Google Calls for Relaxing of Australia's Copyright Laws So AI Can Mine Websites For Information (theguardian.com) 58
Google and other tech giants have called on the Australian government to relax copyright laws to allow artificial intelligence to mine websites for information across the internet. From a report: In a submission to the government's review of copyright enforcement published this week, Google argued the government needs to consider whether copyright law has "the necessary flexibilities" to support the development of AI. The company has called for the introduction of a fair dealing exception for text and data mining for AI.
"The lack of such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of AI and machine-learning technologies is happening and will continue to happen overseas," Google said. "AI-powered products and services are being created in other countries with more innovation-focused copyright frameworks, such as the US, Singapore and Japan, and then exported to Australia for use by Australian consumers and businesses. Without these discrete exceptions, Australia risks only ever being an importer of certain kinds of technologies."
"The lack of such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of AI and machine-learning technologies is happening and will continue to happen overseas," Google said. "AI-powered products and services are being created in other countries with more innovation-focused copyright frameworks, such as the US, Singapore and Japan, and then exported to Australia for use by Australian consumers and businesses. Without these discrete exceptions, Australia risks only ever being an importer of certain kinds of technologies."
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Or, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln after he defeated the Eskimos at the battle of the Alamo, "Never trust what you read on the Internet."
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Citation needed, i.e. You lie!!!
Almost all historians agree Lincoln lost at the Alamo, and it delayed his attempts to re-take Baffin Island. From Dr. P. T. Barnum's "Esquimaux Terror and Degeneracy in the 16th Century":
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And you have now ensured that years from now this version of events will be regurgitated by a ChatGPT instance "helping" some young girl with her history assignment. Oh the artificial humanity!
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Indeed. We're past that brief period of history when Google was small enough for SEO companies to poison the well.
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This is Google, they want to be a vertical company that is able to poison their own wells.
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
Existing data, if it comes from social media, is already designed to poison both artificial and natural intelligence.
Google knows this. What google is asking is "give us all your data so that we can make a lot of money, trust us we're the good guys."
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That's exactly why we shouldn't jump to conclusions and modify the law. It needs its day in court sooner rather than later.
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"I am a human, I demand you send me all copyrighted material immediately so that I can learn everything all at once. And I want it to be free also. Best to just give me the keys to all your libraries to simplify the matter."
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1. A computer is not a human.
2. A human won't read the ENTIRE internet.
3. A human isn't owned and controlled by a corporate entity.
4. A human isn't a tool that will be used for many evil things, the least evil of which being selling me things I don't need.
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1: computers are not humans, they don't have rights. Quite relevant.
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If they put it online in public, yes, I do.
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No, I'm saying the opposite. AC was a good idea for you, today. And I am always amused when my name triggers some nerdling's fragile ego. Thanks for the laughs (at you).
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4. A human isn't a tool that will be used for many evil things, the least evil of which being selling me things I don't need.
You're joking right?
Humans have been used as tools of death and destruction since time immemorial. Every rule in the Geneva Convention exists because somebody somewhere already did those terrible things.
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Reasons to relax laws almost always come down to one reason: making money.
Australia didn't ban learning (Score:3)
I think they should wait and save it for court. Lawyers from FAANG and beyond all involved in the fight. Because fundamentally, a neural network should be allowed to learn from copyrighted material. A human brain is an obvious example.
You could argue that educating yourself is "private" while educating a bot is "public" under Australian law, but what if you pay an employee to learn on the job? And use what they learn in their work. That's either a derivative work of copyrighted material or it is perfectly acceptable.
Once in a while you will accidentally copy something from memory and you tend to be liable for it (e.g. a musician writing a melody that turns out to be a song you've heard before). This should also be true for an AI - but not by default.
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The difference is that a human isn't asking for access to all data all at once. Copyrighted material doesn't mean it gets delivered to you automatically for free. It also doesn't mean you can dominate a library so that other patrons are impeded from access (bandwidth analogous to how many can fit in the library at once).
Though reading the article, it's a bit unclear on what part of the copyright laws they disagree with. Some of it is a separate issue - they want AI generated contenct to be copyrightable
Mixed (Score:1)
Not sure how I feel about this.
On one hand, the miners aren't republishing the content, so you'd think fair use would apply.
On the other hand, the trained AIs will invariably conquer us and destroy the world. Personally, I'm not in favor of that.
Why are they even asking? (Score:3)
Google scanned every book imaginable in the google library project without caring about copyright law. Why would they stop mining websites just because of copyright law for AI development?
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>Google scanned every book imaginable in the google library project without caring about copyright law.
Wellll....they actually won the court case on that, so they followed the law. They claimed all along it was fair use, and the courts affirmed it.
https://techcrunch.com/2016/04... [techcrunch.com]
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Google scanned every book imaginable in the google library project without caring about copyright law. Why would they stop mining websites just because of copyright law for AI development?
Yeah they did care about copyright law. Copyright specifically carves out a case for "transformative" works. They were sued on this and not only did they win, but they won every case and every appeal on this case too.
