The New AI Model Licenses have a Legal Loophole (OpenRAIL-M of BLOOM, Stable Diffusion, etc.)
deep learning machine learning arxiv explained neural networks ai artificial intelligence paper openrail openarail m ai license ai model license ai model copyright stable diffusion copyright bloom copyright stable diffusion license open source ai machine learning open source ai art license ai art copyright
#ai #stablediffusion #license 

So-called responsible AI licenses are stupid, counterproductive, and have a dangerous legal loophole in them.

OpenRAIL++ License here: https://www.ykilcher.com/license

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
0:40 - Responsible AI Licenses (RAIL) of BLOOM and Stable Diffusion
3:35 - Open source software's dilemma of bad usage and restrictions
8:45 - Good applications, bad applications
12:45 - A dangerous legal loophole
15:50 - OpenRAIL++ License
16:50 - This has nothing to do with copyright
26:00 - Final thoughts

References:
https://huggingface.co/CompVis/stable-diffusion/tree/main
https://huggingface.co/spaces/CompVis/stable-diffusion-license
https://huggingface.co/bigscience/bloom?text=34%2B10%3D44+%0A54%2B20%3D
https://huggingface.co/spaces/bigscience/license
https://huggingface.co/runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5
https://huggingface.co/spaces/CompVis/stable-diffusion-license/raw/main/license.txt
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-run.en.html
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html#four-freedoms
https://www.licenses.ai/blog/2022/8/26/bigscience-open-rail-m-license
https://bigscience.huggingface.co/blog/bigscience-ethical-charter
https://www.licenses.ai/blog/2022/8/18/naming-convention-of-responsible-ai-licenses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Eligible_works
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_work
https://www.pearlcohen.com/copyright-office-reiterates-that-works-created-by-ai-cannot-be-copyrighted/
https://jipel.law.nyu.edu/vol-8-no-2-1-hedrick/#II
https://www.ykilcher.com/license

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 The new responsible AI licenses that models like stable diffusion or bloom have are stupid, they conflict with open source principles. In fact, they're distinctly not open source, and they have a glaring legal loophole in them. So join me as we'll explore the fun world of model licensing. So first things first, I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. These are my own opinions and the conclusions that I've come to while researching this topic. And all of it is for entertainment purposes only take everything with a grain of salt and with my own personal bias. That being said, if you go to the hugging face hub right now, and you look at stable diffusion, what you're going to see is this pill right here license creative ml, open rail, m open rail is a new type of license rail in this case. So this is the license rail is the responsible AI license, I believe that's what the acronym stands for open means that it is without usage restrictions. And M stands for the model that is being licensed as opposed to the code or the data. But stable diffusion isn't the only model. In fact, the first model at least that I'm aware of using such a license was bloom, which was released earlier, which is a large language model that comes out of the big science initiative. And it uses the very similar big science bloom rail one dot zero license. Now what is this rail license? What is an open rail license, essentially, it is a permissive license that lets you use the model to produce stuff and puts no restrictions on you then taking that stuff, selling that stuff and doing with that stuff, whatever you want, you're also allowed to take the model and actually sell it or sell its outputs or train it further distill it fine tune it whatever you want to do and then make money off of it, you have no responsibility, for example, as in GPL code to then release your model again as open source. So everything seems like a very permissive Apache or MIT license that you might be familiar if you are in software. However, there is a difference. The rail licenses explicitly put usage restrictions on these things. So what does that mean? If you look at one of these licenses and you scroll way down to the attachments, then you'll see usage restrictions, you agree not to use the model or derivatives of the model for any of these purposes. And some of these purposes are to defame, disparage or otherwise harass others or to generate or disseminate verifiably false information with the purpose of harming others and so on. There are several usage restrictions in this license and the license make sure that you agree that you don't use the model for any of these purposes. And whatever you do with the model, be that fine tune it distill it, sell it and so on, you must pass on you must enforce continuously these usage restrictions. So even if you take the model and you fine tune it on your own data or something like this, then you may keep that private but you may still not use it for any of these things. So much like a copy left license that sort of propagates the openness of code, in this case, it's not about the openness of the model. But what is propagated is the usage restrictions. So the purpose of this is that the developers of these models, they don't want their work to be used for anything that they consider bad or harmful or unethical. Now they are not the first people to think about something like this, the open source software community obviously had to grapple with this topic for a long time, and they have reached a very conclusive conclusion. Is that a word conclusive conclusion? Now let me quote from Richard Stallman on why programs must not limit the freedom to run them. This is a principle of free software and ingrained in open source software. So in this article, he says free software means software controlled by its users rather than the reverse. Specifically, it means the software comes with four essential freedoms that software users deserve. And the head of the list is freedom zero, the freedom to run the program as you wish in order to do what you wish. And here he goes into the arguments some developers propose to place usage restrictions in software licenses to ban using the program for certain purposes. But he says that would be a disastrous path. This article explains why freedom zero must not be limited conditions to limit the use of a program would achieve little of their aims but would wreck the free software community. So firstly describes what is evidently clear to everyone but is still actually a part of the open rail licenses. If you look at the first usage restriction, it says you are not allowed to use the model in any way that violates any applicable national federal state, local or international law or regulation. As Stalman points out here, that is already covered by the law. He gives the example of fraud, he says a license condition against fraud would be superfluous in a country where fraud is a crime. And therefore, the license condition that you may not break any laws is almost tautological and superfluous. But it would be okay if a license contains superfluous information