Sarah Silverman, other authors lose AI copyright case against Meta

Good news! Loosely speaking, copyrights are excessive in Western countries! I am also not sure how copyrights apply to training models with e.g. literature.

KI basiert auf dem grössten Datenraub der Geschichte. Nun kommt das juristische Nachspiel. Wirklich!

Was für eine blödsinnige Schlagzeile! Nur ein Journalist, der keine Ahnung von Geschichte hat, verfasst so was!

Und der verantwortliche Redakteur muss noch dümmer sein!

Z.B. war da die berühmte Bibliothek von Alexandria, die während der Plünderung/Zerstörung von Alexandria etwa 300 CE zerstört wurde.

Z.B. warum sind die modernen Urheberrechte total überzogen (etwa 70 Jahre nach Ableben des Autors). Nach meiner Auffassung sind 25 Jahre nach Ableben mehr als ausreichend.

KI basiert auf dem grössten Datenraub der Geschichte. Nun kommt das juristische Nachspiel "In ersten Urteilen im Streit ums Urheberrecht schlagen sich Richter eher auf die Seite von KI-Unternehmen. Künstler und Kreative rebellieren. Aktuelle Urteile und Antworten auf die drängendsten Fragen."

Lawyer Explains How AI Is Shaking Up Copyright Law

Very recommendable! Human authorship? Substantial similarity?

Andrew Ng proposes fair use of literature, articles etc. for the training of large language models

This seems to be a reasonable proposal! I have argued here several times before that Western copyright laws are excessive if not extreme (see e.g. here)!

These clearly long outdated Western copyright laws need to be updated, adapted etc.! Otherwise, these laws might become a serious obstacle to AI progress!

"As I [Andrew Ng] wrote previously, I believe it would be best for society if training AI models were considered fair use that did not require a license. (Whether it actually is might be a matter for legislatures and courts to decide.) Just as humans are allowed to read articles posted online, learn from them, and then use what they learn to write brand-new articles, I would like to see computers allowed to do so, too. "

XX.XX.XXXX The Batch Template

Copyright Owners Revolt against AI or the copyright conundrum

Probably most copyright laws in existence and in force are seriously outdated!

Reminder: In Western countries, copyrights are often excessive. "Typically, the public law duration of a copyright expires 50 to 100 years after the creator dies, depending on the jurisdiction."

"Individual copyright holders filed lawsuits against AI companies for training models on their data without obtaining explicit consent, giving credit, or providing compensation. Concurrently, formerly reliable repositories of data on the open web started to require payment or disappeared entirely. ...
Most copyright laws were written long ago. The U.S. Copyright Act was established in 1790 and was last revised in 1976! Copyright will remain a battlefield until legislators update laws for the era of generative AI."

Top Stories of 2023: Generative Everything, Doomsday Visions, Hollywood Versus AI, AI's Hit Record, Copyright Owners Revolt (by Andrew Ng)

Copyrights And Massive Anachronism Of The European Parliament

Posted:

Trigger

Just read EU UND URHEBERRECHT : Ein guter Tag (roughly EU and copyrights: A blessed day). Today (9/12/2018), the EU Parliament voted by a large majority (438 yes to 226 no votes) to apply controversial, legacy copyrights to the Internet.

The journalist, who wrote this article for a leading German news media outlet, is in full praise of this measure. As so often, journalists are not the brightest, but they think they are.

Here is another, more critical article: EU Parliament just voted on controversial Copyright Reform — the outlook is grim

To quote (emphasis added; disclosure: I did not ask for permission to quote from this article):

1. “... Article 11 (a.k.a. link tax) will force anyone using snippets of journalistic online content to get a license from the publisher first — essentially outlawing current business models of most aggregators and news apps. This can also possibly threaten the hyperlink and give power to publishers at the cost of public good.”
2. “On the other hand, Article 13 (a.k.a. censorship machines) will make platforms responsible for monitoring user behavior to stop copyright infringements, but basically means only huge platforms will have the resources to let users comment or share content; there’s a worry that this could lead to broader censorship, with free speech vehicles — like parody, satire, or even protest videos — potentially untenable under this system”

A Massive Anachronism

Caveat: I have not followed this momentous development in much detail. Pardon my ignorance

1. European politicians have again demonstrated that they think or pretend that Europe is still the navel of the world (axis mundi). An arrogance unbecoming
2. European politicians demonstrated their huge ignorance of the digital age by applying outdated copyright laws to the Internet instead of reforming or adopting the outdated, legacy copyrights (which are extremely excessive, I blogged about it several times, e.g. here)
3. This law may also be an expression of dim witted European animus towards large social media corporations or the dominance of U.S. corporations, which they appear to loath
4. It is perhaps another acknowledgment of continued European decline and irrelevance on the world stage
5. Among other things, I understand this new law would hold e.g. social media companies responsible for users’ who violated copyrights.
6. For hundreds of years, copyright laws were used by governments to control information and to stymie human progress and the exchange of ideas. Copyrights are extremely one sided and stacked in favor of publishers and authors against consumers or the public at large
7. It would be an irony or a so called (expected) unintended consequence if this law does not in effect promote or strengthen the position of large Internet companies at the expense of smaller rivals

Pastiche In Classical Music

Posted: 3/12/2016

Introduction

I am by no means an expert on classical music.

