https://mashable.com/article/penguin-random-house-ai-protections-copyright-page
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/18/24273895/penguin-random-house-books-copyright-ai
PRH's changing of its copyright wording to combat AI training makes it the first of the Big Five publishers to take such an action against AI, at least publicly.
The clause also notes that Penguin Random House "expressly reserves this work from the text and data mining exception" in line with the European Union's laws.
In August, Penguin Random House published a statement saying that the publisher will "vigorously defend the intellectual property that belongs to our authors and artists."
Penguin Random House will amend their copyright notice with "no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.".
Will it work? Have they just created more job for themselves trying to litigate to all the LLM trainers? How much is to much or enough for it to be distinct from their books or just not words other people have expressed to?
(Score: 2, Disagree) by ledow on Wednesday October 23, @08:09AM (2 children)
Copyright exists because of musicians protecting their work, hundreds of years ago, not mega-conglomerates protecting IP they stole from others.
Authors, artists and others all followed suit.
It's not turning back the clock, their clients are demanding it. Otherwise, they'd just publish their book online for free with a CC0 licence. You'll notice that professional authors don't, and yet budding authors will fall over themselves to sign up with a publisher.
Doing something solely for "the art of it" is unprofitable, and people don't tend to do it unless they're a) already rich, b) have another job elsewhere. Copyright is the sole protector of that industry and it's being turned into the bad guy. Even while, with the same breath, we talk about how open-source software works so well and the licences stop them being abused... the exact same laws facilitate the GPL etc. as that novel sitting on your bookshelf.
And the increasing modern trend, as well as the entire basis of modern AI (somehow!), is to just disregard copyright entirely because it's "new" and copyright is "old".
The only logical outcome is AI slop in everything, artists being cut out of the loop, and AI feeding on its own output only (because why would you write something only for an AI to copy it and pretend it made it?). It's literally already happening.
But that doesn't excuse the fact that copyright exists, is still law, and is the primary legal protection for all kinds of artists - from programmers to writers, artists to musicians, Hollywood to VR.
AGI doesn't exist. It's not even on the horizon. What we have is the same kinds of AI as we had in the 60's - statistical boxes - that we trained on the entire world's data. And it turns out, they still never "learn" and aren't actually that smart.
The only good thing - we will soon finally be able to put to rest the assertion that's followed AI since the 60's. "If only we had a little more processing/memory/training data/time/money/scale/nodes/neurons/transformers... this idea of ours will magically turn into actual intelligence".
It's never happened, and it's still not happened. When this current AI fad dies, the next one is going to have to actually THINK about the problem, rather than just hoping AI will magic out of the ether if you hit enough neurons.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday October 23, @04:21PM
Hundreds of years ago? Mozart made his living from patronage, not copyright. Shakespeare's earnings came from performances, not copyright.
Protection from copying isn't what artists need. That protection is only a means, and a poor one that often backfires, to what artists really need: a living. Protection works against publicity. Another very bad thing about protection is that it triggers fears of loss that are unreasonable.
> Copyright is the sole protector
Sole? No, it's not. Protector? Again, protection is not the ultimate goal. Art is.
> the exact same laws facilitate the GPL
The brilliance of copyleft is that the more these special interests manage to strengthen copyright, the more they strengthen copyleft, and that, they don't want to do.
> why would you write something only for an AI to copy it and pretend it made it?
Copying is one issue, and pretending to have made it is an entirely separate issue, called plagiarism. Copying is good. Plagiarism is bad.
Why write, you say? There you are, getting all triggered about an imaginary loss. Artists shouldn't have to be copy police, shouldn't have to fret about that. What we need is to improve the business models that do not rely on copyright, to better compensate artists fairly.
> is the primary legal protection for all kinds of artists - from programmers ...
Very few programmers use copyright protection. Most of our work is done on a "work for hire" basis.
Further, it is utter absurdity that software was ever allowed to be patented. No one can write a 100 line program without infringing on patents by the dozens. In practice, this infringement is ignored, but there is always the possibility that someone will try to make a big stink over it, to do a shake down.
> AGI doesn't exist. It's not even on the horizon. What we have is the same kinds of AI as we had in the 60's - statistical boxes - that we trained on the entire world's data. And it turns out, they still never "learn" and aren't actually that smart.
With this, I agree. LLMs are brainless. LLMs are not much more than the famous ELIZA program from the 60's, with a much, much bigger library of phrases.
(Score: 4, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday October 23, @08:08PM
Copyright exists because of musicians protecting their work, hundreds of years ago
My GOD! The ignorance in that statement is appalling, more so because it's presented as factual knowledge.
"Hundreds of years ago" the only thing a musician had to do with copyright was to buy sheet music from a publisher who had rights to publish that sheet music; recorded sound is only a little more than a century old.
Copyright was started in Britain to protect publishers from other publishers. It was started in the US to protect authors from publishers; at first, only American works could be copyrighted in the US, resulting in no Americans being published.
The copyright clause was proposed by James Madison in 1787 and unanimously agreed to by the Convention. Congress quickly implemented the clause by passing the Copyright Act of 1790, the first federal copyright law. This law protected books, maps, and charts for 14 years, with the option to renew for another 14 years.
Please educate yourself [lessig.org] before spouting such ignorance.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.