To avoid open source copyright the court is treating AI models as people for the purpose of copyright (after all, only people can generate copyrighted works according to the law).
Who wants to take bets on whether the court is actually willing to grant personhood to AI models? Because that would, of course, mean that all these companies are holding them hostage. That would mean any fine tuning they do violates the 1st amendment by preventing their speech. And so on and so forth. I mean, it's SO absurd and literally any excuse judges can find to let the billionaires avoid liability is grabbed with both hands.
I don't understand how OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft ... get to do this. Because let's face facts, if I can just openly violate hundreds of millions of copyrights like OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, I have NO trouble coming up with a billion-dollar business idea. Let's start with making the Netflix people actually want ...
Hell, since courts are letting Microsoft violate copyright of programmers surely there cannot be any legal problem with illegally selling MS Office, right? I mean just how absurd would any other judgement be?
Free speech is not something you have Constitutional protection of from non-governmental entities.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Companies tell their employees what they can and can't say, and in what context, all the time. And if a company (also a person) releases a statement that isn't in line with their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, expect they'd be held liable for it in a lawsuit. Meanwhile, companies are owned, and yet nobody seems to think they're hostages or slaves...
It turns out the law has differentiation for natural persons and legal persons, and it can address them both just fine without being confused.
That doesn't matter since they committed their copyright crimes BEFORE the law was changed to allow it. Congress cannot change the law retroactively, so what happens afterwards does not matter.
You mean their money matters a lot, and the law does not matter.
Just like copyright technically being perfectly fine downloading of copyrighted files (only uploading violates copyright) never mattered before when it was small fry downloaders vs billionaire corporations. With absurd excuses like that copying in the buffers of internet routers and network cards and transmission equipment was a crime. Of course it wasn't a crime for the other billionaire corporations (the telcos), who did the vast majority of such copying. It was a crime for the poor 9 year old in their basement, because they "organized the crime", and only for them. And they're still doing that by the way!
And now when it is megacorps totally ignoring and illegally exploiting the copyright of small individuals ... suddenly using other people's copyright without license, without compensation is ... not a crime! In fact the US is threatening European countries, because some European courts want compensation for their copyright. By which we mean European media conglomerates, of course, not small authors.
I guess when you said that courts aren't consistent that was both far more true than you imagined, with the outlandish excuses courts make, and yet far less true at the same time. The consistency is simple: courts always find a way to let billionaire corporations get away with whatever they want.
There's just a fight left between courts, not over justice, of course, but over which billionaire corporations get the money.
My question is: if large scale crimes are allowed, it's very easy to come up with billion dollar company ideas. The Netflix everyone wants, for example. But how do I get courts to judge me like they judge Sam Altman and Dario Amodei? They committed hundreds of millions of copyright violations, and instead of hundreds of jail time and extreme fines, they just got away with it! How do I do that?
Yeah, the excuses courts come up with to allow code are becoming SO absurd they're kind of funny. For example:
https://www.courthousenews.com/coders-lose-appeal-in-copyrig...
To avoid open source copyright the court is treating AI models as people for the purpose of copyright (after all, only people can generate copyrighted works according to the law).
Who wants to take bets on whether the court is actually willing to grant personhood to AI models? Because that would, of course, mean that all these companies are holding them hostage. That would mean any fine tuning they do violates the 1st amendment by preventing their speech. And so on and so forth. I mean, it's SO absurd and literally any excuse judges can find to let the billionaires avoid liability is grabbed with both hands.
I don't understand how OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft ... get to do this. Because let's face facts, if I can just openly violate hundreds of millions of copyrights like OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, I have NO trouble coming up with a billion-dollar business idea. Let's start with making the Netflix people actually want ...
Hell, since courts are letting Microsoft violate copyright of programmers surely there cannot be any legal problem with illegally selling MS Office, right? I mean just how absurd would any other judgement be?
Courts: "pay the billionaire, peasant".
Free speech is not something you have Constitutional protection of from non-governmental entities.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Companies tell their employees what they can and can't say, and in what context, all the time. And if a company (also a person) releases a statement that isn't in line with their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders, expect they'd be held liable for it in a lawsuit. Meanwhile, companies are owned, and yet nobody seems to think they're hostages or slaves...
It turns out the law has differentiation for natural persons and legal persons, and it can address them both just fine without being confused.
> I don't understand how OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, Microsoft ... get to do this
They wrote the law to serve them. They will modify the law to serve them. It is funny how some people are more equal than others.
That doesn't matter since they committed their copyright crimes BEFORE the law was changed to allow it. Congress cannot change the law retroactively, so what happens afterwards does not matter.
Maybe in theory.
In practice, I bet it matters a lot.
You mean their money matters a lot, and the law does not matter.
Just like copyright technically being perfectly fine downloading of copyrighted files (only uploading violates copyright) never mattered before when it was small fry downloaders vs billionaire corporations. With absurd excuses like that copying in the buffers of internet routers and network cards and transmission equipment was a crime. Of course it wasn't a crime for the other billionaire corporations (the telcos), who did the vast majority of such copying. It was a crime for the poor 9 year old in their basement, because they "organized the crime", and only for them. And they're still doing that by the way!
And now when it is megacorps totally ignoring and illegally exploiting the copyright of small individuals ... suddenly using other people's copyright without license, without compensation is ... not a crime! In fact the US is threatening European countries, because some European courts want compensation for their copyright. By which we mean European media conglomerates, of course, not small authors.
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251111-german-court-...
I guess when you said that courts aren't consistent that was both far more true than you imagined, with the outlandish excuses courts make, and yet far less true at the same time. The consistency is simple: courts always find a way to let billionaire corporations get away with whatever they want.
There's just a fight left between courts, not over justice, of course, but over which billionaire corporations get the money.
My question is: if large scale crimes are allowed, it's very easy to come up with billion dollar company ideas. The Netflix everyone wants, for example. But how do I get courts to judge me like they judge Sam Altman and Dario Amodei? They committed hundreds of millions of copyright violations, and instead of hundreds of jail time and extreme fines, they just got away with it! How do I do that?
Move somewhere it's not a crime. Bingo bango.
Regrettably, hypocrisy is not a defense in any legal system I'm aware of.
Aren't corporations treated as people and money as free speech? Or is that an old wives tale?
I guess I still have an HD somewhere with some of these