The next step? I suspect that it will be a little different from what most futurists might think. Consider this:
For about a quarter century before the development of the eBook, and ever since, most copyright notices have contained a line forbidding the scanning or storage of the copyrighted text in any sort of electronic or other information retrieval system currently extant, or yet to be invented, without the express consent of the publisher. All well and good. But then came along these Large Language Systems and Machine Learning programs that indiscriminately consume everything.
What if the next step were a series of class action suits brought by major traditional publishers, and others, against the developers of these so-called AI systems?
Think of it this way:
If a rustler steals a cow, then grinds it up into hamburger along with every other cow they’ve ever stolen, and then tries to sell it back as entirely legitimate hamburger, are you going to buy that?
These systems are scraping/stealing everything, grinding it all up, and spitting back at us while pretending that it’s original content. These are, indisputably, electronic systems, so the only real debate will be whether they are ‘retrieval’ systems or not.
Another source of legal conflict?
Currently, copyright does not cover any of the ‘products’ of these systems – so at the very least, the developers will be trying to change copyright law to include machine sourced material so they can improve their profit margins.
Either way, some pretty epic legal battles are on the horizon.
The next step? I suspect that it will be a little different from what most futurists might think. Consider this:
For about a quarter century before the development of the eBook, and ever since, most copyright notices have contained a line forbidding the scanning or storage of the copyrighted text in any sort of electronic or other information retrieval system currently extant, or yet to be invented, without the express consent of the publisher. All well and good. But then came along these Large Language Systems and Machine Learning programs that indiscriminately consume everything.
What if the next step were a series of class action suits brought by major traditional publishers, and others, against the developers of these so-called AI systems?
Think of it this way:
If a rustler steals a cow, then grinds it up into hamburger along with every other cow they’ve ever stolen, and then tries to sell it back as entirely legitimate hamburger, are you going to buy that?
These systems are scraping/stealing everything, grinding it all up, and spitting back at us while pretending that it’s original content. These are, indisputably, electronic systems, so the only real debate will be whether they are ‘retrieval’ systems or not.
Another source of legal conflict?
Currently, copyright does not cover any of the ‘products’ of these systems – so at the very least, the developers will be trying to change copyright law to include machine sourced material so they can improve their profit margins.
Either way, some pretty epic legal battles are on the horizon.