> but in this case the works in question were released under a license that allowed free duplication and distribution so no harm was caused.

FSF licenses contain attribution and copyleft clauses. It's "do whatever you want with it provided that you X, Y and Z". Just taking the first part without the second part is a breach of the license.

It's like renting a car without paying and then claiming "well you said I can drive around with it for the rest of the day, so where is the harm?" while conveniently ignoring the payment clause.

You maybe confusing this with a "public domain" license.

▲ mjg59 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

If what you do with a copyrighted work is covered by fair use it doesn't matter what the license says - you can do it anyway. The GFDL imposes restrictions on distribution, not copying, so merely downloading a copy imposes no obligation on you and so isn't a copyright infringement either.

I used to be on the FSF board of directors. I have provided legal testimony regarding copyleft licenses. I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain.

▲ dataflow 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

[delayed]

▲ danlitt 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I am excruciatingly aware of the difference between a copyleft license and the public domain.

Then why did you say "no harm was caused"? Clearly the harm of "using our copylefted work to create proprietary software" was caused. Do you just mean economic harm? If so, I think that's where the parent comments confusion originates.

▲ friendzis 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> The GFDL imposes restrictions on distribution, not copying, so merely downloading a copy imposes no obligation on you and so isn't a copyright infringement either.

The restrictions fall not only on verbatim distribution, but derivative works too. I am not aware whether model outputs are settled to be or not to be (hehe) derivative works in a court of law, but that question is at the vey least very much valid.

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mcherm 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It's the third sentence of the article:

> the district court ruled that using the books to train LLMs was fair use but left for trial the question of whether downloading them for this purpose was legal.

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friendzis 4 hours ago | parent [-]

No, those are separate issues.

The pipeline is something like: download material -> store material -> train models on material -> store models trained on material -> serve output generated from models.

These questions focus on the inputs to the model training, the question I have raised focuses on the outputs of the model. If [certain] outputs are considered derivative works of input material, then we have a cascade of questions which parts of the pipeline are covered by the license requirements. Even if any of the upstream parts of this simplified pipeline are considered legal, it does not imply that that the rest of the pipeline is compliant.

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superxpro12 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Consider the net effect and the answer is clear. When these models are properly "trained", are people going to look for the book or a derivative of it, with proper attribution?

Or is the LLM going to regurgitate the same content with zero attribution, and shift all the traffic away from the original work?

When viewed in this frame, it is obvious that the work is derivative and then some.

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limagnolia 23 minutes ago | parent [-]

That is your opinion, but the judge disagreed with you. The decision may have been overturned on appeal, but as it stands, in that courtroom, the training was fair use.

	▲	seba_dos1 a few seconds ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[delayed]
	▲	integralid 3 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is also, unfortunately, the only way this can be settled. Making LLM output legally a derivative work would murder the AI golden rush and nobody wants that

▲ snovv_crash 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Models, however, can reproduce copyleft code verbatim, and are being redistributed. Doesn't that count?

Licences like AGPL also don't have redistribution as their only restriction.

