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Comment by nitrogen | Hacker News Reader

Isn't the purpose of a ML model to describe actual facts, derived mechanically and not creatively, and thus might not be subject to US copyright in the first place?

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It may not constitute a new copyright (like a database copyright on a new collection of stuff copyrighted by others), but that doesn't invalidate existing copyrights and the license requirements under which the copyrighted material was used.

But I'm not a lawyer, so no idea how the interactions are in that situation. The closest analogy I could think of are sampling in music: how much must the original works be atomized before they don't count anymore?

But you could argue that the weights of the model wouldn't be what they are without the copyrighted work. Since their model does use the work, apart of it was "derived" from that piece.

This isn't about the various senses the English word "derived" can have, it's about the specific meaning of the legal term "derivative work." That would start with including major elements of another work and those elements being subject to copyright (e.g. in the US, book titles are not). There's no point in talking about how one could argue that something wouldn't be what it is without something else, that's not the legal basis at all. In no legal sense are the Indiana Jones movies derivative works of the old 1930's serials just because they were sources of inspiration.

Being subject/able to copyright, complying with the license, and not infringing on the original work are separate issues

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