This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
When peasants were able to copy 'intellectual property' for personal benefit and enjoyment, it was a massive crime. When the oligarchs can steal - everything - for the slight chance of paying less in wages, it is an innovation.
I think it is pretty much certain the model companies escape any penalty for their mass theft of IP. There will be some settlements and token penalties that sound big on paper, but are nothing compared to the market valuations.
Not really. We had collage and training any kind of AI was fine before all this. There's blood in the water and copyright companies can smell it.
OpenAI is happy to give them a piece of the pie if that means they are the only ones allowed to sell it to consumers.
You are right about the penalty being pennys compared to their profits. It's not meant to punish them but help them build a moat, the one that got destroyed by China a few months ago.
This is your reminder that in 2026 absolutely ZERO court rulings matter long term except the Supreme Court, which is captured for life by conservatives.
No matter who wins the midterms or even the next election, that is with us for the rest of most of our lives.
What a time to be alive.
Only in the US. EU has teeth and occasionally uses them.
If it's any comfort, there's a good chance the sunlight won't be reaching the suface of the earth for much of 2027, so we won't be alive for too much longer.
It very much is not. It is in effect until the end of the United States. This will be long before most of us die.
The future will be getting very bad very fast and most nation states will collapse in a few decades.
So there's that I guess.
All LLM code output is now copyleft because there was GPL stuff in the training data, LOL!
spoiler
(Actually it's probably all just copyright infringement and not usable at all because of all the conflicting licenses, but a guy can dream...)
I think this should be the reasoning politicians use to make AI companies owned by the public.
These AI models are nothing without all the data they were trained on. All this data is content produced by humans throughout history. AI is the ultimate product of thousands of years of human progress. Why should we allow corporations to be the primary beneficiaries of this?
AI companies are burning money pits... don't make me the tax payer the patsy who pays off the unimaginable debts of AI companies.
That's exactly why there's a chance of it happening.
Socialise the costs, privatise the gains. Bail me out, daddy!
but think of the CEOs for a minute, they still gotta run the AI, whether through predatory government contracts or predatory private business
how are they gunna afford their 4th house they visit one week a year?
4th house...? What are you, some kind of shit eating peasant...?
Best case scenario but that's not the one we will be getting.
Copyright juggernauts and data brokers, the ones that actually own all the data like Reddit and universal records, will get paid.
Open weight models won't be allowed in business contexts or to be served online, OpenAI and company get a fat monopoly which suits them.
People are cheering for their own doom. The handful of big AI company are going to end up owning a solid chunk of the economy. It's basically going to be an AI tax.
You will be replaced by an agent, OpenAI will only sell them to your employer in bulk at a stupid price so you can't turn around and compete. That bulk price per agent will still be cheaper than your monthly wage.
Find me one politician that even mentioned forcing these models public. It's a fantasy.
The current copyright system is a artifact of US-dominated systems the world is rapidly disassociating itself from.
The worst case scenario is American companies are able to lock down the United States, but the rest of the world will ignore it.
The AI isn’t very useful, that’s a problem. The government will make them public, then the public will own their huge dept. the oligarchs will receive golden parachutes in the form of a buyout and we will get stuck with the bill. Fuck that, make the technofeudalists liquidate at reasonable prices. Give people their homes back. Make them pay to supply clean water everywhere an open-loop DC was constructed. Jail them for terrorism after polluting our skies and attempting to corner the market on information in order to control the populace.
Do you mean compelling them to operate on a completely open source basis?
If you mean as in government owned/controlled, considering the primary thieves are US corporations, that would be the equivalent of the american government laundering stolen goods and compounding the theft from the rest of the world.
Agreed... the problem is that the damage is already done and there's no way to really make it right to the copyright holders so mandating that all AI models and their weights should be treated as public domain would at least help a bit.
It actively prevents companies like Disney from using AI generation tools to stamp out movies like assembly line products. They can't afford to have their movies become public domain at release.
It won't protect jobs in advertising, because a lot of companies won't care if their ads become public domain. This might be a problem because a lot of actors get their start in ad bits, and a lot of graphic artists make a living on ad images.
Ii think it's an issue so long as private companies are profiting off the works of other people. If this is public (like a utility of some sort), I'm not sure the copyright claim means as much. I'm sure it would need to be handled in a way still.
Don't you mean "could be the reasoning"? AI companies aren't profitable, they would want to be "publicly owned" so that everyone else will be holding their bags. They're already trying to hedge it into everyone's retirement funds etc. It would not be in our best interests to be even more exposed to this.
AI companies spent years treating copyright like a Terms of Service box nobody reads. Now a court has suggested that »we copied it to build a competing product« may not magically become fair use because you sprinkle AI on top. Turns out disruption is slightly less fun when the disrupted people have lawyers.
Yeah…no. This is going to the Supreme Court and there’s zero chance their right wing, Trump-choad-gargling asses don’t rule in favor of AI companies.
Unfortunately, Congress will end up doing whatever its paid to do.
As far as I can tell, the 3rd circuit is just one step below the Supreme Court. So unless they take the case it’s pretty stuck. Congress would have to go above and beyond to change the existing laws to allow it.
Also with midterms coming up congress is going to have a harder time passing a law. Especially if the republicans lose the house or the senate. Then they’d have to get the democrats and the republicans to play ball, vs just one currently.
Remember, Congress makes the laws that courts rule on.
Congress does change legislation for its buddies to get around the court system.
Gun manufacturers have their own little Congressional immunity from lawsuits, for instance, (PLCAA).
IMO Disney and other copyright holders have more lobbying power than AI companies at this time.
That said, damages of a winning suit will end up being minuscule compared the revenue these companies have made from said piracy.
If you think this will turn the tide I both envy how un- jaded you are and worry that you really aren't paying attention.
Worth reading the original opinion appealed here: great technical writing and explanation of reasoning by the judge
Thanks for the hint.
"It was not."
This court finds AI guilty of copyright infringement.
The penalty will be... NOTHING!
A law is useless unless it’s enforced. We live in an era where courts say a lot of shit but the legal system doesn’t back it up.
Just like the tariffs, they will use this to steal our money ... they will use tax money to pay the crony companies that play victim.
This is great progress. Curious to see how the Supreme Court eventually rules
"Ya this is illegal. Your fine is 60$"
Immediately made me think of Betteridge's law of headlines.
I will remain cautiously optimistic but until it makes it through Supreme Court it's not a done deal.
Copyright law is as copyright law does.
