[00:00:02] Speaker A: Ramping up your business. The time is near. You've given it heart, now get it in Gear.
It's Passage to Profit with Richard and Elizabeth Gearhart.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: I'm Richard Gearhart, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart, not an attorney, but I do marketing for Gearhart Law and I am the founder of Gear Media Studios, a full service podcast studio.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Welcome to Passage to Profit, the road to entrepreneurship where we talk with celebrities and entrepreneurs about their stories and their business ventures.
[00:00:37] Speaker D: It's time for intellectual property news and guess what we're talking about AI Complete. As if we haven't talked a lot. But this is an interesting case. Now we've been talking about AI in the courts for a long time and yesterday, just yesterday, a court in San Francisco, Federal District Court in San Francisco, Judge William Allsup handed down a major ruling that is going to have a huge impact on the rights of creators. If you're an intellectual property geek like me, this is important stuff. So Anthropic is AI platform. They make the AI Claude and they were sued by a bunch of creators because Claude was using their content and regurgitating it as AI stuff. Right. And the court was asked to decide is the use of this content considered fair use under the copyright laws and so is it justified? And so this was a big question out there is like, could copyright holders, artists, creators block the use of AI if it was using their copyrighted material? And the court decided no. This is a big deal because it really kind of clears the way for the AI platforms to use content from people and transform it.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Right. But then they said also kind of reverse themselves almost that Anthropic did violate authors rights by saving pirated copies of their books as part of a central library of all the books in the world that would not necessarily be used for AI training.
So I think that's a little bit different. I think what this is saying is it has to go through the courts. And if I were the creators here, I would appeal this.
[00:02:26] Speaker D: It's inevitable. I think you'll have the Supreme Court making a decision on this. But anthropic took 7 million books that they pirated, didn't pay for and uploaded those books and used that as the basis for their data set, which is where all the AI stuff is generated. And so the court said, well you have to, there's damages that go to the creators for this because you can't just steal their books.
[00:02:55] Speaker C: How did they Even do that. Cause I pay for all my books on Kindle.
[00:02:58] Speaker D: Well, they went to. They literally went to the pirate website and downloaded all the books from that.
[00:03:03] Speaker C: Well, that's terrible.
[00:03:05] Speaker D: I think it is, too.
[00:03:06] Speaker C: I mean, because if you know any.
[00:03:07] Speaker D: Authors, somebody should take them to court.
[00:03:09] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, authors put a lot of their own self and time and energy. I mean, your, your time is your life. And they put their life into these work, creative works, and somebody shouldn't just be able to take it.
[00:03:22] Speaker D: I don't think I agree. So let's, let's ask our panel here what your thoughts might be on this situation.
[00:03:29] Speaker E: Matt, I'd be happy to. So I have an IP out there called Sabbath, and it was a comic book that was made into a book, and we also have a screenplay. So someone who invested a lot of money and time in making something, I would have serious issues with that.
And never mind being fair, it's stealing. So I'm against it. If you want to use it, license it for me. Otherwise, go create your own content.
[00:03:54] Speaker D: I think ultimately they're gonna kill the golden goose because a lot of people who are professional creators wouldn't create because they can't get paid for it, they.
[00:04:02] Speaker E: Can'T pay their bills.
[00:04:04] Speaker D: Where's the incentive?
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Or you keep it super private, don't put it on the Internet.
So maybe it spawns a whole new industry.
[00:04:11] Speaker F: Tamia, I kind of agree with Matt. I feel the same way, especially it takes a lot for content creators to create that type of content and for them not to be protected and they can just be replaced. I mean, that's how they make their livelihood.
And I obviously deal a lot with content creators and my type of industry. I mean, I'm a content creator too, so it's very frustrating when you put all your hard work into it, and then it's not really protected. And I can twist what you're saying and, like, it can be reused. There is a fine line.
[00:04:46] Speaker D: Right? Yes, I agree. I mean, the judge in the case said that, you know, well, people have been kind of doing this for years and that they would read a book and a couple of books, and then they would write a new book based on what they read. Right. So AI is kind of doing the same thing. But in this case, you had to buy the book, or somebody had to buy the book first. Right.
And then if you're writing something new and you copy a section of the previous book and put it in yours, then you give credit to the person. Otherwise, it's called plagiarism. Right. So I think there's some differences. And I've seen AI content that includes paragraph by paragraph, lifting from an actual source.
[00:05:33] Speaker B: So, Rob?
[00:05:34] Speaker G: Yeah, I think there's some history around these issues with the Internet, and one of them was very early with Google and Amazon. They actually scanned printed books back in the early years of the Internet and put them online.
So all those scans were made available online, and they were. They were building this world library of sorts is what they were doing. They were digitizing all these books. And in some ways, that's kind of similar to what's going on now is that they're taking an existing piece of content and converting it into something new and then creating the opportunity to create derivative content from that same content.
And so this is just a new twist on an old business strategy of taking content from others and creating derivative content, making it available and putting under a subscription. That's what Audible does. That's what Amazon has done for a long time as well. I was fortunate. About a year and a half ago, I got paid by an AI company to take all of the 600 video episodes, audio and video episodes of the. Of the new media show that I do.
[00:06:46] Speaker H: And.
[00:06:47] Speaker G: And they actually paid us to get that content so they could scan it and use it as training data to put into conversational AI, is what they called it.
[00:06:57] Speaker D: Right.
[00:06:58] Speaker G: This was a couple years ago. And so there has been a pass. And one of the things that they pitched me at the time was that we're. We're an ethical AI company. Right. So we pay for the content that we use to train our AI.
But I think over time that. That ethics has kind of gone away.
[00:07:15] Speaker D: Because they don't want to spend the money to do it. And then going around getting everybody's permission seems almost impossible.
[00:07:21] Speaker G: Yeah, And I think they just abandoned that now.
[00:07:23] Speaker D: Yeah, but at least you got paid.
[00:07:25] Speaker G: For it, though, at that time. Yeah, because it was still very early in the process, I guess.
[00:07:30] Speaker D: You know, to Elizabeth's point, this is one court, one decision. It adds some more information now to the legal mix.
It'll certainly be appealed, and other courts may have different views on it. But as it stands right now, it seems like the general consensus is that the AI platforms got a step ahead, and so we'll just have to monitor it.
[00:07:54] Speaker C: Well, if you let the tech guys run the world, then that's what's going to happen.
[00:07:58] Speaker D: That's what's going to happen. So, speaking of intellectual property, if you have an idea or invention that you want to protect, Contact us at Gearhart Law. We work with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire process of obtaining patents, trademarks and copyrights too. And you can visit learn more about Patents.com or learn more about Trademarks.com for a free consultation. Or you can download your free Entrepreneur's Guide to Patents or Trademarks. And we'd love to hear from you if you have any questions about intellectual property, so Passage to Profit is a.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Nationally syndicated radio show appearing in 38 markets across the United States. In addition, Passage Profit has also been.
[00:08:40] