Judge in Meta’s copyright case questions fair use defense

In a hearing for summary judgment in the case where a group of authors sued Meta for copyright infringement, the judge seemed to side with the authors, but also said they needed to make a clearer case of actual harm, writes Ars Technica.

The case revolves around whether AI companies like Meta can use copyrighted works in the training of their models, which they claim is fair use, while the authors seek damages and compensation for the fact that they copied all of their work without authorization.

The case could upend the entire AI market, and Meta fears it would make them less competitive should they lose.

Infinite competitive works
— You have companies using copyright-protected material to create a product that is capable of producing an infinite number of competing products, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said. — You are dramatically changing, you might even say obliterating, the market for that person’s work, and you’re saying that you don’t even have to pay a license to that person.

— I just don’t understand how that can be fair use.

Need prove actual harm
At the same time, the authors need to actually prove that they are suffering irreparable harm:

— It seems like you’re asking me to speculate that the market for Sarah Silverman’s memoir will be affected by the billions of things that Llama will ultimately be capable of producing, Chhabria told the plaintiffs. — And it’s just not obvious to me that that’s the case.

Sword hanging over the business
The copyright issue is a «sword hanging over the AI companies,», says Daniel Gervais, one of the leaders on AI research at Vanderbilt University.

All of them have used protected materials in training their models, and all of them have been sued by rights holders in some shape or form. — It will continue hanging over them until they negotiate a solution, he said to NPR back in 2023, when the copyright issues started surfacing.

Read more: Court report from Reuters, writeup by Ars Technica.