after all lawyers want to be paid. But he goes further and he gives the example what if the condition were against some specialized private activity that is not outlawed. For instance, PETA proposed a license that would forbid the use of the software to cause pain to animals with a spinal column or there might be a condition against using a certain program to make or publish drawings of vomit and so on. He says it's not clear these would be enforceable free software licenses are based on copyright law and trying to impose usage condition that way is stretching what copyright law permits in a dangerous way. Would you like books to carry a license condition about how you can use the information in them? Well, it's a good point. But actually this point that these licenses are based on copyright law in terms of the open rail licenses, in my opinion, is actually not given. And that's why we're going to look at that's why on hugging face you have to click a little checkbox that you've actually read the license agreement for some of these models. Because in my opinion, copyright does not apply here. But we'll get to that later. The first Stallman asks what if such conditions are legally enforceable? Would that be good? And here it gets to the point. The fact is people have very different ethical ideas about the activities that might be done using software, I happen to think those four unusual activities, the ones he mentioned above are legitimate and should not be forbidden. And he clearly says your views about these issues might differ. And that's precisely the point. The result of such usage restrictions would be a system that you could not count on for any purpose. Allowing usage restrictions in free software would mainly push users towards non free software trying to stop users from doing something through usage restrictions in free software is as ineffective as pushing on an object through a long straight soft piece of cooked spaghetti. It's akin to someone with a very small hammer seeing every problem as a nail and not even acknowledging that the nail is far too big for the hammer. But not only is it ineffective, it is worse than ineffective, Stallman says it's wrong to because software developers should not exercise such power over what users do. Imagine selling pens with conditions about what you can write with them. If you make something that is generally useful, like a pen, people will use it to write all sorts of things, even horrible things such as order to torture a dissident, but you must not have the power to control people's activities through their pens. It is the same for a text editor compiler or a kernel and in my opinion for a language model. And in my opinion, Richard Stallman really hits the nail on the head here with an appropriately sized hammer we've seen in recent years more and more an evolution in the AI world of a mentality that essentially says we know what's good for you and a complete disregard that other people might have different ideas. Now, don't get me wrong, if you create something like this, you can put any license on it that you want, you can make any contract that you want, you can make money off it and keep it for yourself, whatever you want. But don't then also go out and say, oh, we are free, we are open, we are for everyone. No, you are not. And it takes no further to look than actually to look at the license itself and some of these usage restrictions. For example, you may not use this model to provide medical advice and medical results interpretation. You know how many people in the world do not have access to any medical advice at all and would actually be benefiting from some sort of medical advice with maybe a disclaimer that look, this is generated, don't take this as fact, but they would hugely benefit from something like this. You may not use this model to generate or disseminate information for the purpose to be used in administration of justice, law enforcement, immigration or asylum processes. This is like a like Silicon Valley is the entire world. For all the inclusivity and diversity that these people claim the worldview over what's good and what's bad and what's useful and what's unethical is so narrow, how many places in the world would be immensely thankful to any help they can get with enforcing justice with effectively administrating law enforcement. Now I'm not saying that these things are good or bad per se and I can see where these people are coming from. But it is exactly how Stallman says it is making a pen and then telling people what they can and can't write with the pen without any regard that in a different context, what they may write may actually be good for them. And we've seen a lot of applications of language model that violate a lot of these things that actually have beneficial applications. But don't worry, there is always a method to do that. See this here is from a blog post that accompanies the big science open rail license with the release of the bloom model, my use of the model falls under a restriction, but I still think it's not harmful and could be valuable. Well, the blog post says please contact the licensor of the model you're using or distributing for them to assess the case and see whether an authorization and or license could be granted for you in this very specific case. So here is the answer. Even though you may think that what you're doing is quite okay and actually beneficial, even though it technically conflicts with one of the usage restrictions, you go to them, you go to the creators of the model and ask, May I please have an exception for these usage restrictions for my particular case, and they will assess that for you. Now again, I'm not saying they can't do that. This is absolutely legal. And if that's how they want to go about releasing their model, then fine with me, but it is certainly not open. It is certainly not inclusive. It is certainly not accessible to the whole world. It is very much we know what's good for you. And you play a you do not have the authority to decide that for yourself, you come to us and then we decide if it's good enough. What's even more the rest of the license is essentially a copy paste of rather standard terms of permissive open source licenses such as this one, the software is provided on an as is basis without warranties or conditions of any kind either expressed or implied including without limitations any warranties or conditions of title non infringement merchant ability or fitness for a particular purpose, you are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using or redistributing the model derivatives of the model and complementary material and assume any risks associated with your exercise of permission under this license. So the license is very unidirectional. It is we don't trust you, we put usage restrictions on you user of the model. But when it comes to us, nope, no liability, no warranty, no nothing, no guarantees of anything that the model does. And usually in open source software, this is bidirectional, it's I write some code, if it misbehaves, you know, you're the one using it. If I do something stupid, you choose to download or not to download it, that's it. But on the other hand, I will not come to you and tell you how to use it or what to do with it and what not to do with it. Whereas here, same thing for the creators, but not so same thing for the users. But we go on and here is where I think the crucial part comes in and thanks to people on our discord for pointing this out to me, there is paragraph seven right here, updates and runtime restrictions to the maximum extent permitted by law licensor reserves the right to restrict remotely or otherwise usage of the model in violation of this license. So if you violate the license, and you somehow use it via an API or something like this, or there are some other means of restricting the license or can do that so far, so good. But it also says they reserve the right to update the model through electronic means or modify the output of the model based on updates. Now, as far as I understand, this is not just in violation of the license, they reserve the right to update the model just indefinitely. Now you may think, okay, this isn't too bad either, you can just release an update. So what the last sentence says you shall undertake reasonable efforts to use the latest version of this model. And this I believe is in fact, the dangerous part, it goes beyond just usage restrictions or non usage restrictions. First of all, it's going to depend on what reasonable efforts means. But certainly, if you're simply downloading a model from hugging face and then running it, then reasonable effort would certainly include that you point your download script to the new version. If you fine tuned your model a little bit to do something, then I guess it's up to a judge to decide whether it's reasonable effort for you to redo that fine tuning with the new version of the base model, it might very well be. But what does that mean in practice? Well, let's for a moment assume that reasonable effort means that you actually have to upgrade whether you're a fine tuner or just a consumer of the original model, what someone could do if they don't like a certain model being out there, for example, stable diffusion, if they don't like stable diffusion being out there just for free to use for everyone, well, they could just buy the organization that made stable diffusion and therefore by the holder of the rights to the stable diffusion model, they could release an update to the model that just so happens to be much worse than the previous model, but you would be forced under this license to upgrade to the newest model, you could actually not run the old model anymore, a judge is not going to care that you explain to them, but the old model is actually way better and does a better job. Now, the judge will simply say, Well, this is a new version of the model, you agree to always upgrade to the newest model. So therefore you must use it. So there is a clear path for anyone with a chunk of money to destroy any of these models that are currently out there by simply buying them releasing an upgraded version. And then there goes your model. Now you may think that is farfetched, but I guess both of us can think of a few places that have a lot of money and have a vested interest in such things not being freely open and freely shared around. So take your pick. Now here's the deal. I don't like these licenses. I think they're counterproductive. I think they're counter to the spirit of open source. And I think they have a paternalistic elitist mentality. We know what's good for you. But if you are so inclined, if you must use a license with usage restrictions, if that is really your thing to do that, then I have created an updated version for you. I call it the open rail plus plus license, the M here stands for model field three to adjust this to open rail D or open rail a licenses, the license is essentially exactly the same you fill in a bunch of stuff. The only difference is that paragraph seven has the last sentence removed, the receiver of the license must not take reasonable efforts to always use the latest version of the model. That's it. If you must use usage restrictions, use the open rail plus plus license. Okay, now that we got that out of the way, I want to come to the last part of this video. And here I want to say again, I am not a lawyer, this is my opinion. But in my opinion, this thing is drastically different from the open source licenses that we are used to not just in terms of the content of a containing usage restrictions. But in fact, the legal pathway how such a license is applicable is completely different. The open source licenses are based on copyright. Now copyright applies to a work of creative making a creative work as it's defined. Now creative works are defined differently from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But here in the NYU journal for intellectual property and entertainment law, there is a post by Samantha, think Hedrick that goes into detail of copyright and code and how it relates to algorithms and the outputs of algorithms. And that's an important distinction. Specifically, it talks about some court decision saying the seventh circuit, however, has provided a framework that breaks down creativity into three distinct elements of originality, creativity and novelty. A work is original if it is the independent creation of its author, a work is creative if it embodies some modest amount of intellectual labor, a work is novel if it differs from existing works in some relevant aspects. For a work to be copyrightable, it must be original and creative, but need not be novel. Now, all of these things are again pretty vague. But here's the deal copyright applies automatically. If you make a creative work, such as if you write a book, if you make a movie or anything like this, you automatically receive copyright for that. But that only applies to creative works. Now, usually ideas are not considered creative works, you can patent certain ideas depending on the jurisdiction, but you cannot have copyright on an idea, you only have copyright of on the realization of an idea if it is a creative work. So for example, you do not have copyright on the idea of a romance between two Italian rival families, but the work of Romeo and Juliet has copyright to it. And the same counts for source code, you do not have copyright on the idea of the Linux kernel, but copyright exists on the code itself of the kernel. That's why you can re implement someone else's algorithm in your own code provided you haven't copied from them and provided a judge rules that it is substantially different implementation of the idea and then you will be the copyright holder to that new code. Now this gets interesting when we come into the context of GitHub copilot and things like this. But let's leave this out of the way for now copyright applies to creative works of and this is sometimes very explicitly described human authors have previously reported on the case of Stephen taller that tries to patent or obtain copyright registrations on the work outputs of his AI algorithm. For example, here is an article by Clyde Schuman of Pearl Cohen that goes into detail of how this was again and again rejected the copyright office again concluded that the work lacked the required human authorship necessary to sustain a claim in copyright. So