The idea that models are transformative is debatable. Works with copyright are the thing that imbues the model with value. If that statement isn’t true, then they can just exclude those works and nothing is lost, right?

Also, half the problem isn’t distribution, it’s how those works were acquired. Even if you suppose models 44are transformative, you can’t just download stuff from piratebay. Buy copies, scan them, rip them, etc.

It’s super not cool that billion dollar vc companies can just do that.

> In Monday's order, Senior U.S. District Judge William Alsup supported Anthropic's argument, stating the company's use of books by the plaintiffs to train their AI model was acceptable.

"The training use was a fair use," he wrote. "The use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative."

I agree it is debatable but it is not so cut and clear that it is _not_ transformative when a judge has ruled that it is.

> The idea that models are transformative is debatable. Works with copyright are the thing that imbues the model with value. If that statement isn’t true, then they can just exclude those works and nothing is lost, right?

I don't follow.

For one, all works have a copyright status I believe (under US jurisdiction; this of course differs per jurisdiction, although there are international IP laws), some are just extremely permissive. Models rely on a wide range of works, some with permissive, some with restrictive licensing. I'd imagine Wikipedia and StackOverflow are pretty important resources for these models for example, and both are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, a permissive license.

Second, despite your claim being thus false, dropping restrictively copyrighted works would make a dent of course I'm pretty sure, although how much, I'm not sure. I don't see why this would be a surprise: restrictively licensed works do contribute value, but not all of the value. So their removal would take away some of the value, but not all of it. It's not binary.

And finally, I'm not sure these aspects solely or even primarily determine whether these models are legally transformative. But then I'm also not a lawyer, and the law is a moving target, so what do I know. I'd imagine it's less legal transformativeness and more colloquial transformativeness you're concerned about anyhow, but then these are not necessarily the best aspects to interrogate either.