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.” reason.com/2026/09/04/doj-says…
DOJ says barring AI training on copyrighted material could 'severely hamper' tech progress
Training a model on copyrighted work is the same transformative use exception that protects The New York Times' journalism.Tosin Akintola (Reason Magazine)
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George Liquor, American
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Vincent Sparks
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Salem's Lot
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •UraniumNutt
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Lily
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Michel Lind
in reply to Lily • • •@lilyyllyyllyly I guess I am cancelling my contributions... sigh
EFF has always been a bit too libertarian for my taste but giving this support in Reason of all places...
M.S. Bellows, Jr.
in reply to Michel Lind • • •Quest 💚
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Uhm no? Training my own brain on copyrighted materials would land me in jail if I didn't pay for them... But the biggest companies get a free pass? I don't actually think this is the kind of "fostering" we want going on.
How is the EFF not on our side with this one?
Shannon Prickett reshared this.
707Kat
in reply to Quest 💚 • • •Quest 💚
in reply to 707Kat • • •@707Kat I guess I never really paid enough attention to notice, I had figured the EFF was on our side and just left them alone to fight my own battles.
It sucks to feel I trusted them... It feels like the ground is crumbling as every major thing I thought was on our side turns out to be terrible (like linux, Debian, and most of FOSS right now).
I really need to start my own org at this point, I don't really know who else to trust.
707Kat
in reply to Quest 💚 • • •@corigan01 yeah it sucks. I think I only knew because it’s been a subject I have been paying really close attention to.
There are still good people and organizations out there. The EFF does do good regarding surveillance. People are banding together and building moats. But yes, it does make the landscape bleak for current existing organizations.
I think some of the ones that swing gAI will change their mind, as I have seen it elsewhere before. EFF I think not.
IBBoard
in reply to 707Kat • • •Jonathan Lamothe
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • •like this
mancube, Matt W, Valerie, Ryan, ɹ uɐp, Lily, Tirrimas 🚫👑, MooMoo the Cat, Jargoggles, PurP, brainwashed by lentils, ██████████████████████████████, Autokabalesis, surely bazkie 👩🏼💻, Willow "Wolveric" Catkin, Kevin, lupus_blackfur, taichara, swym, David Hembrow, Tom, Angela Scholder, ina, You Better Believe It's Karstan™️, The Witch of Crow Briar, Tony and JBrown, Esq like this.
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Cassandrich, ɹ uɐp, Kg. Madee Ⅱ. and Death by Lambda reshared this.
ɹ uɐp
in reply to Jonathan Lamothe • • •Grutjes
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •😮 Seriously, is the organization that should be protecting our digital rights, now defending the abuse of extreme right billionaires, who are stealing our human creativity to make us all redundant?
Are you couped by MAGA?
Passenger
in reply to Grutjes • • •@Grutjes
The EFF has often had a tendency to side with whatever is most profitable for the big tech companies, for example suing the US government to prevent them from seizing consumer data held by Apple, but not raising so much as a whisper about Apple selling that same data to the US government. This may be why some people have referred to the EFF as "the Google lobby" or "the Facebook lobby."
They have, at times, overridden this tendency. I guess this is not one of these times.
LabSpokane
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Big Blu Gnu
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Antin
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Shannon Prickett reshared this.
maijau
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Can anybody explain to me why hip-hop artists and other musicians have been sued into the ground for ten second samples instead of being lauded for creative transformative use?
Jes
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Angie
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •It's so cool to watch every institution I've trusted bend the knee and kiss the ring of pedophile techbro fascists, one right after the other.
Please consider the last donation that I sent to EFF to be the LAST donation that I send.
Effectively Fucking Finished.
Ryan
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I've been donating monthly since 2017. You just lost my support.
supporters.eff.org/donate/recu… for anyone else that needs to cancel.
Defend Privacy and Free Speech | Electronic Frontier Foundation
supporters.eff.orgMatt W
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •So... fuck the planet right? I mean, you're putting your support behind what's already causing massive amounts of pollution and political corruption (municipal up to executive) across the country.
I donated to you guys a long time ago. I wish I could get a refund all these years later.
mcc
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Mx. Luna Corbden 🪿🐸 reshared this.
Outfrost
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I didn't have "EFF being deeply corrupt in the stupidest way imaginable" on my bingo card
I hope that boot tastes good
Avi Rappoport (avirr)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Shannon Prickett reshared this.