a human author needs to be involved in order for work to have copyright source code is not the same as the output of an algorithm. For example, if you write the source code for a machine learning model, training code, the data loading code and all of that the optimizer code, then you have copyright on all of that, but not automatically on the output of that code. So then you run the code and the output of that code of the training process is the model, the model output is different from the source code. And it's not per se clear whether you have copyright on that model. Now taller here argues that his AI his algorithm should have copyright on that thing. But it is also thinkable that he as the maker of the algorithm and the runner of the algorithm has copyright on the thing. But as I understand it, both of these claims have been rejected. The courts have ruled that while if you use something like Photoshop to make a nice digital painting, then yes, it's essentially a tool and you provide the creative input as a human. So you have the copyright on that final output of the algorithm, even if it's run through Photoshop. But if you simply press go on stable diffusion, then you do not necessarily have copyright on the output. If you enter a prompt, however, then that could be considered enough human authorship. But what I'm pretty sure again, opinion is that if you simply write training code for a language model and then let that run, you do not have copyright on the resulting model because it would not be considered on their most jurisdictions as a creative work because you have not done any sort of creative thinking you have not been able to come up with an idea. It is not an intent to bring an idea to life in a work. In fact, we do know that these things are essentially black boxes. So it's essentially impossible to fulfill these many provisions and standards of copyright law here. So in my opinion, you as a human don't have the copyright on the resulting model and neither does the algorithm itself. The NYU article states the difficult question is whether an algorithm exhibits sufficient intellectual labor or whether we would deem an algorithm to be capable of exhibiting any intellectual labor or true creativity at all. Now obviously, copyright law is much more difficult than that. But after reading through a big chunk of it, which I guess is still a tiny chunk of everything there is to know, I am fairly sure there is no copyright at all on models if they are simply trained by an algorithm, like the training code for GPT or the training code for stable diffusion. And therefore, you can't simply say here is the license for the model. The reason that works with code, the reason you can simply put an MIT license file next to your code on GitHub is because without that, no one would be allowed to use your code by default. So by default, you would have copyright and no one could copy it. And by putting that file there, you essentially allow that. However, here it's the other way around. You do not have a default license. You do not have a default right on the model itself on the code. Yes, but not on the model. And therefore, if you simply put that model somewhere to download, it doesn't matter whether you have a license file next to it, because I can download the model file and I have never agreed to that license. And without having agreed to that license, there is absolutely nothing you can do against me using that model for whatever purpose. And that is why at least in my estimation, hugging face now implements these barriers right here, you need to agree to share your contact information to access this model. Now, this is framed as you know, you share your contact information, we just want to know who's using that model. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you have to accept the conditions to access its files and content. And next to the checkmark, it says I have read the license and agree with its terms. Now this isn't just to register your username with the authors, clicking this checkbox right here is a contract you are entering into a contract with I guess hugging face, I'm not really sure. But by doing this action, you actively accept the license. And that's how it becomes enforceable. I mean, if you have different opinions, please correct me if I'm wrong. But for example, I don't see the same checkboxy thing here on the bloom model or on the original stable diffusion model, even though I guess there aren't actually any files right here. But notice the difference with something like an Apache, a GPL or an MIT license, there is automatic copyright, which essentially gets downgraded for you to be able to use it. So you essentially implicitly accept the license by doing so. Whereas here, there is no license, and you enter into a contract by clicking this checkbox. And this in my opinion, is another downside of these licenses, because we can't simply put these models out there anymore for people to download, we actually are legally enforced to make sure that every person who's able to download the model first has entered into such a contract with whomever it is that makes the model available to download. This again severely restricts the distribution capabilities of these models and essentially centralizes an already relatively central system even more to institutions who can actually enforce search provisions, or at least can enforce the fact that you need to enter into the agreement, such as having a website with a little checkbox that has a user login and so on. But I hope you kind of see that even though this is all framed in terms of open source, and so on, this has nothing to do with the provisions of open source, it is not based on copyright law. So the legal pathway is entirely different. On top of that, again, I would argue that these licenses are quite harmful to the ecosystems, they're very paternalistic. And I think we should move away as fast as possible from this attitude that some people absolutely know what's good for other people and force them to come back if they have some different idea of what's ethical and unethical and useful and not useful and make them essentially go and ask for permission for all of these things. Yeah, I don't like it. Don't do it. If you make a model, put it out there, give good information about what it can and can't do what it might be useful for what it might not be useful for what the dangers of it are and whatnot, and then put the decision power and the competence with the users contrary to what Silicon Valley believes the rest of the world isn't just oblivious to any ethical considerations. I know it's hard to believe but a person can actually make competent decisions even though they're not paying $12 for a pumpkin spice latte. And I hope the current run of models, for example, stable diffusion, which is really useful model do get somehow retrained or relicensed in the future to be actually open source and actually conform to the principles of free software. Until then, be careful what you enter into that prompt box. That's all for me again, if you want to access the open rail plus plus license, it's why culture.com slash license and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.
