this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Simple question:
If you are college student, learning to write professionally, is it fair use to download copyrighted books from Z-Library in order to become a better writer? If you are a musician, is it fair use to download mp3s from The Pirate Bay in order to learn about musical styles? How about film students, can they torrent Disney movies as part of their education?
I'm certain that every court in the US would rule that this is not fair use. It's not fair use even if pirated content ultimately teaches a student how to create original, groundbreaking works of writing, music, and film.
Simply being a student does not give someone free pass to pirate content. The same is true of training an AI, and there are already reports that pirated material is in the openAI training set.
If openAI could claim fair use, then almost by definition The Pirate Bay could claim fair use too.
If the students are using the works for purposes such as analyzing, critiquing, or illustrating a point, and not merely reproducing them, they have a strong case for fair use. That's all these models are, original analysis of their training data in comparison with each other. This use is more likely to be considered transformative, meaning that they add something new or different to the original work, rather than merely copying it. If you need it said another way, here's a link to a video about this sort of thing.
So you believe that if you download an mp3 and claim you are "analyzing" it, then you can't be liable for IP infringement?
Wow, I wonder why the Napster defendants never thought of that. They could have saved tens of thousands of dollars.
They were helping people to reproduce and distribute copyrighted works. There's a world of difference here.