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In recent months, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.<\/p>\nIn recent months, rightsholders of all ilks have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.<\/p>\n
The list includes record labels, individual authors, visual artists, and even the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work without proper compensation.<\/p>\n
Several of the lawsuits<\/a> filed by book authors include a piracy component. The cases allege that tech companies, including Meta<\/a> and OpenAI, used the controversial Books3 dataset<\/a> to train their models.<\/p>\n The Books3 dataset was created by AI researcher Shawn Presser in 2020, who scraped the library of \u2018pirate\u2019 site Bibliotik. The general vision was that the plaintext collection of more than 195,000 books, which is nearly 37GB in size, could help AI enthusiasts build better models. <\/p>\n The vision wasn\u2019t wrong; large text archives are great training material for Large Language Models, but many authors disapprove of their works being used in this manner, without permission or compensation. <\/p>\n In a lawsuit filed last June<\/a>, authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad accused OpenAI of direct and vicarious copyright infringement, among other things. Soon after, writer\/comedian Sarah Silverman teamed up with authors Christopher Golden and Richard Kadrey in an identical suit. <\/p>\n The complaints allege that the authors\u2019 books were sourced from pirate sites. They specifically mention the controversial Books3 dataset, as well as data from other shadow libraries such as LibGen, Z-Library, and Sci-Hub.<\/p>\n \u201cThe books aggregated by these websites have also been available in bulk via torrent systems. These flagrantly illegal shadow libraries have long been of interest to the AI-training community..,\u201d the authors wrote.<\/p>\n OpenAI didn\u2019t deny these allegations directly but nevertheless disagreed that using books to train AI amounts to vicarious copyright infringement or violations of the DMCA. <\/p>\n In a motion to dismiss<\/a>, OpenAI asked the California federal court to \u2018trim\u2019 the scope of the case. The only claim that should be able to survive is direct copyright infringement, but OpenAI said it expects to defeat that at a later stage.<\/p>\n After reviewing input from both sides, California District Judge Araceli Mart\u00ednez-Olgu\u00edn ruled on the matter. In her order, she largely sides with OpenAI. <\/p>\n The vicarious copyright infringement claim fails because the court doesn\u2019t agree that all output produced by OpenAI\u2019s models can be seen as a derivative work. To survive, the infringement claim has to be more concrete. <\/p>\n \u201cPlaintiffs\u2019 allegation that \u2018every output of the OpenAI Language Models is an infringing derivative work\u2019 is insufficient. Plaintiffs fail to explain what the outputs entail or allege that any particular output is substantially similar \u2013 or similar at all \u2013 to their books,\u201d the order reads,<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In addition to copyright infringement, the authors accused OpenAI of violating the DMCA by intentionally altering the copyright management information (CMI). Details such as the title, the author, and the copyright owner, were allegedly stripped to \u201cenable\u201d or \u201cconceal\u201d infringement.<\/p>\n Judge Mart\u00ednez-Olgu\u00edn sees no evidence for the intentional removal of this copyright information. And, even if these allegations are true, there\u2019s no evidence that it was done for nefarious reasons. <\/p>\n \u201cPlaintiffs argue that OpenAI\u2019s failure to state which internet books it uses to train ChatGPT shows that it knowingly enabled infringement, because ChatGPT users will not know if any output is infringing. <\/p>\n \u201cHowever, Plaintiffs do not point to any caselaw to suggest that failure to reveal such information has any bearing on whether the alleged removal of CMI in an internal database will knowingly enable infringement.\u201d <\/p>\n The authors further claimed that OpenAI distributed its works without CMI, which would also violate the DMCA. This argument fails too, the court ruled, as OpenAI didn\u2019t distribute full copies of books. <\/p>\n \u201cInstead, [the authors] have alleged that \u2018every output from the OpenAI Language Models is an infringing derivative work\u2019 without providing any indication as to what such outputs entail \u2013 i.e., whether they are the copyrighted books or copies of the books,\u201d the order reads. <\/p>\n In addition to the vicarious copyright infringement and the DMCA violations, Judge Mart\u00ednez-Olgu\u00edn also dismissed the California Unfair Competition Law (UCL<\/a>) claims for \u2018unlawful business practice\u2019, \u2018fraudulent conduct\u2019, \u2018negligence\u2019, and \u2018unjust enrichment\u2019. The UCL claim for \u2018unfair practices\u2019 can proceed. <\/p>\n This isn\u2019t the end of the legal battle. The authors have the chance to file an amended complaint to correct any shortcomings, should they wish to proceed with the dismissed claims. <\/p>\n Finally, it\u2019s worth reiterating that the direct copyright infringement claim wasn\u2019t covered by OpenAI\u2019s motion to dismiss, so that will move forward as well. As will many of the other AI copyright lawsuits. <\/p>\n \u2014<\/em><\/p>\n A copy of California District Judge Araceli Mart\u00ednez-Olgu\u00edn\u2019s order on the motion to dismiss is available here (pdf)<\/a>.<\/p>\n From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\nAuthors Sue, OpenAI Responds<\/h2>\n
Court Dismisses Copyright and DMCA Claims<\/h2>\n
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<\/center><\/p>\nDirect Copyright Infringement Claim Remains<\/h2>\n