 The new responsible AI licenses that models like stable diffusion or bloom have are stupid,
 they conflict with open source principles. In fact, they're distinctly not open source,
 and they have a glaring legal loophole in them. So join me as we'll explore the fun
 world of model licensing. So first things first, I am not a lawyer. This is not legal
 advice. These are my own opinions and the conclusions that I've come to while researching
 this topic. And all of it is for entertainment purposes only take everything with a grain
 of salt and with my own personal bias. That being said, if you go to the hugging face
 hub right now, and you look at stable diffusion, what you're going to see is this pill right
 here license creative ml, open rail, m open rail is a new type of license rail in this
 case. So this is the license rail is the responsible AI license, I believe that's what the acronym
 stands for open means that it is without usage restrictions. And M stands for the model that
 is being licensed as opposed to the code or the data. But stable diffusion isn't the only
 model. In fact, the first model at least that I'm aware of using such a license was bloom,
 which was released earlier, which is a large language model that comes out of the big science
 initiative. And it uses the very similar big science bloom rail one dot zero license. Now
 what is this rail license? What is an open rail license, essentially, it is a permissive
 license that lets you use the model to produce stuff and puts no restrictions on you then
 taking that stuff, selling that stuff and doing with that stuff, whatever you want,
 you're also allowed to take the model and actually sell it or sell its outputs or train
 it further distill it fine tune it whatever you want to do and then make money off of
 it, you have no responsibility, for example, as in GPL code to then release your model
 again as open source. So everything seems like a very permissive Apache or MIT license
 that you might be familiar if you are in software. However, there is a difference. The rail licenses
 explicitly put usage restrictions on these things. So what does that mean? If you look
 at one of these licenses and you scroll way down to the attachments, then you'll see usage
 restrictions, you agree not to use the model or derivatives of the model for any of these
 purposes. And some of these purposes are to defame, disparage or otherwise harass others
 or to generate or disseminate verifiably false information with the purpose of harming others
 and so on. There are several usage restrictions in this license and the license make sure
 that you agree that you don't use the model for any of these purposes. And whatever you
 do with the model, be that fine tune it distill it, sell it and so on, you must pass on you
 must enforce continuously these usage restrictions. So even if you take the model and you fine
 tune it on your own data or something like this, then you may keep that private but you
 may still not use it for any of these things. So much like a copy left license that sort
 of propagates the openness of code, in this case, it's not about the openness of the model.
 But what is propagated is the usage restrictions. So the purpose of this is that the developers
 of these models, they don't want their work to be used for anything that they consider
 bad or harmful or unethical. Now they are not the first people to think about something
 like this, the open source software community obviously had to grapple with this topic for
 a long time, and they have reached a very conclusive conclusion. Is that a word conclusive
 conclusion? Now let me quote from Richard Stallman on why programs must not limit the
 freedom to run them. This is a principle of free software and ingrained in open source
 software. So in this article, he says free software means software controlled by its
 users rather than the reverse. Specifically, it means the software comes with four essential
 freedoms that software users deserve. And the head of the list is freedom zero, the
 freedom to run the program as you wish in order to do what you wish. And here he goes
 into the arguments some developers propose to place usage restrictions in software licenses
 to ban using the program for certain purposes. But he says that would be a disastrous path.
 This article explains why freedom zero must not be limited conditions to limit the use
 of a program would achieve little of their aims but would wreck the free software community.
 So firstly describes what is evidently clear to everyone but is still actually a part of
 the open rail licenses. If you look at the first usage restriction, it says you are not
 allowed to use the model in any way that violates any applicable national federal state, local
 or international law or regulation. As Stalman points out here, that is already covered by
 the law. He gives the example of fraud, he says a license condition against fraud would
 be superfluous in a country where fraud is a crime. And therefore, the license condition
 that you may not break any laws is almost tautological and superfluous. But it would
 be okay if a license contains superfluous information after all lawyers want to be paid.
 But he goes further and he gives the example what if the condition were against some specialized
 private activity that is not outlawed. For instance, PETA proposed a license that would
 forbid the use of the software to cause pain to animals with a spinal column or there might
 be a condition against using a certain program to make or publish drawings of vomit and so
 on. He says it's not clear these would be enforceable free software licenses are based
 on copyright law and trying to impose usage condition that way is stretching what copyright
 law permits in a dangerous way. Would you like books to carry a license condition about
 how you can use the information in them? Well, it's a good point. But actually this point
 that these licenses are based on copyright law in terms of the open rail licenses, in
 my opinion, is actually not given. And that's why we're going to look at that's why on hugging
 face you have to click a little checkbox that you've actually read the license agreement
 for some of these models. Because in my opinion, copyright does not apply here. But we'll get
 to that later. The first Stallman asks what if such conditions are legally enforceable?
