7 ms·

Isn't scanning also a form of copyright infringement? You are making a digital copy of a book, which is the same thing as downloading a book from the internet..

Isn't scanning also a form of copyright infringement? You are making a digital copy of a book, which is the same thing as downloading a book from the internet...

yonatan8070 3mo ago
I'm pretty sure every book I've seen has a page that says you're not allowed to copy/scan/photograph it.
- gpderetta 3mo ago
  that per-se doesn't mean you are bound by it.
deleted 3mo ago
[deleted]
pmontra 3mo ago
I think that we can run a perhaps silly thought experiment. Suppose that I have a nearly perfect memory and I could remember all the books I read. Suppose also that I have a million year life span so I could read 7 million books. Then, what happens if at the end of all of those years, or at any earlier moment I answer questions from people and I exploit commercially the knowledge I gathered reading those books? Would my reading those books be study or copyright infringement? Remember the nearly perfect memory hypotheses. Of course it's a bit silly because the time to train a LLM and the time I need to read all those books is different by orders of magnitude and that changes the perspective. Who would complain with me today if their heirs lose some money on 7 million AD? Who would even notice that I started that million years long endeavor. Who's going to be there to ask me questions by then? Humans? Birds? Lizards? And I can say that I am studying like everybody else before me, but does an LLM study? And I am sure there are many other nuances. Anyway, I don't think that scanning is any different than photons hitting my retina. The difference is in what happens next: the faithfulness of memory, the amount of knowledge, the speed of accumulating it. After all a huge amount of quantity can become quality.
- Brian_K_White 3mo ago
  How is it different than reading the book, and writing down a copy, and publishing it as your work? Even without selling it, but then on top, selling it too. It isn't. There is no thought experiment that absolves the copyright and citation laundering. And the systematic nature of the excerpt service makes the excerpts different from fair use quotes. A reference quote is not a service that can reproduce the entire work, and the reference quote cites the actual source of the insight/wisdom/research/poetry/etc. The only thought experiment is why might someone even try to excuse this activity? I can think of a few.
- close04 3mo ago
  > Suppose also that I have a million year life span But that's what makes the usual analogies with humans fail from the start. The laws were made with the assumption that they apply to humans which are a known quantity. This breaks down when you apply them with system with vastly increased (and ever increasing) capabilities. > Anyway, I don't think that scanning is any different than photons hitting my retina. If I ask you 10 years from now to give me a completely accurate depiction of what your retina registered yesterday at 5:52 PM, will you be able to? And can you give me a copy?
- latexr 3mo ago
  The thought experiment falls apart immediately by the mere fact that—even given all the other fantastical abilities such as perfect memory and impossible lifespan—you can still only answer one question at a time. As has been repeated ad nauseam, scale puts an hard stop on the comparison of LLMs to humans. Let’s switch up your scenario. Let’s say the subject isn’t a human with machine-like qualities but instead a computer with human-like limitations. All the books were fed to that one computer, and for technical reasons it cannot be duplicated and can only answer one question at a time. Suddenly the infringement isn’t as problematic and the ways to commercially exploit that data are minimal. Furthermore, even with perfect memory it would take time to read all those books, you’d never keep up with everything released in a single year. Nor would you be able to reproduce everything perfectly due to required time and lack of ability (perfectly recalling a painting or photograph does not mean you have the skills to make an exact copy). All these comparisons are silly and useless anyway (though in your particular case I think you are arguing in good faith). Computers are not human. If a person was caught killing animals of an endangered species and used as a defence “but what about the natural predators in that habitat? I’m just doing the same as them”, we’d rightfully see through the bullshit and scoff at such an obviously flawed comparison.
monegator 3mo ago
Here we have a 15% limit on scanning for fair use
reedciccio 3mo ago
No, there is a famous law case to prove that's allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....
shakna 3mo ago
As long as it is destructive, and the digital copy is access-restricted to equal the licenses or physical copies destroyed, then it falls under fair use.
maxloh 3mo ago
Copyright protects the presentation of knowledge, not the knowledge itself, which is uncopyrightable in almost all jurisdictions. As long as the book was a legal copy, that is allowed legally.

