Trump Administration Sides With OpenAI in New York Times Copyright Lawsuit
Trump Administration Sides With OpenAI in New York Times Copyright Lawsuit
特朗普政府在《纽约时报》版权诉讼中支持 OpenAI
The Trump Administration just took OpenAI’s side in the artificial intelligence company’s legal battle with the New York Times. 特朗普政府刚刚在人工智能公司 OpenAI 与《纽约时报》的法律纠纷中站在了 OpenAI 一边。
The media juggernaut sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023, alleging that the companies had violated copyright law by training their AI tools on its articles without permission. Now, the government has stepped in, arguing that OpenAI’s actions were within bounds. 这家媒体巨头于 2023 年起诉了 OpenAI 和微软，指控这两家公司在未经许可的情况下，利用其文章训练人工智能工具，从而违反了版权法。现在，美国政府介入了此案，并辩称 OpenAI 的行为在法律允许的范围内。
On Tuesday, the federal government submitted a letter to the court stating that the United States has a “strong interest” in whether AI training on copyright works is considered “fair use,” because it connects to whether the country’s AI industry can “retain global leadership in artificial intelligence.” (The “fair use” rule shields certain uses of copyrighted materials.) 周二，联邦政府向法院提交了一份信函，称美国对于“利用受版权保护的作品进行人工智能训练是否属于‘合理使用’”这一问题有着“浓厚的兴趣”，因为这关系到美国的人工智能产业能否“保持在全球人工智能领域的领先地位”。（“合理使用”规则保护对受版权保护材料的某些特定使用方式。）
The letter argued that the Times’ definition of fair use is “inconsistent” with current copyright law, and that a win for the paper could have disastrous consequences. “Constraining LLM development under a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine would thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility,” lawyers for the government wrote. 信中指出，《纽约时报》对合理使用的定义与现行版权法“不一致”，如果该报胜诉，可能会带来灾难性的后果。政府律师写道：“基于对合理使用原则的误解来限制大语言模型（LLM）的发展，将阻碍这种创造性和科学性的进步，同时也会妨碍美国的繁荣和经济流动性。”
While the letter focuses on the New York Times and OpenAI, the government noted that its arguments apply to all of the parties in this case and related cases, including other publishers and authors. 虽然这封信主要针对《纽约时报》和 OpenAI，但政府指出，其论点适用于本案及相关案件中的所有当事方，包括其他出版商和作者。
Training LLMs on copyrighted works is considered “extraordinarily transformative,” meaning that these systems meaningfully change their inputs, the administration argued. The administration also wrote that OpenAI’s LLMs do not significantly compete with The New York Times’ articles. Courts consider both of these conditions, as well as others, when deciding if the fair use doctrine is met. 政府辩称，利用受版权保护的作品训练大语言模型被认为是“极其具有转换性的”，这意味着这些系统对其输入内容进行了有意义的改变。政府还写道，OpenAI 的大语言模型并没有与《纽约时报》的文章形成实质性竞争。法院在判定是否符合合理使用原则时，会考虑这两个条件以及其他因素。
Conflating AI training with what artificial intelligence tools produce would lead to “problematic implications for copyright law generally” by implying that it would be similarly illegal for human writers to practice their craft by training on the words of others, per the letter. (The lawyers compared it to how a teenage Joan Didion typed out Ernest Hemingway’s stories to figure out how to write.) 信中提到，将人工智能训练与人工智能工具的产出混为一谈，会对版权法产生“普遍性的负面影响”，因为它暗示人类作家通过学习他人的文字来磨练技艺也是违法的。（律师们将其比作年轻时的琼·狄迪恩通过抄写海明威的故事来学习写作。）
Evan Brown, an intellectual property lawyer with the firm Neal & McDevitt, tells WIRED that the US district judge overseeing this case, Sidney H. Stein, is not obliged to let this letter influence his ultimate decision. However, Brown says that Stein and other judges overseeing cases like this will almost certainly “take it quite seriously because it comes from the Department of Justice, and inherently carries a lot of weight.” Neal & McDevitt 律师事务所的知识产权律师埃文·布朗（Evan Brown）告诉《连线》（WIRED），负责此案的美国地方法官西德尼·H·斯坦（Sidney H. Stein）没有义务让这封信影响他的最终裁决。然而，布朗表示，斯坦和其他负责此类案件的法官几乎肯定会“非常认真地对待它，因为它来自司法部，本身就具有很大的分量”。