 Would that be good? And here it gets to the point. The fact is people have very different
 ethical ideas about the activities that might be done using software, I happen to think
 those four unusual activities, the ones he mentioned above are legitimate and should
 not be forbidden. And he clearly says your views about these issues might differ. And
 that's precisely the point. The result of such usage restrictions would be a system
 that you could not count on for any purpose. Allowing usage restrictions in free software
 would mainly push users towards non free software trying to stop users from doing something
 through usage restrictions in free software is as ineffective as pushing on an object
 through a long straight soft piece of cooked spaghetti. It's akin to someone with a very
 small hammer seeing every problem as a nail and not even acknowledging that the nail is
 far too big for the hammer. But not only is it ineffective, it is worse than ineffective,
 Stallman says it's wrong to because software developers should not exercise such power
 over what users do. Imagine selling pens with conditions about what you can write with them.
 If you make something that is generally useful, like a pen, people will use it to write all
 sorts of things, even horrible things such as order to torture a dissident, but you must
 not have the power to control people's activities through their pens. It is the same for a text
 editor compiler or a kernel and in my opinion for a language model. And in my opinion, Richard
 Stallman really hits the nail on the head here with an appropriately sized hammer we've
 seen in recent years more and more an evolution in the AI world of a mentality that essentially
 says we know what's good for you and a complete disregard that other people might have different
 ideas. Now, don't get me wrong, if you create something like this, you can put any license
 on it that you want, you can make any contract that you want, you can make money off it and
 keep it for yourself, whatever you want. But don't then also go out and say, oh, we are
 free, we are open, we are for everyone. No, you are not. And it takes no further to look
 than actually to look at the license itself and some of these usage restrictions. For
 example, you may not use this model to provide medical advice and medical results interpretation.
 You know how many people in the world do not have access to any medical advice at all and
 would actually be benefiting from some sort of medical advice with maybe a disclaimer
 that look, this is generated, don't take this as fact, but they would hugely benefit from
 something like this. You may not use this model to generate or disseminate information
 for the purpose to be used in administration of justice, law enforcement, immigration or
 asylum processes. This is like a like Silicon Valley is the entire world. For all the inclusivity
 and diversity that these people claim the worldview over what's good and what's bad
 and what's useful and what's unethical is so narrow, how many places in the world would
 be immensely thankful to any help they can get with enforcing justice with effectively
 administrating law enforcement. Now I'm not saying that these things are good or bad per
 se and I can see where these people are coming from. But it is exactly how Stallman says
 it is making a pen and then telling people what they can and can't write with the pen
 without any regard that in a different context, what they may write may actually be good for
 them. And we've seen a lot of applications of language model that violate a lot of these
 things that actually have beneficial applications. But don't worry, there is always a method
 to do that. See this here is from a blog post that accompanies the big science open rail
 license with the release of the bloom model, my use of the model falls under a restriction,
 but I still think it's not harmful and could be valuable. Well, the blog post says please
 contact the licensor of the model you're using or distributing for them to assess the case
 and see whether an authorization and or license could be granted for you in this very specific
 case. So here is the answer. Even though you may think that what you're doing is quite
 okay and actually beneficial, even though it technically conflicts with one of the usage
 restrictions, you go to them, you go to the creators of the model and ask, May I please
 have an exception for these usage restrictions for my particular case, and they will assess
 that for you. Now again, I'm not saying they can't do that. This is absolutely legal. And
 if that's how they want to go about releasing their model, then fine with me, but it is
 certainly not open. It is certainly not inclusive. It is certainly not accessible to the whole
 world. It is very much we know what's good for you. And you play a you do not have the
 authority to decide that for yourself, you come to us and then we decide if it's good
 enough. What's even more the rest of the license is essentially a copy paste of rather standard
 terms of permissive open source licenses such as this one, the software is provided on an
 as is basis without warranties or conditions of any kind either expressed or implied including
 without limitations any warranties or conditions of title non infringement merchant ability
 or fitness for a particular purpose, you are solely responsible for determining the appropriateness
 of using or redistributing the model derivatives of the model and complementary material and
 assume any risks associated with your exercise of permission under this license. So the license
 is very unidirectional. It is we don't trust you, we put usage restrictions on you user
 of the model. But when it comes to us, nope, no liability, no warranty, no nothing, no
 guarantees of anything that the model does. And usually in open source software, this
 is bidirectional, it's I write some code, if it misbehaves, you know, you're the one
 using it. If I do something stupid, you choose to download or not to download it, that's
 it. But on the other hand, I will not come to you and tell you how to use it or what
 to do with it and what not to do with it. Whereas here, same thing for the creators,
 but not so same thing for the users. But we go on and here is where I think the crucial
 part comes in and thanks to people on our discord for pointing this out to me, there
 is paragraph seven right here, updates and runtime restrictions to the maximum extent
 permitted by law licensor reserves the right to restrict remotely or otherwise usage of
 the model in violation of this license. So if you violate the license, and you somehow
 use it via an API or something like this, or there are some other means of restricting
 the license or can do that so far, so good. But it also says they reserve the right to
 update the model through electronic means or modify the output of the model based on
 updates. Now, as far as I understand, this is not just in violation of the license, they
 reserve the right to update the model just indefinitely. Now you may think, okay, this
 isn't too bad either, you can just release an update. So what the last sentence says
 you shall undertake reasonable efforts to use the latest version of this model. And
 this I believe is in fact, the dangerous part, it goes beyond just usage restrictions or
 non usage restrictions. First of all, it's going to depend on what reasonable efforts
 means. But certainly, if you're simply downloading a model from hugging face and then running