I did not grow up with classical music. I only really discovered classical music for myself a few years ago and for several months now I have been listening to all kinds of classical music from all kinds of composers from the past 400 years.

I am truly amazed about the richness and variation of classical music that has developed over the centuries.

About Pastiche

Definition: “an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period” (Oxford Pocket Dictionary as quoted here, emphasis added)

Description by Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB): “Britannica does not currently have an article on this topic.  … fraudulence in the arts

• Forgery (art): Forgery in the visual arts
• In the composite fraud, or pastiche, the forger combines copies of various parts of another artist’s work to form a new composition and adds a few connecting elements of his own to make it a convincing presentation. This type of forgery is more difficult to detect than the copy. Such a combining of various elements from different pieces can be very deceptive, because a creative artist” (emphasis added)

I disagree with Encyclopedia Britannica that composite fraud should be associated with a pastiche. Actually, what EB is describing is also a process of invention or creativity out of which new things may emerge.

There is little doubt in my mind that classical composers imitated or, to use a modern term, plagiarized music from other composers. Imitation is the sincerest of flattery or acknowledgement! Without pastiche the world would have been a lot poorer!

Intellectual Property Rights - Specifically Copyright

As my blog amply attests, I am not a particular fan of excessive intellectual property rights or intellectual property rights are in the end not property rights at all, because ideas are rarely if ever developed or owned by a single person or company.

I don’t believe that classical music would have been so amazing had similar intellectual property rights existed and were enforced by government before classical music developed.

For the sake of argument, I will assume that copyrights were not really in effect on an international scale before the Berne Convention of 1886. Thus, until about 1886 copyrights were not widely accepted or enforced in Europe or America.

Examples Of Pastiche

This chapter is under construction and definitely not exhaustive as I do not have the time to do more research. Thus, a few stumbled upon examples have to suffice here.

Josef Mysliveček

“Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant compositional models in the genres of symphony, Italian serious opera, and violin concerto; both Wolfgang and his father Leopold Mozart considered him an intimate friend from the time of their first meetings in Bologna in 1770 … He was close to the Mozart family, and there are frequent references to him in the Mozart correspondence.”

Max Bruch

“His Violin Concerto No. 1, in G minor, Op. 26 (1866) is one of the most popular Romantic violin concertos. It uses several techniques from Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor. ”

Nicola Porpora

“"[Joseph] Haydn later remembered Porpora thus: "There was no lack of Asino, Coglione, Birbante [ass, cullion, rascal], and pokes in the ribs, but I put up with it all, for I profited greatly from Porpora in singing, in composition, and in the Italian language."[1] He also said that he had learned from the maestro "the true fundamentals of composition".”

Arcangelo Corelli

“Nevertheless, his compositions for the instrument mark an epoch in the history of chamber music. His influence was not confined to his own country. Johann Sebastian Bach studied the works of Corelli and based an organ fugue (BWV 579) on Corelli's Opus 3 of 1689. Handel's Opus 6 Concerti Grossi take Corelli's own older Opus 6 Concerti as models, rather than the later three-movement Venetian concerto of Antonio Vivaldi favoured by Bach.”

Abolish Copyrights

Posted: 2/21/2015

Trigger

Just read this article “Steal Our Stuff, Please Permission is hereby granted to reprint these essays in whole or in part”. I agree with most of what the author has written in following excerpt.

I have previously blogged here several times about copyrights.

The Essence

I excerpted the salient part of this long article (emphasis added):

“To be sure, in a truly free market, there would be no such thing as the institution of copyright at all, simply because ideas are not subject to the constraints of ownership. You can own a book. You can own a CD. You can own a film reel. You can own an image. But the ideas and images and arrangements of notes they broadcast publicly are not scarce goods and therefore not commodifiable or excludable absent the use of aggressive force.

The history of copyright itself is bound up with the state and its ambitions to control the population, the same as any other government plan. In the 16th-century political struggles of England, Queen Elizabeth had an idea for suppressing religious dissent. She declared that the government had to approve anything printed. It was the first action of what eventually became known as copyright. It was a tool for censorship through the creation of monopolies.

