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 Yeah, that's not a bad legal decision. The threshold for copyright violation is deliberately set high, meaning that if you do something innovative with someone else's copyrighted material, you're *meant* to free to do that. That's by design.
@eff I am horrified. Seriously, EFF?
WTF? #AItheft #copyright #AI_slop
@eff who donated and how much for your to take that position?
This is a horrible take and I've just lost insurmountable amounts of respect for your organization
Hey, uh...
So if I set up a pantograph and use it to copy the contents of an entire book by tracing over the pages, and the pantograph is poorly-designed so it results in lots of errors, but the book is slightly larger and therefore distinguishable from the original by size alone, is that a transformative work? Especially if I sell it as an alternative to the original?
I'm just wondering where the limits apply.
@eff If we have to pay, they have to pay. No special cases.
That is the way copyright works.
@eff Wow, the irony is palpable in this one. This is the most "technically correct but in unintended way" take we've seen in a month.
Yes, this is *precisely* the kind of "creation" copyright is *designed to foster*. Corporation-centered, worker-oppressing framework to extract profit from others' labor and handwave away any complaints through legalese bullshit and arguing for fake moral superiority, when the reality is that multi-billion companies use copyright as a tool for oppression. genAI is just another iteration of "laws for thee but not for me", alongside many other oppressive things.
Shame on you.
@eff Okay so you're advocating piracy. I don't feel conflicted about it now. Can't have it both ways.
@eff Scale matters. Intent matters. A world-eating model, that benefits from every sentence ever written, cannot morally be locked up behind a paywall for the sole benefit of the few.
@eff interested to see what @pluralistic has to say about this…
@eff A technology only available to ultra-wealthy corporations that is built through copyright infringement is A-OK, but normal people can't have a a 4 second clip of Disney in the background of a video without getting sued.
Is that really what you're saying? I just want to be clear before I cancel my 25-year membership.
@eff I'm so confused. In front of me is Cindy Cohn's "Privacy's Defender". The opening pages read:
"(c) 2026 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used to train artificial intelligence systems or reproduced in any form [...]"
What kind of a f*cking pro-slop-technofascism stance did you assume over night? I'll be dropping my recurring titanium donation if you do not clean this shit up.
@eff have you lost your fucking minds
@eff you what???? :///
@eff well this is the heel turn of the decade, so disappointed to see you siding with the fash
@eff why the fuck are you siding with fascists?
@eff Yeah, nah.
"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for him."
Yes and reading a book is transformative to my knowledge and mind, so just give me all the copyrighted works. Does anyone dispute that a human reading those works makes a human better/smarter/more creative?
I'm not a huge fan of copyright holder lawsuits. However, AI companies are stacking cash, while standing on the heads of all of human history. It's not a public works project for the betterment of society, it's not a library you can freely use. It's not even like the beginning of the internet, where infrastructure and networking allowed collaboration and content creation.
Love the EFF but I don't think I'd help the AI overlords in this. Spend the time on something better than this.
Heaven forbid that the courts set a precedent that OpenAI pay for content they use for training purposes. Maybe they could just let them use torrent like Meta did already. I mean it's accepted use right. (/s)
@eff Tear out your lying, duplicitous tongues.
You betray everyone who ever looked to you, you goddamn demons.
@eff What a betrayal of content creators. The EFF might as well remove all its humans and function as an AI bot.
@eff There goes the donation I was going to make
@eff are you fucking high?
@eff interesting point of view. Not one I’m happy with but interesting and informative.
fuck "tech progress".
@eff fuck off with that shit.
@eff Lot of folks who clearly didn't read the article are crashing out over this post.
@eff this is not the EFF I have known and loved. Wtf has gone wrong?
@eff I'd be interested to know what you, @pluralistic, think about it?
@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.
