this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
846 points (96.4% liked)
Technology
59143 readers
2600 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I don't know if that's true. If Google grabs that book from a pirate site. Then publishes the work as search results. ChatGPT grabs the work from Google results and cobbles it back together as the original.
Who's at fault?
I don't think it's a straight forward ChatGPT can reproduce the work therefore it stole it.
Copyright doesn't work like that. Say I sell you the rights to Thriller by Michael Jackson. You might not know that I don't have the rights. But even if you bought the rights from me, whoever actually has the rights is totally in their legal right to sue you, because you never actually purchased any rights.
So if ChatGPT ripps it off Google who ripped it off a pirate site, then everyone in that chain who reproduced copyrighted works without permission from the copyright owners is liable for the damages caused by their unpermitted reproduction.
It's literally the same as downloading something from a pirate site doesn't make it legal, just because someone ripped it before you.
That's a terrible example because under copyright law downloading a pirated thing isn't actually illegal. It's the distribution that is illegal (uploading).
Yes, downloading is illegal, and the media is still an illegally obtained copy. It's just never prosecuted, because the damages are miniscule if you just download. They can only fine you for the amount of damages you caused by violating the copyright.
If you upload to 10k people, they can claim that everyone of them would have paid for it, so the damages are (if one copy is worth €30) ~€300k. That's a lot of money and totally worth the lawsuit.
On the other hand, if you just download, the damages are just the value of one copy (in this case €30). That's so miniscule, that even having a lawyer write a letter is more expensive.
But that's totally besides the point. OpenAI didn't just download, they replicate. Which is causing massive damages, especially to the original artists, which in many cases are now not hired any more, since ChatGPT replaces them.