I don't think training a model with copyrighted data is any kind of gray zone at all.

Running inference against such a model _might_ be infringing.

But I don't see the legal argument that model training would be.

Think of model training as lossy data compression. You provide an input, it produces a compressed artifact, and it can no longer reproduce the original when you uncompress it. It can produce _something_. It cannot reproduce the original.

On slashdot, we all agree that format shifting copyrighted works should be allowed and unrestricted, right?

If there is applicable case law here about how lossy a "reproduction" can be before copyright has something to say about it, that would be relevant. Do you know of any?

I think you're repeating something that feels emotionally valid but in my experience, isn't factually (or legally) accurate.

I have found AI models to be frustratingly _obedient_ of copyright.

I'll be in a situation where I ask a specific question about what a document says, and the AI repeatedly says the work is copyrighted and it can't just tell me what it says _verbatim_, but it can answer specific questions for me in its own words (while telling me to check the original).

Two examples from my life are procedural questions about what Roberts Rules of Order would require in a given situation, and, what ASD STE-100 says about how to name/word things.

The applicable US law would appear to be USC 17 Sec 106 and 107, which on one hand limits derivative works, but on the other, allows fair use for purposes of teaching, scholarship, or research.

(USC references provided by AI, btw. Which I haven't read)

I used to agree with you, and then oddly enough, about 25-30 years ago, I came across this signature on another regular slashdot posters postings:

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

(AI tells me the attribution is "The Red Lily", Anatole France, 1894)

I think the only Premium TVs left are the business TVs that give you meaningful mechanisms to not have intrusive "Smart" features.

Is there a meaningful difference between a Sony TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features, and a Wal-mart TV that harvests data and won't let you opt-out of "smart" features?

I guess I am blessed to not be an audiophile and not have flawless supervision :)

FWIW, I have:
- a 20 yo 720p dumb 42" plasma
- a 20 yo 1080P dumb 50" plasma
- a 1yo 4k Samsung 65" TheFrame TV

That last one was a splurge I wanted because the "Art Mode" is just too beautiful, and at the time, Samsung really had the only coherent offering. (I guess there are now "off brand" ArtTV attempts from HiSense and others.. i have no experience with them.)

On the ArtTV, we watch youtube or DVDs or XBox on it a little of the time, and all that stuff looks fine to me on the 65" Samsung. But the TV is otherwise displaying pretty artwork almost all of the time, and whatever Samsung has done with the screen, dimming control, bezel, etc, really does work and really is lovely. And you don't need a service or an app to get the experience - just stick a USB full of public domain masterpieces into the TV.

Even so, the Samsung ecosystem is pretty annoying. I can have it show my images in ArtMode, but i cannot have the "real" experience you'd get with a subscription - with Art XML metadata and stuff (artist, date, etc). We don't always remember what a piece is or who painted it when it comes up..

Anyway, AFAIK, the only way to get TVs that aren't enshittified spyware is a business SKU, right?

In my house, we use Steam to play "windows-only" games on:
- Devuan with XFCE
- Devuan with Cinnamon
- Arch with hyprland
- bone stock Ubuntu 24
- ubuntu 25 laptop w/ second GPU

From my POV, there's not much need to port games to Linux. With the heroic efforts of Valve, most Windows games now just work. Win32, DX, D3D, and whatever else windows game devs have been using seems to have become the defacto reference gaming API on Linux.

Steam makes it work on every linux distro we've tried.

In writing this, it occurs to me: The F/OSS ecosystem does a very good job of re-implementing someone else's API/products (WINE, Proton, LibreOffice, etc)

The F/OSS ecosystem does a comparatively poor job at independently developing its own technology and then standardizing/universalizing those choices. E.g. the transition from X11 to Wayland; the systemd "situation(s)", desktop environments... gui greeters, audio muxers...

I think Valve has done the right thing. They made existing games work on Steam; they made Steam work on most linux distros.

Making everyone use a reference linux platform seems to be a total non-starter.

We already have a reference gaming platform: Windows 7 thru 10. And what we learned in 2025 is that Steam on nearly _any_ Linux often implements that windows reference gaming platform better than Windows 11 does.

Not to argue against you here, but this only sounds like half the calculation.

Carbon is sequestered in the cow itself when it eats the grass - cut grass grows faster and spreads more than grass left to grow to full height (at which point carbon sequestration should severely slow down, though I don't know for sure), which means the cows are actually pulling some portion of atmospheric CO2 into their bodies before releasing said CO2 back when it dies.

I have no idea the actual numbers on that. I would be surprised if it were enough to offset the methane release, but I don't know either way.

Because people don't buy these phones!

It's been done before. CAT - as in the heavy equipment company - has a line of ultra-durable phones. Those phones you could pretty much throw at concrete and they'd probably be fine. They're popular enough to keep making them, but they aren't exactly taking over the market.

People want slim, sleek, sexy phones. Then they want to cover them up so their slim, sleek, sexy phones look gaudy, and don't break.

Most vegans I've met aren't about toxins, they're about killing animals. Toxins may enter in as an ad-hoc justification to attempt to bolster their claim, but the smart ones only care about the treatment/killing of animals (because the toxins angle is rather obvious bullshit - meat is good for you, in most cases).

So far you've given zero evidence for your claims. It sounds like you're the one with the preconceived notions who is avoiding any disconfirming information.

I found something more pathetic!

It's some random nobody going to bat for a $2,700,000,000,000 lifestyle brand and computer company as they cling to absurdly outdated messaging technology instead of joining the industry standard that literally every phone operator on the planet has switched to.

That is NOT what LLMs do at all. There aren't any "pieces" for it to "slice and dice" or repeat. There aren't even whole words saved. It doesn't have any data or record or memory of any kind.

What they do is predict the conversation, based on a set of tokens (akin to syllables, but not the same) and a highly tuned neural network.

It's literally taking your question, combined with what it has already said itself in previous prompts, and is predicting the rest of the conversation not even a whole word at a time.

It's literally making shit up as it goes. The most amazing thing about LLMs is how close they get to reality while literally pulling their responses out of their asses.

And this is why these authors are going to loose their asses. Because copyright only protects the distribution of copied works, it doesn't do anything for what people use said works for.

And even worse for these authors, even if they're right? Copying for the purpose of research is a fair use exception.

If you don't think publishing a book is a major career advancement criterion, why did you mention it?

You're the one who said publishers would sell to a library, not me:

This is not how copyright works. Perpetual copyright is automatic, it is granted as soon as the copy is fixed to a physical medium. This makes zero sense. How am I straw manning you? YOU are the one talking nonsense.

Finally, at the mention of The British Library you make it clear that you wholly misunderstand how copyright works. UK publishers are require to send copies of their works to The British Library, but The British Library only allows reading of their works on premises. Anybody can do this. I could let you read any copy of any book I own inside my own home. Hell, I could lend you the book even, just like any library, and have no problem at all with copyright. Digital lending is a whole separate beast, and The British Library is required to pay a royalty to the author every time they lend their book digitally.

Copyright does not simply govern the copying of works. It governs copying for the purpose of distribution. If they do not distribute the work, the copying is completely legal. This is true for every man, woman, and child on the planet. Libraries, including The British Library, do not distribute copies except where they have been expressly authorized by the copyright holder, or if the work falls into the public domain for one reason or another (or both, in the case of their digital collections).

Copyright is written for people, not computers.