Seth B. ❌👑
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •FinFangFoomed
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Jack
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •"Billionaires stealing creative work is fine" is a stance you can take, I guess.
It's a bad stance, but you can take it.
Shannon Prickett reshared this.
brendan (ジャンク品)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •no human = no intent = no transformation
eff y'all done fucked up
Shannon Prickett reshared this.
Kris Warner
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Shannon Prickett reshared this.
frutiger
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Spirit
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Miss Aemilia🎀
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Bit_form
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Darren du Nord
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Biggles 20X6!
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •regurgitating content in a statistically probable manner is not transformation. Transformation requires intent.
Robut has no intent.
There is case law on this already.
Please unfuck yourselves.
FoolishOwl
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •tmw 🌈
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •oh, AI is transformative alright. it's transforming earth into a hellscape even faster than it already was.
who has access to everything they stole, anyway? if their stolen shit leaked, who would get in trouble? no one?
Mx. Chara Aznable of Pnictogen
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •This is NOT all that is going on, EFF account-minder, and I reject your softened and euphemized framing of this issue. This isn't about "training" or "transformation" or any positive purpose, it's about capturing and destroying information, grabbing the books and other works and stuffing them into the machine and then making sure nobody else can use the stuff for their own rackets.
This is a fraud. The entire #tech sector is consecrated to CHEATING. You can't honestly say that there's a positive "transformative" purpose in the GenAI obsession.
There's no reason at all at work. Their thing isn't an "AGI superintelligence" and they know it. When do we stop pretending that this is just kind-hearted software engineers wanting to change the world? They exist, but not anywhere powerful in U.S. business or technology.
Bob K Mertz
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •What
The
Fuck
I'm stunned. This is the last organization I expected to take a stance against individuals and placate to the authoritarians.
adolar0042
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Moe Lassus
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Graham Sutherland / Polynomial
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •bye
Tom Dullemond
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •bri
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •yooooo this sucks
i mean, completely unsurprising from y’all at this point, but regardless. sucks. big sucks. sucks shit.
Jeroen Baert
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Kelsey
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ryan Lounsbury
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Well, that is the end of me supporting your apparently traitorous org.
Get the fuck out of here EFF with this take.
ShadSterling
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Even if creating a generative model is transformative, selling the use of one as a for-profit service to undercut creative artists is preventing the kind of creation that copyright was intended to foster.
But since the generation of statistically similar outputs ensures that the further-derived generated outputs are minimally transformative of the sources, it’s misleading to describe the model itself as transformative.
These services should be required to license their sources.
Totes Manly
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I'm surprised you're bragging about your staff attorney's boneheaded comment.
P.S. What are you patting yourself on the back for? Having a your staff attorney quoted in an article? I used to think EFF was cool but shameless self promotion is the opposite of cool. It's lame and gross.
Dr Ro Smith
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Bunbury
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •No sane person loves transformative work that makes the internet unusable, boils the ocean, and makes hardware and electricity expensive
It's Pronounced DEETS
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Brian Tatosky
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •sammypanda
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Process Parsnip
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Sensitive content
@eff
pork_slam
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Veviser
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •tkissing
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Alice Pea (she/her) 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Maybe these stupid #AI #Clankers can stop this stupid #DDoS attack on my server then?
If you have taken this hypocritical take on copyright, then you need to get your head out of you're ass, because if I did the same thing these companies are doing, I'd be sued into hell for it.
Translation: Someone at the #EFF is definitely getting fired over this stupid post.
Eric
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •What kind of ass backwards take is this? Does training models on copyrighted materials bring any additional money to the creator of the copyrighted work used in said training? No. If there's no monetary benefit to the original creator of a work, it should not be used in training.
I'm so disappointed in you all for backing this horrible take.
Tobias Hellgren
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Supermoosie
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Kg. Madee Ⅱ.
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Sham 🏳️🌈
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •F4GRX Sébastien
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •what the fuck, EFF, what did you smoke? This is awful.
I hate this world.
Jan
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Hanno Rein
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ianto Jones
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •a horrible opinion that screws creators. Unbelievable that you would not only support mass copyright infringement, but seemingly with enthusiasm. You've officially helped tip the scales in favor of billionaire robber barons and likely alienated a large percentage of your supporters.
Are you counting on large donations from the supremely entitled, inhuman, hoarding scumbags?