As the centuries went on, copyright took on new forms, but the principle remained the same. Government would assign rights to what should really be free for all. Even then, modern copyright didn’t become what it is today until the late 19th century (internationalized with the Berne Convention of 1886), meaning that most authors and composers didn’t use it.

Did authors make money without copyright? Of course they did. So did composers, sculptors, painters, and architects. They all relied on good marketing and the first-mover advantage to promote their works. Before the Berne Convention, copyright could only be enforced within a nation’s borders, which is why so many American schoolkids in the 19th century were reading British literature. It was possible to print and distribute cheaply, unlike the protected American literature.

In the course of the 20th century, the law became ever tighter. Copyright once lasted 28 years. You had to apply for it to be “protected” by it. Today, copyright is automatic. And it lasts not only throughout your lifetime, but up to 70 years past your death. Such ridiculous terms are a result of lobbying by powerful commercial interests like the Walt Disney Company — even though Disney made its corporate empire by taking from the commons! The extension has been a disaster for literature, causing many decades of great writing to vanish into the ether rather than be put online for the world.

Even now, major sectors of economic life thrive without copyright. There is no copyright in the design of clothing, for example, which is one reason that fashion is such an exciting and competitive industry. You can’t copyright recipes, and yet somehow, recipe books and restaurants thrive. It’s the same with fonts, football plays, and architecture. Without “intellectual property,” which really just creates a government-protected monopoly, you get that beautiful market feature called competition.”

I may add that a number of service industries (e.g. tourism) are generally not copyright or trademark or patent protected.

Not only have authors the first mover advantage, they can always write more original literature or give public performances or teach about writing etc. to make a living.

Why Copyrights Protection Are Way Too Long

Brief Background

Western countries grant roughly a copyright lasting to end of life and up to 70 years beyond death of the author. This is absolutely insane!

http://www.worldcat.org/title/present-day-russia/oclc/1360698

http://books.google.co.tz/books/about/Present_day_Russia.html?id=-MJBAAAAYAAJ

Declaration of Principles, 1906

An Example

I recently learned that Ivy Ledbetter Lee (1877-1934) was one of the pioneers of public relations in the U.S.

Among other things, he published a book with the title “Present Day Russia” in 1928. I thought that was kind of interesting that this man published something about the Soviet Union.

Google Books would not publish their digitized version for some reason.

According to WorldCat the nearest library to obtain this book is 107 miles away. So I would have to order it to be delivered to a library near me. What a hassle! Why can I not just access this book online in a matter of seconds?

This is an enormous obstacle to human progress!

Related, Previous Blog Posts

Here, here, here, and here.

Urgent Reform Of Copyrights

Prologue

I have previously blogged about intellectual property rights here, here, and here. My opinion is to start over. Abolish any intellectual property rights going forward, preserve existing ones until they expire. This should be a worthwhile experiment to accelerate human progress.

Copyright Protections Are Way Too Long

“In most of the world, the default length of copyright is the life of the author plus either 50 or 70 years.” (Wikipedia). Thus, if an author at the age of 15 wrote something it would be protected for up to 85 years!

Fair use does not compensate for that.

Consequences

You can not read a book or listen to music online in digital form before that copyright has expired. Thus many recent works are only available through purchase (e.g. if they are still in print) or via old fashioned libraries.

Research and utilizing these works in new and different ways is seriously hampered! Our gain of knowledge is seriously encumbered! The hurdles are too high!

Socrates

This important philosopher lived well before any intellectual property rights were defined (he died in 399 BC). Good for us!

He left no written works. Only through few of his students, e.g. Plato and Xenophon, was his wisdom conveyed to us because Plato wrote down what he remembered or what he liked. Well, Socrates had three sons. Had these sons or even Socrates enforced copyrights as we know them, perhaps his wisdom would have been lost. This is, of course, highly speculative and one can also apply the argument to achieve the opposite result.

A Service Not A Property Right

I strongly believe, the authorship of a literary or musical work is more like a service than a property right. Not much different than when a hairdresser cuts your hair perhaps in a unique way by the hairdresser’s intuition or experience.

Of course, one can argue that mental work and ingenuity are different from more physical work, but are they so different that they deserve such extraordinary protections? Why should not a plumber have his little personal trick he conceived protected in a similar way by which the plumber fixes a certain problem more efficient than others?

Many literary works are personal or trivial, such as e.g. autobiographies or pulp magazines or many prose narratives. Pop music is often not much different.