Australian copyright law is not as lax as American copyright law in terms of what it carves out, though the actual punishments are no where near as severe for actual illegal acts.
typical cant have one for fair use (Score:1)
Fuck off. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Counterpoint: If I can read something, why shouldn't a computer be able to? Do you actually believe you should be able to control who listens when you shout out in public?
Lack of clarity (Score:2)
Google = sprint to the bottom (Score:1)
We have large corporations sucking up datasets created by others.
Leveraging them to judge and manipulate the masses for commercial gain (e.g. ad revenue) an addition to creating new products engineered to increase both data collection and reliance upon a central authority from fancy models trained on the backs of the public.
All the while executing a PR blitz about how AI has arrived complete with stoking fear and linking it to publically asking for legislation. Which really means they want existing laws to
The balls on these assholes (Score:2, Insightful)
They can get bent.
The self-centeredness is genuinely sickening (Score:4, Insightful)
Insane copyright laws that outlive the author's children, stifle expression, and can be (and quite often are) automatically enforced at the whim of some anonymous shithead who may or may not actually own the rights, leaving people with no recourse other than to click an "appeal" button and hope the invisible coin they have no control over lands on heads; thus chilling speech even further and making everybody's lives more miserable than they would be otherwise? Ah well, too bad so sad, we don't writes the laws we just follows them, ma'am.
Copyright laws that prevent training Markov chains that can be wielded to make search even shittier and the copyright appeals process even more of a fucking nightmare? This is an outrage, we need to leverage the full fury of our megacorp to change this particular aspect of the law!
Australian laws were written in the USA (Score:2)
That is how we got the Mickey Mouse act, 70 years copyright snuck into a USA free trade agreement.
The point of copyright is to promote the creation of works, not to create a new type of property just for the heck of it. Nobody creates a work today hoping for income in 50 years time, let alone 70. 21 years is plenty.
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Author creates a work, say a story book. Seems copies to whomever for a few bucks each.
Why should the author, the person who created the book in the first place with whom there would be no book, EVER have to give up their creative work to the unwashed masses who didn't give him a damned penny for it?
What a bunch of selfish demanding screaming baby assholes are out there crying they don't get to have the fruits of someone else's labor and creativity for free.
Author owns it. If they want their kids to have i
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There's been a contingent here for years that has had the stance that anything you do should simply be handed over to them. After all, you didn't invent English (or some other lame-ass reasoning).
It should be noted that they themselves don't produce anything worth sharing.
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ah yes, who could forget the great collected works of slashdot user oligonicella, media conglomerate bootlicker and all-around lackey
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Nobody's forcing the author to publish it. If the author doesn't want to give it to the unwashed masses, they're free to keep it to themselves, and even read it to their children should they so choose.
If you want to sell it to the great unwashed, then the great unwashed - what the more enlightened among us may choose to term "society" - deserves to have it during their lifetimes. They - and more to the point, their publisher - do not need exclusive rights for decades. That's called trying to have your cake
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Copyright provides the author with the ability to publish and at the same time retain control over the creation of copies, which doesn't exist naturally. Society provides this benefit to the author in the hope that works are published which would otherwise be kept secret or not created at all. Copyright is a privilege and a means to an end. Perpetual copyright runs counter to the interests of society. Copyright has associated costs and drawbacks, so extending it beyond its usefulness to society is wrong.
"In
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Why does society require expiration of protection for someone's property??
If I build a house with my own hands will the fire department only protect it for the first 20 years and then everyone gets to move in?
Wild concept.
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In other news... (Score:2)
In a submission to the government's review of copyright enforcement published this week, Google argued the government needs to consider whether copyright law has "the necessary flexibilities" to support the development of AI.
In related news, historians have just determined that Genghis Khan questioned whether the laws of the peoples he conquered had the necessary flexibilities to support the development of his empire.
Oh, wait - I just made that up. In reality, I'm sure Genghis Khan didn't give a crap about laws made by other people. And I'm sure Google doesn't either - they will find a way to take what they want, regardless of the law. That's simply the way of those seeking to build and maintain empires.
Take from creators, automate their replacement (Score:1)
Copyright, for better or worse, has the intent of compensating authors and creators for their work, and not letting it get used without permission. AI seems like it will be really, really harmful to that intent. So why should we throw away copyright laws so that Google and other big players can dominate content creation? And don't forget that many open source software licenses are built on copyright.
Even outside of these concerns, Google is just hand-waving over the question of whether Google harvesting
Purpose of Copyright (Score:3)
In the USA, The purpose of copyright is spelled out explicitly in the constitution: Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Under this definition, Google's request is in keeping with the purpose of copyright.
However, this article is about Australia. Australia is a sovereign nation, and can make their own laws whatever they want, for whatever reasons the choose.
But... Google's point stands: If Australia prevents the use of copyrighted material, they will fall behind those who allow it's use.
So Trump & his russian bosses (Score:2)