undefined | Better HN

0 pointsmountainb1y ago0 comments

No that is not an extreme interpretation of the fair use factors. This is a routinely emphasized factor in fair use analyses for both copyright and trademark. School fair use is different because that defense is written into the statute directly in 17 U.S.C. § 107. Also, § 108 provides extensive protections for libraries and archives that go beyond fair use doctrines.

The idea that the schools are encouraging the students to compete with the original authors of works taught in the classroom is fanciful by the meaning that courts usually apply to competition. Your example is different from this case in which Ross wanted to compete in the same market against West offering a similar service at a lower price. Another reason that the schools get a carveout is because it would make most education impractical without each school obtaining special licenses for public performance for every work referenced in the classroom.

But maybe that also provokes the question as to if schools really deserve that kind of sweetheart treatment (a massive indirect subsidy), or does it over-privileges formal schools relative to the commons at large?

0 comments

AnthonyMouse1y ago

> School fair use is different because that defense is written into the statute directly

It's written into the statute as an example of something that would be fair use.

> The idea that the schools are encouraging the students to compete with the original authors of works taught in the classroom is fanciful by the meaning that courts usually apply to competition.

People go to art school primarily because they want to create art. People study computer science primarily because they want to write code. It's their direct intention and purpose to compete with existing works.

> Your example is different from this case in which Ross wanted to compete in the same market against West offering a similar service at a lower price.

So if you use Windows and then want to create Linux...

> Another reason that the schools get a carveout is because it would make most education impractical without each school obtaining special licenses for public performance for every work referenced in the classroom.

How is that logic any different than for AI training?

> But maybe that also provokes the question as to if schools really deserve that kind of sweetheart treatment (a massive indirect subsidy), or does it over-privileges formal schools relative to the commons at large?

It not only doesn't have any explicit requirement for a formal school (it just says "teaching"), it also isn't limited to teaching, teaching is just one of the things specified in the statute as being the kind of thing Congress intended fair use to include.

mountainbOP1y ago

>It's written into the statute as an example of something that would be fair use.

Statutory text controls what the courts can do, even and perhaps especially when it includes an example.

>People go to art school primarily because they want to create art. People study computer science primarily because they want to write code. It's their direct intention and purpose to compete with existing works.

Interesting perspective.

>So if you use Windows and then want to create Linux...

I don't understand your meaning.

>How is that logic any different than for AI training?

That is what Mark Lemley, law professor at Stanford, has argued in his many law review articles and amicus briefs: he believes that training is analogous to learning. The court here didn't agree with the Lemley view.

>It not only doesn't have any explicit requirement for a formal school (it just says "teaching"), it also isn't limited to teaching, teaching is just one of the things specified in the statute as being the kind of thing Congress intended fair use to include.

In practice courts tend to limit these exceptions to formal teaching arrangements.

zozbot2341y ago

Copyright covers expression, not ideas. The underlying problem here is that Ross Intelligence never went to the trouble of distilling the purely idea-based and factual element from their original sources; even their finalized search system still had a pervasive reliance on Westlaw's original and creative expression as embedded in their headnotes. Using Windows and then creating Linux is something entirely different because Linux goes to great effort in order not to use anything that's specific to Windows. Large-scale language models are probably somewhere in the middle, because their unique reliance on an incredibly wide variety of published texts makes it very unlikely that they'll ever preserve anything of substance about the expression in any single text.

brookst1y ago

What a world we’re in where a school using text to teach children, who will remember it, talk about it with others, likely buy it for their own children… can be framed as a “massive indirect subsidy” rather than “free advertising”.

nerdile1y ago

This reflects on the individuals choosing to create and proliferate such misleading or hyperbolic framing more than it does on the world that we all live in. In meatspace we usually reject these ideas and ignore the people pushing them.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse