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by foo12bar1 hours ago |
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upvoteby usef-33 minutes ago|
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They do seem to be paying for it (as per the 1.5Bil lawsuit yesterday and them now purchasing books and licensing from media companies).

Whether we think they're paying enough is another question, but "I'm paying for content so can protect it" doesn't seem inconsistent.

We may decide that giving models away for free means they don't have to license content (judging by HN comments), but currently that doesn't seem to be the case as Meta is facing lawsuits for its open models.

(Obligatory stratechery piece: https://stratechery.com/2026/whos-afraid-of-chinese-models/ )

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upvoteby trhway8 minutes ago|
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The judge found their use is fair use. They are paying not for their use of the content, they are paying for using illegal copies of the content.

The same principle can be applied to distillation - it is a fair use. You just shouldn't use illegal ways to access the models being distilled.

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upvoteby breppp48 minutes ago|
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Because model output is probably far closer to software or a licensed work which possibly has greater protections than it is to copyright. There is far less possibility of fair use, it might be protected by patents, license or reverse engineering laws.

In any case the laws are being written now, but I doubt these will have worse protection than software does, which has far better protections than copyright

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upvoteby giaour18 minutes ago|
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> I doubt these will have worse protection than software does, which has far better protections than copyright

Software is protected by copyright. Some software may also be protected by patents, but last time I checked, AI generated output of any kind was not patentable.

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upvoteby breppp14 minutes ago|
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Software is protected by the DMCA, patents, licenses, EULAs, all of those aren't there for books. I doubt new laws won't be written for model outputs.

Also, if model output distillation is shown as some form of reverse engineering I assume the DMCA can apply

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upvoteby giaour6 minutes ago|
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You may recall that the DMCA was originally written to protect music and movies. It does in fact apply to creative works. If you have ever purchased an MP3, eBook, or streaming movie, you will also be aware that you purchased a license to the underlying IP. This is also true of physical media, but the license agreement you have to accept when obtaining a digital work makes this explicit.

I agree that you can't patent a book, but I would point out that you can patent an idea, which may only appear in a book or journal article.

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upvoteby preg_match35 minutes ago|
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Why would this be the case. Why would software output from a model magically have greater protection than the software the model trained on.
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upvoteby vel0city33 minutes ago|
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Let's assume model output can be claimed by copyright or some form IP. You can't really patent it, as the output isn't a novel idea or process, much like you don't patent a book or a movie. But for arguments sake, let's agree it is some kind of IP.

Who are you saying owns that IP? The people who trained the model? The people who ran the model? The people who wrote the prompt? The person who paid for all of that to happen?

If the model output is owned by the person prompting it and paying for the tokens, what's the problem here?

If the model output is owned by the trainer of the model, that's a big nasty can of worms.

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