Stockfish: Our lawsuit against ChessBase

[syzygy]

Currently I am more concerned about things like GitHub Copilot, training large language models on open source projects w/o explicit consent, seems we are missing here some clear law interpretation that Copyright excludes consent for training NNs and alike.

Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from reading, and thus learning from, the protected work.

As long as you are not reproducing protected expression, there is no copyright infringement.

[smatovic]

Currently I am more concerned about things like GitHub Copilot, training large language models on open source projects w/o explicit consent, seems we are missing here some clear law interpretation that Copyright excludes consent for training NNs and alike.

Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from reading, and thus learning from, the protected work.

As long as you are not reproducing protected expression, there is no copyright infringement.

I can not prevent a robot from reading my (open) source code? Ahh, what a world

--
Srdja

PS:...it is always the same, at first they read your source code, then they take your job ;-P

[syzygy]

Currently I am more concerned about things like GitHub Copilot, training large language models on open source projects w/o explicit consent, seems we are missing here some clear law interpretation that Copyright excludes consent for training NNs and alike.

Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from reading, and thus learning from, the protected work.

As long as you are not reproducing protected expression, there is no copyright infringement.

I can not prevent a robot from reading my (open) source code? Ahh, what a world ;)ob ;-P

If you mean "of course I cannot prevent this", then I would point that you ask about copyright and I give a legal answer.
Copyright gives you the right to prevent others from copying and publishing the protected work. This does not mean the laws of nature will help you with this, but you can go to court.
Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from reading the protected work.

[smatovic]

Currently I am more concerned about things like GitHub Copilot, training large language models on open source projects w/o explicit consent, seems we are missing here some clear law interpretation that Copyright excludes consent for training NNs and alike.

Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from reading, and thus learning from, the protected work.

As long as you are not reproducing protected expression, there is no copyright infringement.

I can not prevent a robot from reading my (open) source code? Ahh, what a world ;)ob ;-P

If you mean "of course I cannot prevent this", then I would point that you ask about copyright and I give a legal answer.
Copyright gives you the right to prevent others from copying and publishing the protected work. This does not mean the laws of nature will help you with this, but you can go to court.
Copyright does not include the right to prevent others from reading the protected work.

I am just a layman in this regard, but here in Germany there is a clause added to the Copyright in printed books, "any kind of electronic data processing is not allowed w/o further permission", I guess this excludes the robots from reading, dunno if this clause can be generalized, dunno how this could be applied to source code, makes lil sense considering interpreters and compilers and so on, dunno if there are open source licenses out there which exclude the use case of NN training...

--
Srdja

[syzygy]

I am just a layman in this regard, but here in Germany there is a clause added to the Copyright in printed books, "any kind of electronic data processing is not allowed w/o further permission", I guess this excludes the robots from reading, dunno if this clause can be generalized, dunno how this could be applied to source code, makes lil sense considering interpreters and compilers and so on, dunno if there are open source licenses out there which exclude the use case of NN training...

Are you sure it does not say "any kind of electronic reproduction"?

[smatovic]

I am just a layman in this regard, but here in Germany there is a clause added to the Copyright in printed books, "any kind of electronic data processing is not allowed w/o further permission", I guess this excludes the robots from reading, dunno if this clause can be generalized, dunno how this could be applied to source code, makes lil sense considering interpreters and compilers and so on, dunno if there are open source licenses out there which exclude the use case of NN training...

Are you sure it does not say "any kind of electronic reproduction"?

Additional Copyright clause in my German Duden dictionary from 2013:

Alle Rechte vorbehalten.
Nachdruck, auch auszugsweise verboten.
Kein Teil dieses Werkes darf ohne schriftliche Einwilligung des Verlages
in irgendeiner Form (Fotokopie, Mikrofilm oder ein anderes Verfahren)
auch nicht für Zwecke der Unterrichtsgestaltung,
reproduziert oder unter Verwendung elektronischer Systeme
verarbeitet, verfielfältigt oder verbreitet werden.

Google Translate:

All rights reserved.
Reproduction, including excerpts, is prohibited.
No part of this work may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher
in any form (photocopy, microfilm or other process)
not for the purposes of teaching,
reproduced or made using electronic systems
processed, duplicated or distributed.

Additional Copyright clause in my British Collins dictionary from 1997:

All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles and reviews. For information adress....

--
Srdja

[smatovic]

...just cross-checked, seems usual books (English and German) do not contain such a clause, just the Copyright, seems to be a special case for dictionaries, or alike.

--
Srdja

[smatovic]

AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection

The United States Copyright Office (USCO) reversed an earlier decision to grant a copyright to a comic book that was created using "A.I. art," and
announced that the copyright protection on the comic book will be revoked, stating that copyrighted works must be created by humans to gain official
copyright protection. From a report: In September, Kris Kashtanova announced that they had received a U.S. copyright on his comic book, Zarya of the
Dawn, a comic book inspired by their late grandmother that she created with the text-to-image engine Midjourney. Kashtanova referred to herself as a
"prompt engineer" and explained at the time that she went to get the copyright so that she could "make a case that we do own copyright when we make something using AI."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/12/2 ... utm_source

In concord with syzygys line of arguments, question remains open if neural networks in general can not be protected by Copyright.

--
Srdja

[towforce]

AI-Created Comic Has Been Deemed Ineligible for Copyright Protection

The United States Copyright Office (USCO) reversed an earlier decision to grant a copyright to a comic book that was created using "A.I. art," and
announced that the copyright protection on the comic book will be revoked, stating that copyrighted works must be created by humans to gain official
copyright protection. From a report: In September, Kris Kashtanova announced that they had received a U.S. copyright on his comic book, Zarya of the
Dawn, a comic book inspired by their late grandmother that she created with the text-to-image engine Midjourney. Kashtanova referred to herself as a
"prompt engineer" and explained at the time that she went to get the copyright so that she could "make a case that we do own copyright when we make something using AI."

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/12/2 ... utm_source

In concord with syzygys line of arguments, question remains open if neural networks in general can not be protected by Copyright.

--
Srdja

This would appear to contradict the legal expert I linked ages ago (maybe not in this thread) who wrote that if someone commissions a work of art, then the copyright belongs to the person that commissioned it, not the creator of it - and this would very likely apply to someone generating art using a computer.

There has to be a line somewhere!

If I write something using a word processor, it's clear I can claim copyright for it - even though the word processor has corrected my spelling and maybe even prompted some of the text for me.

The above quoted text appears to be saying that art created by a computer cannot be copyrighted. How much prompting do I need to give my computer as to what art to create before I can claim copyright over it?

Where's the line???

IMO the above ruling is nonsense, and I would model it as follows:

1. if I prompt my computer to create some art, then I have commissioned it and I can claim copyright over it

2. however, given that art can now be generated quickly and cheaply, copyright over art no longer has any value

[noobpwnftw]