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Doesn't matter if it's legal or not

See I don't understand this. Training an AI using this content is legal, but how is copying it in the first place to use not illegal? This is what I never understand about these AI cases. If I copy a Youtube video I'm breaking the law, but if I then use my illegal copy to train an AI it retroactively makes my copying legal?



I think you're using the word "copy" incorrectly. What does it mean to "copy" a Youtube video? You are literally making a copy of it on your computer as you watch it, that's what watching a video is. You're also making a "copy" of it in your brain.


Right, but you don't train a model by pointing a camera at a screen. You download the video file. You deliberately bypass the copy protection. I'm not saying it should be illegal, I'm saying it is.


Hmm, is that how it works? We're mostly talking about images in the op, not video, and her images are freely available to view / download from her website.

I'm not sure about literally downloading YouTube videos, you might be right about that.


and her images are freely available to view / download from her website.

At least under US law, the person downloading the images has to be the same one who trains the model, because giving them to another person is copyright-violating distribution.

To be clear, I'm just sick of corporations being free and clear to do things that would get the rest of us stomped.


The LAION dataset, which SD was trained on, is just a list of URLs and textual descriptions. There's no illegal copying going on when StabilityAI trained SD. It's also not illegal for you to do the same thing.


> If I copy a Youtube video I'm breaking the law […]

No. Only if you redistribute your copy are you violating copyright law.




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