Comment by ben_w

Comment by ben_w 3 days ago

3 replies

> The LLM steals content from open source creators.

Not according to court cases.

Courts ruled that machine learning is a transformative use, and just fine.

Pirating material to perform the training is still piracy, but open source licenses don't get that protection.

A summary of one such court case: https://www.jurist.org/news/2025/06/us-federal-judge-makes-l...

> "Write me a parser for language X" is like pressing a button on a photocopier.

What is the prompt "review this code" in your view? Because LLM-automated code review is a thing now.

tjr 3 days ago

Maybe pointless, but I for one disagree with such rulings. Existing copyright law was formed as a construct between human producers and human consumers. I doubt that any human producers prior to a few years ago had any clue that their work would be fed into proprietary AI systems in order to build machines that generate huge quantities of more such works, and I think it fair to consider that they might have taken a different path had they known this.

To retroactively grant propriety AI training rights on all copyrighted material on the basis that it's no different from humans learning is, I think, misguided.

  • ben_w 3 days ago

    > Maybe pointless, but I for one disagree with such rulings.

    That's a fair position: laws are for the nation (and in a democracy, that's supposed to mean the people), and the laws we make are not divine or perfect.

    But until the laws change, it is what it is.

    > To retroactively grant propriety AI training rights on all copyrighted material on the basis that it's no different from humans learning is, I think, misguided.

    I would say it's not retroactive, it's the default consequence of what already is. Changing the law so this kind of thing is no longer allowed in the future is one thing, but it would be retro-active to say it had always been illegal.

    • tjr 3 days ago

      I say retroactive not because the law changed, but because the law was never written with AI training in mind. I don't think existing copyright laws fit this situation, and I feel applying this interpretation to works already under copyright, when the creators of those works surely never envisioned this outcome, is an unfair interpretation.