Wolf480pl
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •COMPU73E ❄️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Aurimas Liutikas
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Emelia/Emi
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •So you think it's somehow "fair use" despite it failing pretty much every test once the marketing newspeak is stripped away?
That last one is particularly damning: They have openly stated that they want their 'product' to push the very creatives they copied from to "train" it out of the market, which is one of the reasons we have copyright: If everyone's work is immediately hoovered up and shat out worse by a slop-machine, they have no incentive (or ability) to create.
reshared this
mcc and Mx. Luna Corbden 🪿🐸 reshared this.
Tock
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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.)
(Edit: this was me chiming in, nothing more. I'm muting this thread.)
Li ~ Crystal System
in reply to Tock • • •Sensitive content
@Tock EFF is; anti-copyright, as like a 'hard stance' as an absolute -- the EFF has always been anti-copytight
therefore, attempts to block usage of training data, by appealing to copyright they are naturally against, as they are using copyright, and they are against copyright
they are also for free access to information as a hard stance, an 'absolute', this includes say, the government censoring the internet, but it also includes say, software meant to block ai scrapers, as that blocks access
the EFF behaves in an extremely consistent and predictable way -- tbh in a sense thats kind of respectable ..
to an extent i also have my issues with attempts to expand copyright further by shaping it as 'anti ai' -- but eh probably not to this extent
ninkosan
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •@eff
Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •kikebenlloch
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ciarán (mc)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •∷ccccel△♪
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Kevin Loney
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Matilda Love - i suggest introspection
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Shannon Prickett reshared this.
Swirly
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •jiub
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Syrinx
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •B05H
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Nullstring 🏴☠️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ada Worcester 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Double Bones with Doctor Skelebone
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Pip
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Liam 🏳️🌈
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Jesse T
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Egon Willigh☮gen 🟥
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •gzip
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Brutal Sponge
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •This is pathetic.
Way to condone the wholesale theft of creative works.
Everything you say from now on is suspect.
Shannon Prickett reshared this.
mirabilos🐈⬛
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •excuse me? That’s theft, not creativity.
You just lost every reason to exist. Go disband.
ƒ: 🪿️→ ℝ
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Kargas
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •bluestarultor
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Are you sure this is the venue you wish to announce this to?
Just asking, because 2017 should be long enough to have a handle on the culture here.
astroPug
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I remain unconvinced.
As a layperson, I’ve been told that the point of copyright has been to make sure the writer and their publisher can earn a livelihood, so they may live to write another days
I know if I were to consistently copy or distribute copyrighted articles in such a way that it affects these companies bottom line to the point where they downsize, they’d come for me with an arsenal of lawyers.
So there are consequences for us small people.
But along comes OpenAI and the gang, and because they transform these copyrighted works into a model, it’s suddenly alright if they don’t license it even though they actually replace a whole numbers of writers?
That doesn’t add up to me.
I don’t buy the hand waving in this article about “it’s not replacing jobs” either. It shouldn’t, but it does, right now, because management isn’t always smart.
I think copyright is flawed and a bandaid for a not-working economic system, but you can’t rip off the bandaid before you fixed the system.
So that’s a no from me.
Em reshared this.
Laukidh
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •for fucks sake.
No! Bad EFF!
itgrrl
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •speaking as a card-carrying paid up #EFF member… fuck off with this shitty take 😡🤬
if you’re gung ho on copyright, how about something more defensible like “we believe that (US) copyright laws are a net positive but in the light of wholesale unpaid slurping of human creativity and labour for billionaire profits, clearly they’re broken and need to be fixed – here’s how we plan to fight this”
JFC, do better 🤮
lolbird
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Arthfach 🐻
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Glowing Cat of the Nuclear Wastelands
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •So, uh, you taking donations from the Slop companies now? Is this why you're dropping toxic takes like this?
They're literally destroying the commons by scraping web servers to death, they're burning the planet with this stampede to build data centers and polluting water, and then their poorly designed models aren't even any good at what they claim to be able to do. They introduce bugs, give bad answers, and record incorrect information in medical transcripts!
But sure, fight for the big guy as he puts his boot on the necks of the rest of us.
hecks
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Spark Purcell (they/them)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Kim Crawley 😷 (she/her)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •ThatKomputerKat
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Peter Huene
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •your position is bad and you should feel bad.
Also, get the fuck outta here.