Novel ideas or observations etc. often spring not from a single mind. Many times, they are the product of human collaboration or generations of humans. Just because one person writes it down first does not justify such extensive protections.

Condemned To Poverty

One may object that so many artists have died in poverty and that intellectual property rights help to prevent poverty of authors or musicians. Or similar, so many great artists had to work full time in a different capacity, because their artistic work would not cover their cost of living.

First, I would suggest that e.g. publishers of music, literature etc. have been perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of the system not the author.

Authors can make money in different ways, e.g. merchandising, live presentations, frequent production of new works etc. To be successful you have to be enterprising like any other business owner.

A World Without Any Intellectual Property Rights

Prolog

Here is an interesting article along the lines of my blog. Here is an interesting website dealing with this issue.

Here is the link to my earlier blog post on intellectual property.

What Is Wrong With Existing Intellectual Property Rights?

·         It is a government granted exclusive, artificial monopoly for extended periods of time

·         Too many frivolous, trivial patents

·         Terms of protection are way too long in many cases

·         Patent trolls

·         Lawsuits to intimidate competitors or to interfere with competition

·         Impediment to human progress

To use hyperbole, what are Apple and Samsung fighting over in court? Rounded square button icons?

Reverse Engineering

In a competitive world with intelectual property rights one has to suspect that competitors are constantly reverse engineering any new or modified product or service from any other competitor as soon as it hits the market or even earlier, which, I suppose, is a legal activity.

I suppose also that competitors quickly try to replicate new and successful features etc. to the extent as not to infringe on intellectual property rights.

Tabula Rasa

I like thought experiments and to start with a blank slate given a thorny issue like intellectual property rights in the 21^st century. Unfortunately, I am not an expert in the history of such rights and how they came about over the centuries.

Whatever were the reasons that governments became involved in granting and enforcing such exclusive monopoly rights, the question is whether from today’s perspective such rights still make sense and can be justified.

Do intellectual property rights improve human progress and technological innovation more than what would be the case without it? Do we have empirical data to corroborate that?

Benefits Of No Intellectual Property Rights

·         Cheaper products

·         Less government bureaucracy and litigation

·         More intense competition

·         Possibly more and better competitors

·         Possibly more specialization and differentiation among competitors

·         Possibly more dynamic markets

·         Better first mover and inventor advantage

·         Accelerated innovation and technological progress

·         Free market contractual protections instead of government granted one size fits all monopolies

Clearly, the first mover would be ahead of its competitors for some time before they catch up. The first mover would also have a strong incentive to keep improving or differentiate their products and to sell other services etc. related to their original invention. Similar holds true for authors and artists.

A Two Way Street

In a world without intellectual property rights any competitor can imitate anything another competitor has come out with and, very important, vice versa.

Once a competitor adopted a new feature by imitation, the competitor then can try to add new variations or a completely different feature and be the first to market and so on.

Counter Arguments

Capital as well as research & development investments by Companies would be reduced. In my estimation this is a myth or a red herring. Before a first mover can sell a new product on the market before anyone else, the first mover needs to make some kind of investment.

The profit motivation would be eliminated or greatly reduced. In my estimation this is another myth or a red herring. A first mover will in most cases make some profit or he can sell his invention to the highest bidder etc. The inventor or author has expert knowledge that his rivals very likely do not have to the same extent for some time.

Like Photography Displaced Naturalistic Or Realism Painting – Computational Music Is Going To Transform Music

Music At A Crossroads

I have little doubt that like computational photography is going to revolutionize conventional digital photography computational music is going to do the same for music. In my opinion, popular music (including classical, jazz, pop music etc.) has become kind of stale. Of course, we still like to listen to it, but I believe, we are about to enter a new era in music. I also have no doubt that somewhere on this planet unconventional musicians are already experimenting …

Too Excessive Copyrights Protecting Modern Music

As I see it, there is at least one major hindrance and that is excessive copyright rights which almost exclusively protect the music created over the last 100 years or so. Without these excessive copyrights contemporary or modern music could be more easily stored in computer systems and remixed or whatever to please current generations of listeners. New styles of music could be fused and much more.

I wrote a separate blog on excessive intellectual property rights.

Music X-Ray

In an article published on 7/27/2012 in the MIT Technology Review titled “Can Creativity be Automated?” by Christopher Steiner it reads that the music industry is beginning to rely on computer algorithms to select artists & repertoire for the next big hit. The company behind these algorithms: Music X-Ray.

Well, if such algorithms are capable to select music that suits our sweat spots could such algorithms not also compose music in such a way that it creates catchy tunes or songs?

Same article also mentions Professor David Cope of UC Santa Cruz who created algorithms that compose classical music.