[License-discuss] Curious about derived works and AI...

[Miles Georgi]

Thanks so much for the insight, Bruce, Shuji, and Josh.

Sounds like I find myself at a bit of a murky point in history for open
source project licensing/copyright. I was wondering if maybe weak copyleft
licenses might help over permissive licenses but honestly seems like that's
irrelevant. I'd be eager to take a small hit in adoption if I felt like I
could protect contributors from such licensing/copyright circumvention. But
it all sounds so uncharted that I don't see an obvious path.

One thing I am considering is starting to use SPDX headers in source-code
files so at least AI systems are aware that the input is licensed and
copyrighted, though doesn't seem likely to have any practical impact. But I
suppose easy enough to automate and probably doesn't hurt much.

But yeah, sounds like, for now, I just have to make a choice ignoring this
concern.

Thanks again!

Cheers

Miles


On Tue, May 28, 2024 at 1:14 AM Bruce Perens via License-discuss <
license-discuss at lists.opensource.org> wrote:

> Hi Sado-san,
>
> It is unfortunate that Japan made the choice that it did, because it makes
> Open Source software fair game for those who would profit from the work of
> our developers without attribution or remuneration and entirely outside of
> their license terms. I came to the conclusion that this could not be fixed
> under my own rules in the OSD. This is one of the reasons I've been working
> on Post-Open. At this time the Post-Open license requires explicit consent
> for use in Japan (rather than tear-open or implicit consent) because I felt
> that was necessary to work reliably within their law.
>
>     Thanks
>
>     Bruce
>
> On Sat, May 25, 2024 at 5:31 PM Shuji Sado <shujisado at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In general, Japanese copyright law is considered to be one of the most
>> compatible with machine learning in the world.
>> Training AI with open source code is basically considered legal, and
>> even for commercial software code, AI training is legal as long as it
>> is not explicitly prohibited by contract.
>>
>> However, if the output generated by the AI is substantially identical
>> to the original code, it will be considered copyright infringement of
>> the original code.
>> License washing is not permitted.
>>
>> The Agency for Cultural Affairs in Japan recently published an English
>> PDF titled "General Understanding on AI and Copyright in Japan":
>> https://www.bunka.go.jp/english/policy/copyright/pdf/94055801_01.pdf .
>> Various industries in Japan discussed and submitted tens of thousands
>> of public comments for the creation of this document.
>> Although it is not a complete document, it provides an understanding
>> of how Article 30-4 of the Copyright Act, which is seen as fully
>> endorsing machine learning, actually functions.
>>
>>
>> 2024/05/26 2:10 Bruce Perens via License-discuss
>> <license-discuss at lists.opensource.org>:
>> >
>> > 1. Not in Japan, because they've decided to make their law that way. 2.
>> It should be the case in most countries, but it is not so far because it's
>> not literal copying and cases which are attempting to make the point that
>> it is copying are still in litigation.
>> >
>> > On Sat, May 25, 2024, 06:55 Miles Georgi <azimux at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Hi! If I open-source a project with a free license, if code from that
>> project winds up being used as training data or prompt data to a
>> code-generating AI to generate similar code, would that generated code be
>> considered a derived work under any circumstances? And does that
>> potentially depend on what license is chosen?
>> >>
>> >> I'm trying to choose a license for a project I wish to release and I'm
>> assuming there's no way to protect against something like that but figured
>> I'd ask.
>> >>
>> >> Cheers!
>> >>
>> >> Miles
>> >> _______________________________________________
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>> Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
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>> >>
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>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
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>> >
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>> >
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Shuji Sado
>> Chairman, Open Source Group Japan
>> https://opensource.jp/
>> https://shujisado.com/
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not
>> necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Official statements by the
>> Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
>>
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>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> Bruce Perens K6BP
> _______________________________________________
> The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not
> necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Official statements by the
> Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address.
>
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