Mister Dave
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Thankful Machine
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Frontal Temporal Craniotomy - Martin M. Mortazavi, MD, FICS
YouTubeVx. Princess "size_t queen" Grace
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Li ~ Crystal System
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •extremely obvious outcome is extremely obvious
Electronic Frontier Foundation
2026-09-04 23:17:12
mau 🏳️🌈 #EndFossilFuels
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Francisca Sinn
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Clare Hooley
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •hydra [she/they]
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Benjamin
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •billy joe bowers 🗽
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Katie Fenn
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Jacen
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •BlumenKid
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •herr stoltenberg
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Claudius
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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.
Tane Piper ⁂
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •@eff
Knud Jahnke
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ret
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Fabiano Celentano
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •grob (teeth era) 🇺🇦🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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"
Rycochet
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •surely bazkie 👩🏼💻
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •tnt
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •David Plisken 🏳️⚧️ BLM! 🇵🇸
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Dan Patch
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Robert Alan
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ciela-An Orca Ally
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Igel
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Torpedoing everything good you do with such a shit take???...
Reiner Jung 🇬🇱 🇺🇦 🇪🇺
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Yora
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Kevin
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Urzl
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •marble 弹珠
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Machine learning transfers skill to the wealthy while withholding wealth from the skilled.
Isn’t copyright intended to do the opposite?
Max L.
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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 model for free then sure, this could be argued, but they are literally making money off of stolen works.
Kat S
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •This isn't an argument for free speech. This is a defense of drowning out speech that comes from people.
stux⚡️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Aprazeth
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •@stux
I have been a longtime supporter of the EFF, and hope to remain so
That said, after this statement of theirs, I have no reason to continue to do so
I fully understand the need to make sure that the right of "transformative use" is maintained.
These LLM's are not transformative. Time and again it has been shown that copyrighted works are able to be dispensed *verbatim and in full*
These companies do not credit source, and (try to) claim copyright on these materials themselves
B O
in reply to stux⚡️ • • •@stux @pluralistic explains the reasoning here: pluralistic.net/2025/12/05/pop…
It’s not a crazy take once you read it
Pluralistic: The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI (05 Dec 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow)Avery
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •BlueDot
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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.
NadiaPurge
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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.
#EFF
eobet
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •¡a!n
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •jelte
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •and what about verbatim-enough output that would certainly be considered copyright violation if a human hand-typed it? Even if (and I'm far from sure i agree) training a model in and of itself is legal, it's output could still violate copyright. So either this doesn't say much, or copyright is effectively dead.
Additionally, the article contains claims about prohibitive costs if the trainers need to get permission from all sources. Those costs are currently externalized to those sources, so maybe that would he a good thing? The scrapers are literally killing the web right now.
FediThing
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •hyblon (su gts)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Kat the Leopardess
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Whelp, I guess "EFF drinking the AI Kool Aid" is now a thing for my 2026 Bingo card. 😕
Ewww... this is gross. "Disappointing" is an understatement.
Fantômas
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •You are nothing without supporters.
A former supporter.
magic_smoke ✨🍃🏳️⚧️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Thats a scumfuck move and if you where doing your job you'd be pushing this fight so that any ai code that came from a model trained on GPL/agpl code must be agpl'd.
Fuck you guys, you lost the plot. Please fall down a shit-covered spike pit.
gudenau
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Angus Marshall
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •uoʇɹǝʌıɥƆ ɯo⊥
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Munin
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Aks
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •deejay4am
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Erik
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Damon L. Wakes
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •StarkRG
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Bredroll
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Paul J Wege
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Aaron Lord reshared this.
Goose was not valued
in reply to Paul J Wege • • •@makeratschool @pluralistic
I would too!
Karsten
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Nate
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Vinnie (any)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Oenanthe conioides ⁂
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •"DOJ Says Barring AI Training on Copyrighted Material Could 'Severely Hamper' Tech Progress"
I say: fuck this kind of "tech progress".
bigjsl
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •ahistorical immaterialist
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •FurryBeta
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Capitã Jack
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •David Phd
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •taichara
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Tear out your lying, duplicitous tongues.
You betray everyone who ever looked to you, you goddamn demons.
Be Kind Rewind
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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)
Stacey Campbell
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Yeah, nah.
"It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for 'em."
Audrey
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Otter-Matic
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Sensitive content
Sam Livingston-Gray
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •dr34m3r
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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 pro-slop-technofascism stance did you assume over night? This must be a joke, right? Clear up this mess please.
