Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) company Anthropic has claimed to a US court that using copyrighted content in large language model (LLM) training data counts as “fair use”, however.
Under US law, “fair use” permits the limited use of copyrighted material without permission, for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research.
In October 2023, a host of music publishers including Concord, Universal Music Group and ABKCO initiated legal action against the Amazon- and Google-backed generative AI firm Anthropic, demanding potentially millions in damages for the allegedly “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics”.
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Then your argument is non-falsifiable, and therefore, invalid.
Major corporations and pirates are finally on the same side for once. “Fair Use” finally has financial backing. Meta is certainly not a friend, but our interests currently align.
The worst possible outcome here is that copyright trolls manage to convince the courts that they are owed licensing fees. Next worse is a settlement that grants rightsholders a share of profits generated by AI, like they got from manufacturers of blank tapes and CDs.
Best case is that the MPAA, RIAA, and other copyright trolls get reminded that “Fair Use” is not an exception to copyright law, but the fundamental reason it exists: Fair Use is the promotion of science and the useful arts. Fair Use is the rule; Restriction is the exception.
Wow this is some powerful internet word salad, just shot gunning scientific sounding words at the wall to try to pretty up a basic internet debate. Falsifiability is about scientific hypotheses, not statements of belief. “Nothing you can say can convince me that murder isn’t wrong” may mean there’s no further use in debate, but it isn’t “non-falsifiable” in any meaningful way nor does it somehow make the argument for the immorality of murder “invalid”.
You don’t see the difference between distributing someone else’s content against their will and using their content for statistical analysis? There’s a pretty clear difference between the two, especially as fair use is concerned.
By and large copyright infringement is illegal. That some things aren’t infringement doesn’t change that a general stance of “if I don’t have permission, I can’t copy it” is correct. The first argument in the EFF article is effectively the title: “it can’t be copyright, because otherwise massive AI models would be impossible to build”. That doesn’t make it fair use, they just want it to become so.
The purpose of copyright is to promote the sciences and useful arts. To increase the depth, width, and breadth of the public domain. “Fair Use” is not the exception. “Fair Use” is the fundamental purpose for which copyrights and patents exist. Copyright is not the rule. Copyright is the exception. The temporary exception. The limited exception. The exception we grant to individuals for their contribution to the public.
If that is, indeed, true, and if AI is a progression of science or the useful arts, then it is copyright that must yield, not AI.