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No, not really. You mistake what the purpose of copyright is.

If I used a chatbot to sell the entire text of harry potter, all at once, that would still be illegal even though its through a chatbot.

Whats legal, of course, is creating transformative content, learning from other content, and mostly creating entirely new works even if you learned/trained from other content about how to do that. Or even if there are some similarities, or even if there were verbatim "copies" of full sentences like "he opened the door" that were "taken" from the original works!

Copyright law in the USA has never disallowed you entirely from ever using other people's works, in all circumstances. There are many exceptions.



> Copyright law in the USA has never disallowed you entirely from ever using other people's works, in all circumstances. There are many exceptions.

Sure, and the question is: "does using an AI chatbot like Copilot fall under one of those exceptions?" My position -- as well as the position of many here -- is that it shouldn't. You may disagree, and that's fine, but you're not fundamentally correct.


> If I used a chatbot to sell the entire text of harry potter, all at once, that would still be illegal even though its through a chatbot.

Right, which is why you sell access to the chatbot with a knowing wink.

> You mistake what the purpose of copyright is.

At one point it was to ensure individual creators could eke out a living when threatened by capital. I frankly have no clue what the current legal theory surrounding it is.


It would still be illegal to ask the chatbot to recreate the text of Harry Potter.

Now, if you were to ask it to generate a similar story based on Harry Potter, that would be fine. Especially since that's basically what JK Rowling did after watching Star Wars.


Harry Potter is a clone of Star Wars? I don't really see it, any more than any story that follows the Hero's Journey. I remember being a kid and reading Eragon though, and that really was very similar.


> It would still be illegal to ask the chatbot to recreate the text of Harry Potter.

Ok, but this is basically impossible to litigate so what's the point of asserting it? Besides, copyright violation still requires distribution.


If you use ChatGPT to recreate the text of Harry Potter, then OpenAI is distributing that to you, which is copyright infringement.


That's a very, erm, poetic understanding of distribution. Good luck bringing suit.


In the US, it's "To promote the progress of science and useful arts" as per the US Constitution.

Making sure individual creators can eke out a living is one avenue to pursue that goal.


> Making sure individual creators can eke out a living is one avenue to pursue that goal.

Someone should let our legislators know.




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