So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use?

It's funny that crimes can be settled in cash. IOW, everything has a price; and the price is always right. Settlement ought to be the euphemism for blood money.

In addition to the settlement, what I'd consider fair is to have these companies pay royalties in perpetuity. Of course, that's not tractable.

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shakna an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use?

No, that's what they got in trouble for - a lack of consent.

If the author consents, it would have been fine. If they bought the books, then it is fine. Digitisation through destruction, like most book scanning systems. As long as the original work is destroyed during the process, and you actually paid for it, then it is fair use.

If it regurgitates, then the author can sue you again. So you are incentivised to make damn sure it doesn't. That's not covered by fair use.

Its only if the original cannot be accessed anymore, and you paid to get the original. Both must be true, for fair use to hold.

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maccard 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That’s what the got a _slap on the wrist for_. 1.5 Billion of a payout to effectively cement themselves as one of the only orgs that can ever create one of these models because the ladder is pulled up behind them.

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whateverboat 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

So, they can bu ya book and format shift it, but when I do it, it's piracy? Looking at all DMCA/DRM systems.

	▲	shakna 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Format shifting has a DMCA carveout. It is 100% allowed. Since around 2000, the rule has permitted it for: > Literary works, including computer programs and databases, protected by access control mechanisms that fail to permit access because of malfunction, damage, or obsoleteness. DRM being covered under other laws, and being gross, still applies. And still applies to industry giants, too. Which is why most who do this, like Google, actually buy physical copies and scan it destructively, so they don't have to deal with it.

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owenfi 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, I feel like penalties here should be something like 10% of revenue in perpetuity. Then companies might think twice about asking forgiveness instead of permission.

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sdenton4 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I dunno, ever used a thing you learned from a textbook in your job? Did you have to continue paying for the copy of that knowledge speed on your brain? No, because that's not what copyright is about.

Learning from and building on previous work is civilization. Copyright maximalism is a plague.

	▲	shakna 26 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Well, as not every book is a textbook, I'd say quite a lot of what I've read never went to any kind of knowledge in my head at all. But I reckon the author still deserves to eat.
	▲	calgoo 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Yes but does the computer actually learn? Is the computer a person that read a book and remembered, a part and used that to create a novel idea or is it just cioy pasting the answer and then reselling that
	▲	simoncion 34 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		> I dunno, ever used a thing you learned from a textbook in your job? Did you have to continue paying for the copy of that knowledge speed on your brain? Those regulations and principles are for humans. Either the major LLMs are software tools deployed by ostensibly-profit-seeking companies, and regulations based on the notion that "making humans pay to make use of the things they've learned is profoundly antisocial" don't apply, or the LLM companies have a bigass swarm of unpaid -er- "servants", and labor laws and other human rights regulations do apply.
	▲	gspr 27 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> I dunno, ever used a thing you learned from a textbook in your job? Did you have to continue paying for the copy of that knowledge speed on your brain? They are, presumably, human. We can perfectly well say that humans have certain rights without needing to give machines those same rights. For example, we've more or less all agreed that it's fine for a human to watch a movie and enjoy the memories forever, and be inspired by it forever. But we've also more or less all agreed that that doesn't mean that a human can use a machine to record that movie and keep it forever. > Learning from and building on previous work is civilization. Copyright maximalism is a plague. The debate has existed for several generations at this point. You may disagree with the mainstream opinion, but it's disingenuous to frame it as "copyright maximalism".

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simianwords an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Why do they need prior consent? What sort of rent seeking do you want?

	▲	gspr 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Are you saying that if someone writes a book or records a song, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent? How does intellectual work get funded in this insane world if yours, pray tell?