<story><title>The New York Times Launches a Strong Case Against Microsoft and OpenAI</title><url>https://katedowninglaw.com/2024/01/06/the-new-york-times-launches-a-very-strong-case-against-microsoft-and-openai/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>monkeynotes</author><text>Why doesn&amp;#x27;t Google need licensing to scrape and reproduce NYT snippets in their results? OpenAI doesn&amp;#x27;t even quote the sources its consumed to produce it&amp;#x27;s output. It seems totally fair use to me. Any given content site has authors that read stuff that is copyrighted and produce their own take.</text></item><item><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>I assume you&amp;#x27;re unfamiliar with anonymous sources - said &amp;quot;a person familiar with the matter.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The issue isn&amp;#x27;t usefulness, and it isn&amp;#x27;t even objective quality. News outlets are primarily about opinion forming and marketing, not about absolute truthfulness.&lt;p&gt;This is a simple corporate fight about the value of that IP.&lt;p&gt;The NYT wants a licensing deal, and it&amp;#x27;s likely to get one.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s all.</text></item><item><author>throwaway4aday</author><text>A model that possesses the entire collective knowledge of our civilization is useless if it can&amp;#x27;t directly quote its sources.&lt;p&gt;If we enforce the behavior of &lt;i&gt;always&lt;/i&gt; paraphrasing and synthesizing the information before returning it even in cases where the exact quote is asked for then that is a failure.&lt;p&gt;The correct solution is to make the model capable of&lt;p&gt;1) quoting directly&lt;p&gt;2) identifying and then indicating when its output is a direct quote&lt;p&gt;3) citing the source of the identified quote&lt;p&gt;while still retaining the ability to paraphrase and synthesize those sources when appropriate. These requirements are what humans are held to and should also be applied to commercial AI models. Models that are not intended for commercial use should be exempt and at this point there isn&amp;#x27;t really a way to hold them to such requirements anyways.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>6gvONxR4sf7o</author><text>When I worked on something related-enough a few jobs ago, I was surprised when our legal dept said that google (and pinterest) generally &lt;i&gt;doesn&amp;#x27;t&lt;/i&gt; have a legal leg to stand on with regards to that kind of thing, but since they link to the thing they&amp;#x27;re quoting&amp;#x2F;copying, they have a relatively symbiotic relationship. If you sue google into delisting you, you end up with less traffic, so you don&amp;#x27;t sue.</text></comment>
<story><title>The New York Times Launches a Strong Case Against Microsoft and OpenAI</title><url>https://katedowninglaw.com/2024/01/06/the-new-york-times-launches-a-very-strong-case-against-microsoft-and-openai/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>monkeynotes</author><text>Why doesn&amp;#x27;t Google need licensing to scrape and reproduce NYT snippets in their results? OpenAI doesn&amp;#x27;t even quote the sources its consumed to produce it&amp;#x27;s output. It seems totally fair use to me. Any given content site has authors that read stuff that is copyrighted and produce their own take.</text></item><item><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>I assume you&amp;#x27;re unfamiliar with anonymous sources - said &amp;quot;a person familiar with the matter.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The issue isn&amp;#x27;t usefulness, and it isn&amp;#x27;t even objective quality. News outlets are primarily about opinion forming and marketing, not about absolute truthfulness.&lt;p&gt;This is a simple corporate fight about the value of that IP.&lt;p&gt;The NYT wants a licensing deal, and it&amp;#x27;s likely to get one.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s all.</text></item><item><author>throwaway4aday</author><text>A model that possesses the entire collective knowledge of our civilization is useless if it can&amp;#x27;t directly quote its sources.&lt;p&gt;If we enforce the behavior of &lt;i&gt;always&lt;/i&gt; paraphrasing and synthesizing the information before returning it even in cases where the exact quote is asked for then that is a failure.&lt;p&gt;The correct solution is to make the model capable of&lt;p&gt;1) quoting directly&lt;p&gt;2) identifying and then indicating when its output is a direct quote&lt;p&gt;3) citing the source of the identified quote&lt;p&gt;while still retaining the ability to paraphrase and synthesize those sources when appropriate. These requirements are what humans are held to and should also be applied to commercial AI models. Models that are not intended for commercial use should be exempt and at this point there isn&amp;#x27;t really a way to hold them to such requirements anyways.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dkjaudyeqooe</author><text>&amp;gt; Why doesn&amp;#x27;t Google need licensing to scrape and reproduce NYT snippets in their results?&lt;p&gt;Because Google established that it was fair use in a court of law.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Any given content site has authors that read stuff that is copyrighted and produce their own take.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s fine as long as you&amp;#x27;re human, if you&amp;#x27;re a machine then it&amp;#x27;s a purely mechanical process and subject to copyright.</text></comment>