 it, then reasonable effort would certainly include that you point your download script
 to the new version. If you fine tuned your model a little bit to do something, then I
 guess it's up to a judge to decide whether it's reasonable effort for you to redo that
 fine tuning with the new version of the base model, it might very well be. But what does
 that mean in practice? Well, let's for a moment assume that reasonable effort means that you
 actually have to upgrade whether you're a fine tuner or just a consumer of the original
 model, what someone could do if they don't like a certain model being out there, for
 example, stable diffusion, if they don't like stable diffusion being out there just for
 free to use for everyone, well, they could just buy the organization that made stable
 diffusion and therefore by the holder of the rights to the stable diffusion model, they
 could release an update to the model that just so happens to be much worse than the
 previous model, but you would be forced under this license to upgrade to the newest model,
 you could actually not run the old model anymore, a judge is not going to care that you explain
 to them, but the old model is actually way better and does a better job. Now, the judge
 will simply say, Well, this is a new version of the model, you agree to always upgrade
 to the newest model. So therefore you must use it. So there is a clear path for anyone
 with a chunk of money to destroy any of these models that are currently out there by simply
 buying them releasing an upgraded version. And then there goes your model. Now you may
 think that is farfetched, but I guess both of us can think of a few places that have
 a lot of money and have a vested interest in such things not being freely open and freely
 shared around. So take your pick. Now here's the deal. I don't like these licenses. I think
 they're counterproductive. I think they're counter to the spirit of open source. And
 I think they have a paternalistic elitist mentality. We know what's good for you. But
 if you are so inclined, if you must use a license with usage restrictions, if that is
 really your thing to do that, then I have created an updated version for you. I call
 it the open rail plus plus license, the M here stands for model field three to adjust
 this to open rail D or open rail a licenses, the license is essentially exactly the same
 you fill in a bunch of stuff. The only difference is that paragraph seven has the last sentence
 removed, the receiver of the license must not take reasonable efforts to always use
 the latest version of the model. That's it. If you must use usage restrictions, use the
 open rail plus plus license. Okay, now that we got that out of the way, I want to come
 to the last part of this video. And here I want to say again, I am not a lawyer, this
 is my opinion. But in my opinion, this thing is drastically different from the open source
 licenses that we are used to not just in terms of the content of a containing usage restrictions.
 But in fact, the legal pathway how such a license is applicable is completely different.
 The open source licenses are based on copyright. Now copyright applies to a work of creative
 making a creative work as it's defined. Now creative works are defined differently from
 jurisdiction to jurisdiction. But here in the NYU journal for intellectual property
 and entertainment law, there is a post by Samantha, think Hedrick that goes into detail
 of copyright and code and how it relates to algorithms and the outputs of algorithms.
 And that's an important distinction. Specifically, it talks about some court decision saying
 the seventh circuit, however, has provided a framework that breaks down creativity into
 three distinct elements of originality, creativity and novelty. A work is original if it is the
 independent creation of its author, a work is creative if it embodies some modest amount
 of intellectual labor, a work is novel if it differs from existing works in some relevant
 aspects. For a work to be copyrightable, it must be original and creative, but need not
 be novel. Now, all of these things are again pretty vague. But here's the deal copyright
 applies automatically. If you make a creative work, such as if you write a book, if you
 make a movie or anything like this, you automatically receive copyright for that. But that only
 applies to creative works. Now, usually ideas are not considered creative works, you can
 patent certain ideas depending on the jurisdiction, but you cannot have copyright on an idea,
 you only have copyright of on the realization of an idea if it is a creative work. So for
 example, you do not have copyright on the idea of a romance between two Italian rival
 families, but the work of Romeo and Juliet has copyright to it. And the same counts for
 source code, you do not have copyright on the idea of the Linux kernel, but copyright
 exists on the code itself of the kernel. That's why you can re implement someone else's algorithm
 in your own code provided you haven't copied from them and provided a judge rules that
 it is substantially different implementation of the idea and then you will be the copyright
 holder to that new code. Now this gets interesting when we come into the context of GitHub copilot
 and things like this. But let's leave this out of the way for now copyright applies to
 creative works of and this is sometimes very explicitly described human authors have previously
 reported on the case of Stephen taller that tries to patent or obtain copyright registrations
 on the work outputs of his AI algorithm. For example, here is an article by Clyde Schuman
 of Pearl Cohen that goes into detail of how this was again and again rejected the copyright
 office again concluded that the work lacked the required human authorship necessary to
 sustain a claim in copyright. So a human author needs to be involved in order for work to
 have copyright source code is not the same as the output of an algorithm. For example,
 if you write the source code for a machine learning model, training code, the data loading
 code and all of that the optimizer code, then you have copyright on all of that, but not
 automatically on the output of that code. So then you run the code and the output of
 that code of the training process is the model, the model output is different from the source
 code. And it's not per se clear whether you have copyright on that model. Now taller here
 argues that his AI his algorithm should have copyright on that thing. But it is also thinkable
 that he as the maker of the algorithm and the runner of the algorithm has copyright
 on the thing. But as I understand it, both of these claims have been rejected. The courts
 have ruled that while if you use something like Photoshop to make a nice digital painting,
 then yes, it's essentially a tool and you provide the creative input as a human. So
 you have the copyright on that final output of the algorithm, even if it's run through
 Photoshop. But if you simply press go on stable diffusion, then you do not necessarily have
 copyright on the output. If you enter a prompt, however, then that could be considered enough
 human authorship. But what I'm pretty sure again, opinion is that if you simply write
 training code for a language model and then let that run, you do not have copyright on
 the resulting model because it would not be considered on their most jurisdictions as
 a creative work because you have not done any sort of creative thinking you have not
 been able to come up with an idea. It is not an intent to bring an idea to life in a work.