Isn't scanning also a form of copyright infringement? You are making a digital copy of a book, which is the same thing as downloading a book from the internet...

yonatan8070 3mo ago

I'm pretty sure every book I've seen has a page that says you're not allowed to copy/scan/photograph it.

gpderetta 3mo ago
that per-se doesn't mean you are bound by it.

deleted 3mo ago

[deleted]

pmontra 3mo ago

I think that we can run a perhaps silly thought experiment. Suppose that I have a nearly perfect memory and I could remember all the books I read. Suppose also that I have a million year life span so I could read 7 million books. Then, what happens if at the end of all of those years, or at any earlier moment I answer questions from people and I exploit commercially the knowledge I gathered reading those books? Would my reading those books be study or copyright infringement? Remember the nearly perfect memory hypotheses. Of course it's a bit silly because the time to train a LLM and the time I need to read all those books is different by orders of magnitude and that changes the perspective. Who would complain with me today if their heirs lose some money on 7 million AD? Who would even notice that I started that million years long endeavor. Who's going to be there to ask me questions by then? Humans? Birds? Lizards? And I can say that I am studying like everybody else before me, but does an LLM study? And I am sure there are many other nuances. Anyway, I don't think that scanning is any different than photons hitting my retina. The difference is in what happens next: the faithfulness of memory, the amount of knowledge, the speed of accumulating it. After all a huge amount of quantity can become quality.

Brian_K_White 3mo ago
How is it different than reading the book, and writing down a copy, and publishing it as your work? Even without selling it, but then on top, selling it too. It isn't. There is no thought experiment that absolves the copyright and citation laundering. And the systematic nature of the excerpt service makes the excerpts different from fair use quotes. A reference quote is not a service that can reproduce the entire work, and the reference quote cites the actual source of the insight/wisdom/research/poetry/etc. The only thought experiment is why might someone even try to excuse this activity? I can think of a few.
close04 3mo ago
> Suppose also that I have a million year life span But that's what makes the usual analogies with humans fail from the start. The laws were made with the assumption that they apply to humans which are a known quantity. This breaks down when you apply them with system with vastly increased (and ever increasing) capabilities. > Anyway, I don't think that scanning is any different than photons hitting my retina. If I ask you 10 years from now to give me a completely accurate depiction of what your retina registered yesterday at 5:52 PM, will you be able to? And can you give me a copy?
latexr 3mo ago
The thought experiment falls apart immediately by the mere fact that—even given all the other fantastical abilities such as perfect memory and impossible lifespan—you can still only answer one question at a time. As has been repeated ad nauseam, scale puts an hard stop on the comparison of LLMs to humans. Let’s switch up your scenario. Let’s say the subject isn’t a human with machine-like qualities but instead a computer with human-like limitations. All the books were fed to that one computer, and for technical reasons it cannot be duplicated and can only answer one question at a time. Suddenly the infringement isn’t as problematic and the ways to commercially exploit that data are minimal. Furthermore, even with perfect memory it would take time to read all those books, you’d never keep up with everything released in a single year. Nor would you be able to reproduce everything perfectly due to required time and lack of ability (perfectly recalling a painting or photograph does not mean you have the skills to make an exact copy). All these comparisons are silly and useless anyway (though in your particular case I think you are arguing in good faith). Computers are not human. If a person was caught killing animals of an endangered species and used as a defence “but what about the natural predators in that habitat? I’m just doing the same as them”, we’d rightfully see through the bullshit and scoff at such an obviously flawed comparison.

monegator 3mo ago

Here we have a 15% limit on scanning for fair use

reedciccio 3mo ago

No, there is a famous law case to prove that's allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....

shakna 3mo ago

As long as it is destructive, and the digital copy is access-restricted to equal the licenses or physical copies destroyed, then it falls under fair use.

maxloh 3mo ago

Copyright protects the presentation of knowledge, not the knowledge itself, which is uncopyrightable in almost all jurisdictions. As long as the book was a legal copy, that is allowed legally.