	▲	shagie 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Stack Overflow has verbatim copied GPL code in some of its questions and answers. As presented by SO, that code is not under the GPL license (this also applies to other licenses - the BSD advertising clause and the original json will cause similar problems). Arguably, the use of the code in the Stack Overflow question and answer is fair use. The problem occurs not when someone reads the Q&A with the improperly licensed code but rather when they then copy that code verbatim into their own non GPL product and distribute that without adherence to the GPL. It's the last step - some human distributing the improperly licensed software that is the violation of the GPL. This same chain of what is allowed and what is not is equally applicable to LLMs. Providing examples from GPL licensed material to answer a question isn't a license violation. The human copying that code (from any source) and pasting it into their own software is a license violation. --- Some while back I had a discussion with a Swiss developer about the indefinite article used before "hobbit" in a text game. They used "an hobbit" and in the discussion of fixing it, I quoted the first line of The Hobbit. "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." That cleared it up and my use of it in that (and this) discussion is fair use. If someone listening to that conversation (or reading this one) thought that the bit that I quoted would be great on a T-shirt and them printed that up and distributed it - that would be a copyright violation. Google's use of thumbnails for images was found to be fair use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_10,_Inc._v._Amazon.com... `The Ninth Circuit did, however, overturn the district court's decision that Google's thumbnail images were unauthorized and infringing copies of Perfect 10's original images. Google claimed that these images constituted fair use, and the circuit court agreed. This was because they were "highly transformative."` If I was to then take those thumbnails from a google image search and distribute that as an icon library, I would then be guilty of copyright infringement. I believe that Stack Overflow, Google Images, and LLM models and their output constitutes an example of transformative fair use. What someone does with that output is where copyright infringement happens. My claim isn't that AI vendors are blameless but rather that in the issue of copyright and license adherence it is the human in the process that is the one who has agency and needs to follow copyright (and for AI agents that were unleashed without oversight, it is the human that spun them up or unleashed them).

▲ piker 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That's really interesting. I'm a lawyer, and I had always interpreted the license like a ToS between the developers. That (in my mind) meant that the license could impose arbitrary limitations above the default common law and statutory rules and that once you touched the code you were pregnant with those limitations, but this does make sense. TIL. So, thanks.

	▲	graemep 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Does the reasoning in the cases where people to whom GPL software was distributed could sue the distributor for source code, rather than relying on the copyright holder suing for breach of copyright strengthen the argument that arbitrary limitations are enforceable?

▲ thayne an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

But fair use is dependent on you getting the work legally. Is downloading a book with the intention of violating the GFDL a legal way of acquiring it.

▲ materialpoint 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This means that you can ignore any part of licenses you don't want to and just copy any software you want, non-free software included.

	▲	mikkupikku 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is in fact how I operate.

▲ an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

▲ ghighi7878 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Telling mjg59 they are confused about a license is an audacious move. But I understand your question and I have the same question.

▲ jcul 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This article is talking about a book though, not software.

"Sam Williams and Richard Stallman's Free as in freedom: Richard Stallman's crusade for free software"

"GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL). This is a free license allowing use of the work for any purpose without payment."

I'm not familiar with this license or how it compares to their software licenses, but it sounds closer to a public domain license.

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kennywinker 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It sounds that way a bit from the one sentence. But that’s not the case at all.

> 4. MODIFICATIONS

> You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

Etc etc.

In short, it is a copyleft license. You must also license derivative works under this license.

Just fyi, the gnu fdl is (unsurprisingly) available for free online - so if you want to know what it says, you can read it!

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mjg59 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

And the judgement said that the training was fair use, but that the duplication might be an infringement. The GFDL doesn't restrict duplication, only distribution, so if training on GFDLed material is fair use and not the creation of a derivative work then there's no damage.

	▲	leni536 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Last time I checked online LLMs distribute parts of their training corpus when you prompt them.

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onion2k 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

For this to stand up in court you'd need to show that an LLM is distributing "a modified version of the document".

If I took a book and cut it up into individual words (or partial words even), and then used some of the words with words from every other book to write a new book, it'd be hard to argue that I'm really "distributing the first book", even if the subject of my book is the same as the first one.

This really just highlights how the law is a long way behind what's achievable with modern computing power.

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ndsipa_pomu 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Presumably, a suitable prompt could get the LLM to produce whole sections of the book which would demonstrate that the LLM contains a modified version.

	▲	p_l 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, and for practical purposes the current consensus (and in case of EU, the law) is that only said document would be converted by FDL

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rcdwealth 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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karel-3d 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

FDL is famously annoying.

wikipedia used to be under FDL and they lobbied FSF to allow an escape hatch to Commons for a few months, because FDL was so annoying.

▲ Dylan16807 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They don't need the "do whatever" permission if everything they do is fair use. They only need the downloading permission, and it's free to download.