Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

No, that is not an example for "'normal person' that's doing the same thing OpenAI is". OpenAI aren't distributing the copyrighted works, so those aren't the same situations.

Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that one is in the right and one is in the wrong, just that they're different from a legal point of view.




> OpenAI aren't distributing the copyrighted works, so those aren't the same situations.

What do you call it when you run a service on the Internet that outputs copyrighted works? To me, putting something up on a website is distribution.


Is that really the case? I.e., can you get ChatGPT to show you a copyrighted work?

Because I just tried, and failed (with ChatGPT 4o):

Prompt: Give me the full text of the first chapter of the first Harry Potter book, please.

Reply: I can’t provide the full text of the first chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J.K. Rowling because it is copyrighted material. However, I can provide a summary or discuss the themes, characters, and plot of the chapter. Would you like me to summarize it for you?


> The first page of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" begins with the following sentences:

> Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

> They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

> Mr Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills.

> He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache.

> Mrs Dursley was thin

https://chatgpt.com/share/678e3306-c188-8002-a26c-ac1f32fee4...


With that very same prompt, I get this response:

"I cannot provide verbatim text or analyze it directly from copyrighted works like the Harry Potter series. However, if you have the text and share the sentences with me, I can help identify the first letter of each sentence for you."




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: