Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epic Meepo" data-source="post: 9372225" data-attributes="member: 57073">My objection isn't that OpenAI read a bunch of data they scanned from the internet. If all they were doing was having their AI read the contents of their browser cache as it was being displayed in the browser window, I don't have any problem with that. I don't think it's possible for a copyright holder to post publicly-facing internet content without implicitly giving permission for people (or entities) to create copies of that content for the express purpose of viewing those copies in internet browsers. Allowing those cached copies to exist is literally the express purpose of posting public-facing content online, so it would be non-sensical to say you're posting public-facing content online but also withholding that permission.My objection would be if, as I suspect is the case, OpenAI copied the content they scraped from the internet into a training database separate from any browser cache. Saving a new copy of online content into a database separate from your browser cache is not standard practice when viewing a website, so there's no implicit permission to do so.This has nothing to do with distribution or derivative works, and everything to do with reproducing a copyrighted work. You literally need permission to create a copy of a copyrighted work. Sure, that permission is implicitly granted to users of internet browsers for the purpose of reading a website on a browser. But at no point did OpenAI ever ask any copyright holder permission to make an additional, unauthorized copy of their work for an entirely different purpose, in an entirely different block of memory, unrelated in any way to reading it on a browser.It doesn't really matter what the terms of service on the websites were. Websites don't have to establish additional restrictions on the use of copyrighted content to prevent it from being copied to anything other than a browser cache. Copyright law already does that.By default, you cannot legally create a copy of a copyrighted work without getting permission from the copyright holder. Permission to create a copy in your browser cache for the purpose of viewing a website is not permission to create an additional copy for some other purpose. You don't get to say, "Well, it's in my browser cache, so I'll just save a copy to my training database, too." By default, copyright law says you need to actively receive permission to make that second, non-browser-related copy of that data.If, at any point, OpenAI copied copyrighted content stored in their browser cache and pasted it into a database (or other, non-browser-related file), I would content they violated a copyright. My understanding of copyright law is that OpenAI isn't allowed to copy the data in their browser cache to a new location without first getting permission to do. (And if they're skipping the browser and just scraping copyrighted material directly into a training file, I'd that's an even more blatant copyright violation.)</blockquote>

Verification