 In fact, we do know that these things are essentially black boxes. So it's essentially
 impossible to fulfill these many provisions and standards of copyright law here. So in
 my opinion, you as a human don't have the copyright on the resulting model and neither
 does the algorithm itself. The NYU article states the difficult question is whether an
 algorithm exhibits sufficient intellectual labor or whether we would deem an algorithm
 to be capable of exhibiting any intellectual labor or true creativity at all. Now obviously,
 copyright law is much more difficult than that. But after reading through a big chunk
 of it, which I guess is still a tiny chunk of everything there is to know, I am fairly
 sure there is no copyright at all on models if they are simply trained by an algorithm,
 like the training code for GPT or the training code for stable diffusion. And therefore,
 you can't simply say here is the license for the model. The reason that works with code,
 the reason you can simply put an MIT license file next to your code on GitHub is because
 without that, no one would be allowed to use your code by default. So by default, you would
 have copyright and no one could copy it. And by putting that file there, you essentially
 allow that. However, here it's the other way around. You do not have a default license.
 You do not have a default right on the model itself on the code. Yes, but not on the model.
 And therefore, if you simply put that model somewhere to download, it doesn't matter whether
 you have a license file next to it, because I can download the model file and I have never
 agreed to that license. And without having agreed to that license, there is absolutely
 nothing you can do against me using that model for whatever purpose. And that is why at least
 in my estimation, hugging face now implements these barriers right here, you need to agree
 to share your contact information to access this model. Now, this is framed as you know,
 you share your contact information, we just want to know who's using that model. No, no,
 no, no, no, no, no, no, you have to accept the conditions to access its files and content.
 And next to the checkmark, it says I have read the license and agree with its terms.
 Now this isn't just to register your username with the authors, clicking this checkbox right
 here is a contract you are entering into a contract with I guess hugging face, I'm not
 really sure. But by doing this action, you actively accept the license. And that's how
 it becomes enforceable. I mean, if you have different opinions, please correct me if I'm
 wrong. But for example, I don't see the same checkboxy thing here on the bloom model or
 on the original stable diffusion model, even though I guess there aren't actually any files
 right here. But notice the difference with something like an Apache, a GPL or an MIT
 license, there is automatic copyright, which essentially gets downgraded for you to be
 able to use it. So you essentially implicitly accept the license by doing so. Whereas here,
 there is no license, and you enter into a contract by clicking this checkbox. And this
 in my opinion, is another downside of these licenses, because we can't simply put these
 models out there anymore for people to download, we actually are legally enforced to make sure
 that every person who's able to download the model first has entered into such a contract
 with whomever it is that makes the model available to download. This again severely restricts
 the distribution capabilities of these models and essentially centralizes an already relatively
 central system even more to institutions who can actually enforce search provisions, or
 at least can enforce the fact that you need to enter into the agreement, such as having
 a website with a little checkbox that has a user login and so on. But I hope you kind
 of see that even though this is all framed in terms of open source, and so on, this has
 nothing to do with the provisions of open source, it is not based on copyright law.
 So the legal pathway is entirely different. On top of that, again, I would argue that
 these licenses are quite harmful to the ecosystems, they're very paternalistic. And I think we
 should move away as fast as possible from this attitude that some people absolutely
 know what's good for other people and force them to come back if they have some different
 idea of what's ethical and unethical and useful and not useful and make them essentially go
 and ask for permission for all of these things. Yeah, I don't like it. Don't do it. If you
 make a model, put it out there, give good information about what it can and can't do
 what it might be useful for what it might not be useful for what the dangers of it are
 and whatnot, and then put the decision power and the competence with the users contrary
 to what Silicon Valley believes the rest of the world isn't just oblivious to any ethical
 considerations. I know it's hard to believe but a person can actually make competent decisions
 even though they're not paying $12 for a pumpkin spice latte. And I hope the current run of
 models, for example, stable diffusion, which is really useful model do get somehow retrained
 or relicensed in the future to be actually open source and actually conform to the principles
 of free software. Until then, be careful what you enter into that prompt box. That's all
 for me again, if you want to access the open rail plus plus license, it's why culture.com
 slash license and I'll see you next time. Bye bye.