Training AI models on copyrighted works is "squarely what transformative use is," EFF’s Tori Noble told Reason - these are "general purpose tools" and "exactly the kind of creation that copyright is designed to foster.” https://reason.com/2026/09/04/doj-says-barring-ai-training-on-copyrighted-material-could-severely-hamper-tech-progress/
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@eff well... fuck
@eff They aren't "general purpose tools" this *absolutely* isn't anything remotely like the creation that copyright is designed to foster, and it definitely isn't a transformative work. I get that she's a lawyer by trade and training, and therefore lacks the background to understand what "AI" is, so I have to wonder who she's been working with to have developed such an enormously skewed idea of what this technology actually is and how it's created.
@eff Sorry EFF but that is a terrible move. Maybe one day you will reflect and discover why. But until then hell no.
@eff Looks like the EFF just became one of those organisations I actively avoid donating to.
@eff never getting another fucking CENT from me you morally bankrupt fucks. What an unbelievably humiliating betrayal. You cannot trust anyone or anything in this world, apparently
@eff so how the f does that square with privacy and free speech????
Stealing is a violation of privacy, stealing our words is a violation of free speech. No one is being compensated. Rare books are being destroyed. In some cases original authors are being denied the rights to their own work because an AI stole it from them.
You can not say this is not stealing.
Absolutely you have violated your own purpose in existing.
Even granting the bizarre claim that training a large language model on entire works isn't a copyright violation, how can you pretend not to see the bigger picture?
I ask this as a long-time EFF contributor who's suddenly reconsidering.
@eff You have lost all credibility and are out of touch with the general populace.
@eff What the fuck is wrong with you
@eff No, that's bullshit. When did the EFF switch sides and start wielding specious arguments for the bad guys?
This isn't an argument for free speech. This is a defense of drowning out speech that comes from people.
@eff I am in no way a supporter of how copyright laws are used at times especially to attack remixes but the LLM-case seems extremely clear: Fair use clearly limits commercial usage, especially one where you directly compete with the original work.
WTF are you going on about saying running a business like OpenAI under fair use is allowed?!? If they gave away the motel for free then sure, this could be argued, but they are literally making money off of stolen works.
@eff
Machine learning transfers skill to wealthy while withholding wealth from the skilled.
Isn’t copyright intended to do the opposite?
@eff You're gonna argue in favor of them being able to copyright the resulting AI mashup too, aren't you? That's converting our work into their work without consent or compensation.
@eff A few weeks full of disappointments. What a disaster.
@eff Who bribed you, and how much did they pay?
@eff I strongly disagree. And it seems many more disagree too. Fostering billionaires is not what liberalism is for.
@eff what the fuck is wrong with you...
Torpedoing everything good you do with such a shit take???...
@eff now this is disappointing
@eff i guess it is only theft if you aren't a billionaire? you had one job eff and you failed. protecting the rich was not it. grow a spine and fight for EVERYBODY not your tech bros
@eff deeply disappointing
@eff cmon EFF, what corporate contributions are you defending with that conclusion. It is resoundingly false. Your position should be the individual creator not some corporate monolith scraping the globe for all known human knowledge with the goal of regurgitation without citation. It is the largest copytheft industry in history.
@eff wait wtf EFF? I thought you were on our side 😿
@eff You know your take is good and you are on the right side of history when you are siding with corporate interests in a puff piece from the Koch funded Reason outlet, and in great company, with their long history of defending and platforming apartheid defenders, big tobacco, climate change deniers, big oil, holocaust deniers, covid deniers...
@eff What is the point of the EFF if it's going to side with big tech companies burning the planet while stealing labour? Are you just PR for oligarchs now?
@FediThing Ah but it's their oligarchs who they know so that's just fine. 🤦♀️
I mean the EFF were also into Blockchain, it's their libertarian roots. Freedom for the individual not the community.
@onepict It doesn't even make sense from libertarian perspective as GenAI/LLM dependence would hand over control and monitoring of discourse to giant tech corporations? On the other hand a lot of libertarians worship corporations and authoritarians so they never believed in individual liberty either.
@FediThing Yep, folks like that want power for themselves.
Whereas the rest of us know that it's a responsibility and it should be shared.
Power is a burden not a toy. But folks should be sharing it regardless.
Only spoiled children don't want to share their toys.
@eff tell that to my employer when I transformatively use their IP to create a copyleft software that annihilates their whole business model.
"they're the same picture"
@eff What the fuck. Good bye then. Best of luck with the fascists, I'm sure they're all very nice.
Sorry, what? Definitely no.
@eff I have never been a *recurring* donator, I renewed annually whenever I had some money left. I do this since 2011.
VERY much rethinking this for this end of the year.
Your work is sorely needed, but AI certainly is not one of the things I think you should put my donations towards.
@eff Do kindly go and fuck yourself.
@eff fuuuuckofffffff
@eff This ain’t it, chief.
Another corrupted organization showing their ass.
@eff what's wrong with you?
![hydra [she/they]](https://files.mastodon.social/accounts/avatars/115/569/700/108/493/450/original/befbd22e67f6bc99.jpg "hydra [she/they]")
@eff Hell fucking NO.
@eff you’re supposed to be an organisation that stands up for our digital rights. Our rights include not having work taken wholesale and regurgitated by for profit companies without proper licensing and proper attribution - in most cases actually even costing us money as these bots steal bandwidth meant for humans.
@eff Tell me you don’t understand anything about copyright in 5 lines or less.
@eff can you elaborate what this means for "clean room" implementations? Just running it through an LLM would follow the same logic? (honest question; haven't seen rulings/opinions/news about this)
@eff Your CIA is showing
@eff Fuck me. We really needed you on our side regarding this. Terrible, worst approach possible from the EFF.
@eff Saw this coming. EFF has been on Big Tech's side for every issue except surveillance capitalism and censorship.
Well, this sucks. Thanks for siding with fascism, EFF. I'd suggest abandoning Open Source Software as a cause of yours as well as the Creative Commons, because if AI is going to have your backing, you can't support either of those. (You have lawyers, you should know why.)
@eff you've got to be kidding?