Paul_IPv6
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •i can't believe that the EFF is leaning into this. this is not fostering creativity. it's swallowing copyrighted material whole so that they can charge money for it. if they can figure out how to deny us access to the original, they'll do that too.
very disappointing, EFF. do better.
Digital Mark λ ☕️ 🎃 👻 8647
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Brennan Kenneth Brown
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Larry Garfield
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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.
Dave Wood 🇨🇦
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •mass theft isn't a good look.
On top of that, why does Reason try to access my camera when I visit the page?
#Privacy
Allan Evans
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Log 🪵
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Valerie
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Joe Heafner
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •KFears& 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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.
Extreme Electronics
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •If we have to pay, they have to pay. No special cases.
That is the way copyright works.
Jennifer Kayla | Theogrin 🦊
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •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.
Jonathan
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Jonathan
in reply to Jonathan • • •...
Jonathan
in reply to Jonathan • • •Hubert Figuière
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I am horrified. Seriously, EFF?
WTF? #AItheft #copyright #AI_slop
Orion Ussner kidder
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •River 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I'd like to kindly remind everyone in this thread that copyright is the legal system that has allowed everyone from Apple to Facebook to Twitter to Nintendo to Android to all build walled gardens around their platforms and slowly enshittify everything until the whole internet is as terrible as it is today.
Copyright law has been the method through which all of that has occurred. Copyright is a mechanism that enables powerful corporations ("rights-holders") to acquiesce even more power.
The fact that we're in a temporary moment where a few massive companies have found a winning strategy in subverting copyright, this does not mean that copyright isn't the mechanism destroying the entire internet.
youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em…
DEF CON 32 - Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation - Cory Doctorow
DEFCONConference (YouTube)Gavin
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Maia
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Aleksei 🎄🎅☃️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Sharp Cheddar Goblin
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •rzetaO
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •WHaT?
has your account been hacked or something?
Mx Rey 💜 🏳️⚧️ (bikesexual)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •booooo
how much are you getting paid to be quisling pieces of shit?
Melted Acid Plushy
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •chronohart
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •NOOOOOO
What the fuck is wrong with you??? Exceptions to copyright are for *HUMAN* use. Gen-AI *is not human*.
Tamazon ⁂
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Rhys
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Alexander 😷
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Fuck AI
#NoAI
🌸 lumi-nhac 🌱
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •the fuck, eff
go against fashtech, don't embrace it
diana 🏳️⚧️🦋🌱
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •0xC0DEC0DE07EA
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Fennix
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Following this argument, since so much code is LLM-generated now, no commercial code has a valid copyright anymore, right?
So pirate away I guess.
Kenny
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Stage name Jay Peach
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Chris Mackay 🇨🇦🐈🐈
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Dan 🔓
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •🌿Toonie🍸
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Alkaris
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Stacey Cornelius 🇨🇦
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Swilling the tech bro kool-aid. So do you also agree with Altman that intelligence should be a utility that we all pay him to access?
Or do you have a 30,000-foot theoretical stance to deflect attention from what's really going on here?
Chris Geoghooligan ✊
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •@eff
Tom
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •emeritrix
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ahimsa
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I saw this last night and I'm still feeling bad about it.
This is really a horrible take, @eff
Angela Scholder
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •As this basically is invalidating all your credibility!
The Arachnixe Entity 🪞🕯️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Angela Scholder
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Chad McCullough
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •This is a fucking joke, right? Please, tell us all that this was just a joke.
I need to cut back on a some of the donations that I give to projects and this post just made it really easy to decide on at least one.
izzy | Technically Good ✨
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Curioso
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •AIANAL, but I find obvious that using copyrighted content to create content that competes with the copyright holder is far from being 'fair use'.
The main reason I am not contributing to open source is I don't want my code to be used to be used by AI. I don't mind if code derived from my contributions were to be published under the same license, but that's clearly not the case with AI.
Stop helping big corporations destroy the commons, please.
tony 🏳️⚧️ 🏴 🚴🧗🏻
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •sntx
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Strypey
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •> Training AI models on copyrighted works is "squarely what transformative use is," EFF’s Tori Noble told Reason
People are very upset about this. But it's not a simple 'pro-AI' vs. 'anti-AI' question. It's a complex legal one about where the boundary lines between fair use and copyright violation ought to lie. One can be vehemently opposed to #MOLE Trainers (as I am), without necessarily wanting the copyright monopoly strengthened in the way Big Content is pushing for here.