Pamela Samuelson, a copyright lawyer who codirects the Berkeley Center For Law & Technology, tells WIRED that the government’s brief is a “significant development,” and one which is consistent with AI copyright rulings thus far. 伯克利法律与技术中心联席主任、版权律师帕梅拉·萨缪尔森（Pamela Samuelson）告诉《连线》，政府的这份陈述书是一个“重大进展”，且与迄今为止的人工智能版权裁决保持一致。
“The Administration is siding with a handful of trillion-dollar AI companies at the expense of the countless American creators whose work they stole,” New York Times spokesperson Graham James tells WIRED. “Both AI and creators can thrive–AI companies simply need to pay fairly for the content that makes their products possible, as copyright law requires.” 《纽约时报》发言人格雷厄姆·詹姆斯（Graham James）告诉《连线》：“政府站在少数几家万亿美元级的人工智能公司一边，而牺牲了无数被窃取作品的美国创作者的利益。人工智能和创作者完全可以共同繁荣——人工智能公司只需要按照版权法的要求，为使其产品成为可能的内容支付合理的费用即可。”
OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment. OpenAI 和微软没有立即回应《连线》的置评请求。
Other plaintiffs are unhappy at the government’s incursion. Mary Rasenberger, the chief executive of the Author’s Guild—which filed its own lawsuit against OpenAI in 2023—tells WIRED that the nonprofit is “extremely disappointed” about the letter, which she calls ”replete with faulty arguments and a gross misunderstanding of the fair use doctrine and copyright law.” 其他原告对政府的介入感到不满。作家协会（Author’s Guild）首席执行官玛丽·拉森伯格（Mary Rasenberger）告诉《连线》，该非营利组织对这封信感到“极其失望”。她称这封信“充斥着错误的论点，并对合理使用原则和版权法存在严重的误解”。（该协会曾在 2023 年对 OpenAI 提起诉讼。）
There are dozens of ongoing, high-profile lawsuits over the legality of AI companies training their tools on copyrighted work. The two biggest decisions so far took place last year. Meta technically won its copyright case, Kadrey v. Meta, although the judge noted that the plaintiffs did not produce enough evidence that the training caused them harm while stressing that in other circumstances, training on copyrighted materials without permission might indeed be illegal. 目前有数十起备受瞩目的诉讼正在进行中，涉及人工智能公司利用受版权保护的作品训练其工具的合法性。迄今为止最大的两项裁决发生在去年。Meta 在其版权案（Kadrey v. Meta）中从技术上胜诉，尽管法官指出原告未能提供足够的证据证明这种训练对其造成了损害，同时也强调在其他情况下，未经许可利用受版权保护的材料进行训练确实可能是违法的。
Anthropic, meanwhile, lost its case, and must pay authors $1.5 billion in damages, the largest copyright settlement in national history. The judge in that case carved out an important caveat, ruling that the AI training itself was fair use, but that the authors were owed damages because the AI giant had pirated their books. 与此同时，Anthropic 输掉了官司，必须向作者支付 15 亿美元的赔偿金，这是美国历史上最大的版权和解案。该案法官提出了一个重要的警告，裁定人工智能训练本身属于合理使用，但由于这家人工智能巨头盗版了作者的书籍，因此必须向作者支付赔偿。
Meanwhile, the larger fight over copyright rages on. New lawsuits are still rolling in; late last week, Sony and Warner Music sued Anthropic, following another suit from other music giants like Universal Music Group, in which Anthropic is mounting a fair use defense. In both cases, the companies allege that their copyrighted material was stolen to train Claude, the company’s popular AI tool. 与此同时，关于版权的更大规模的斗争仍在继续。新的诉讼仍在不断涌现；上周晚些时候，索尼和华纳音乐起诉了 Anthropic，此前环球音乐集团等其他音乐巨头也提起了诉讼，Anthropic 正在这些案件中进行合理使用辩护。在这两起案件中，这些公司均指控其受版权保护的材料被窃取，用于训练 Anthropic 旗下流行的人工智能工具 Claude。