the same can be said of a human. Why is one a (supposed) copyright violation but the other is not?

 The AI isn't paying for the work and the works in question aren't free
for anyone to use.

 I don't pay for the books in my local library? Am I committing a copyright
violation by reading them?

 You are if you read them to someone else.

Doing a book reading for an audience (especially if they're paying for a ticket) without the publisher's permission is definitely breaking the legalese small print in the front of many books.
For example, this is in the front of a random book I took from my home bookshelf:
    "All rights reserved. no part of this publication my be
     reproduced, published, performed in public or communicated
     to the public in any form or by any means without prior
     permission from the publisher or its authorised licensees."
Techncially, even me posting that 'part of the publication' is breaking those terms and conditions.
Similarly playing a DVD, of video tape in ye olde days, for an audience needs permission.
Many books and videos also say the product cannot be stored in any kind of retrieval system without permission, which is one of the legal problems for some of the silly AI systems "learning" from such material.
Many things, especialy creative works, that you buy you do not actually own. You simply pay for a 'license' to use them under the terms and conditions that you agree to when purchasing and/or opening the packaging. That includes almost all computer software and the operating systems. Legally, if you break those terms and conditions, the company that owns the rights could take you to court or simply revoke your license to use the product. In most cases they don't bother because it's simply not worth the time and money, unless you're stupid enough to be trying to make money yourself.