You’re “stealing” their opportunity to use that space. In legal terms, assuming they had a right to the spot, you’d be committing an unauthorized use of their property, causing deprivation of benefit or interference with use.
Makes sense. Do you think it’s stealing to train on someone’s data/work without their permission?
This isn’t a ‘gotcha’, btw—if you think it’s not, I want to know and understand.
I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that. My instinct is that most publicly accessible material (not behind a paywall) is largely “fair use”, but it gets messier for things like books not yet in the public domain. LLM pre-training is both transformative and extractive.
There is no sensible licensing infrastructure for this yet, AFAIK, so many companies are grabbing whatever they can and dealing with legalities later. I think, at minimum, they should pay some upfront fee to train on a copyrighted book, just like humans do when they buy rather than pirate or borrow from libraries.
What prior reading have you done on this question? I did a DDG search “AI duplicating artists style controversy” and have found dozens of journalism pieces which appear, for the most part, seem to be arguing broadly with “it is theft”. What is your understanding of the discourse on this at the moment? What have you read? What has been persuasive? What don’t you understand?
The main thing I don’t understand is the full thought processes that leads to not seeing this as stealing opportunity from artists by using their work non consensually, without credit or compensation. I’m trying to understand if folk who don’t see this as stealing don’t think that stealing opportunity is a significant thing, or don’t get how this is stealing opportunity, or something else that I’m not seeing.
I’m trying to understand if folk who don’t see this as stealing don’t think that stealing opportunity is a significant thing, or don’t get how this is stealing opportunity, or something else that I’m not seeing.
And what arguments have they raised? Whether you agree or feel they hold water or not is not what I’m asking—I’m wondering what arguments have you heard from the “it is not theft” camp? I’m wondering if they are different from the ones I’ve heard
Literally steal? No, except in cases that you probably don’t mean such as where it’s part of a building and someone physically removes that part of the building. “Steal” in the colloquial but not in the legal sense, sure.
Legally it’s usually more like tortious interference, e.g. you have a contract that provides the service of using that space to park your car, and someone interferes with that by parking their own car there and deprives you of its use in an economically damaging way (such as having to pay for parking elsewhere).
Sometimes it’s trespass, such as when you actually own the land and can legally forbid others from entering.
It is also relatively common for it to be both: tortious interference with the contracted user of the parking space, and trespass against the lot owner who sets conditions for entry that are being violated.
Do you think you can steal someone’s parking spot?
If yes, what exactly do you think you’re stealing?
You’re “stealing” their opportunity to use that space. In legal terms, assuming they had a right to the spot, you’d be committing an unauthorized use of their property, causing deprivation of benefit or interference with use.
Makes sense. Do you think it’s stealing to train on someone’s data/work without their permission? This isn’t a ‘gotcha’, btw—if you think it’s not, I want to know and understand.
I don’t think there’s a simple answer to that. My instinct is that most publicly accessible material (not behind a paywall) is largely “fair use”, but it gets messier for things like books not yet in the public domain. LLM pre-training is both transformative and extractive.
There is no sensible licensing infrastructure for this yet, AFAIK, so many companies are grabbing whatever they can and dealing with legalities later. I think, at minimum, they should pay some upfront fee to train on a copyrighted book, just like humans do when they buy rather than pirate or borrow from libraries.
What prior reading have you done on this question? I did a DDG search “AI duplicating artists style controversy” and have found dozens of journalism pieces which appear, for the most part, seem to be arguing broadly with “it is theft”. What is your understanding of the discourse on this at the moment? What have you read? What has been persuasive? What don’t you understand?
The main thing I don’t understand is the full thought processes that leads to not seeing this as stealing opportunity from artists by using their work non consensually, without credit or compensation.
I’m trying to understand if folk who don’t see this as stealing don’t think that stealing opportunity is a significant thing, or don’t get how this is stealing opportunity, or something else that I’m not seeing.
And what arguments have they raised? Whether you agree or feel they hold water or not is not what I’m asking—I’m wondering what arguments have you heard from the “it is not theft” camp? I’m wondering if they are different from the ones I’ve heard
Literally steal? No, except in cases that you probably don’t mean such as where it’s part of a building and someone physically removes that part of the building. “Steal” in the colloquial but not in the legal sense, sure.
Legally it’s usually more like tortious interference, e.g. you have a contract that provides the service of using that space to park your car, and someone interferes with that by parking their own car there and deprives you of its use in an economically damaging way (such as having to pay for parking elsewhere).
Sometimes it’s trespass, such as when you actually own the land and can legally forbid others from entering.
It is also relatively common for it to be both: tortious interference with the contracted user of the parking space, and trespass against the lot owner who sets conditions for entry that are being violated.