(1/?)
#AI
Strypey
in reply to Strypey • • •It's analogous to the link tax issue. Would I feel sorry for DataFarmers if they had to pay individual journalists a royalty whenever their work was linked on DataFarming platforms like FarceBook or Xitter? Not for a second.
So do I support link taxes as policy? Also, not for a second. Not because of their affect on the DataFarmers targeted, but because of the precedent created. If linking required a copyright license, and perhaps a royalty, that would fundamentally break the open web.
(2/?)
Kieran McGuire
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •[End of Line]
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •USB Type-Steve
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Snuffleupadon
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I thought this was a quote from the DOJ and that EFF was (rightfully) calling them out. EFF needs to get on the right side of history or forget about any future donations from me. The only thing "transformative" about laundering copyrighted materials through a plagiarism machine is how it turns other people's work into money for billionaires. This is an absolute disgrace and an unforced error.
Edit: you know what, I cancelled, I'm not going to act like my threat means anything to you. What a waste. When the institutions that are supposed to be standing up for freedom and fairness start talking like and supporting the opposition you can't make idle threats. I hope someone else stands up where you fell down.
Pēteris Krišjānis
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I do not think fair use applies here. This also doesn't touch native rights at all. One corner of law in very narrow interpretation might be correct, it wider context it is still wrong.
This is usually where new laws get written tho.
a40YOStudent
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Szabó Em, Enigma He-Art Director
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Donald Ball
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Marcus The Board Gamer
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Ok, so I’ll download copyright material to train my own actual intelligence? That’s fine right and fair use? Nobody will sue me for breach of copyright, right? RIGHT?
My goddess give your head a wobble. Supporting mass theft of people’s work to feed to the Great Fascist Hallucination Machine? That’s probably the most stupid thing I’ve heard. To hear it from the EFF? Beyond stupid.
sneedy maccreedy
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Enalys
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Wow, the libertarians at EFF bootlicking the techno-fachists.
Not surprised at all.
Worik
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •I just read the article
I agree
Equinox ➡️ EF30
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Jim Jones
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Oof. Not the take I would have expected from you.
The fact that a well crafted prompt can pull near identical data from the training source shows this is not the case.
Touch grass, @eff, I think you have spent too much time online.
Troed Sångberg
in reply to Jim Jones • • •@GreatBigTable
This is simply not true in the general case*. The proof is simple and based in computer science and maths:
A great LLM to host locally is Qwen 3.8 27B. Quantized to 4 bit weights the size of the model is ~14GB on disk.
All of human knowledge cannot be compressed down to 14GB and then decompressed again (see Shannon's theorem). Thus LLMs do not work by storing training data.
*) When training has _failed_ and cause what's known as "overfitting" too much training data is stored close to verbatim in the model. This is unwanted (wastes model space) and are extreme outliers model creators work actively and successfully to make sure doesn't happen.
@eff
oheso
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Troed Sångberg
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Shimmin Beg (he/him)
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Jonathan Miller
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Divya Ranjan Pattanaik
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
in reply to Divya Ranjan Pattanaik • • •@divyaranjan There's a world of difference between "training is fair use" and abandoning copyright protections entirely.
The copyright office has different guidelines for training an LLM and distributing the output of an LLM. Rights holders of training data might need to licence outputs before they can be distributed without infringing.
I'm sure the EFF is taking this stance so that individuals can train and use LLMs for good ends both now and after the bubble pops. Sometimes laws and legal principles protect both large organisations and individuals, both to good ends and ill.
Even if "training is fair use" we can still fight the generative AI abuses, especially of the companies commercializing it while trying to shirk responsibility, both through legal and labor efforts.
🏳️🌈Quin
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Obsidian Snow Audio
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •William Gillis 🏴
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •runarcn
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •ChiCPL
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •glitchcake⚡🍰🇵🇸
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •Mikołaj 🏳️🌈
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •JBrown, Esq
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •this.... is an insane, tone deaf, basically tech illiterate take on "transformative use" and im utterly shocked to see EFF publish this. Ive been funding EFF for years... and this is the first time I've had STRONG doubts about my support.
This should be reviewed, reconsidered.
Victoria 🏳️⚧️
in reply to Electronic Frontier Foundation • • •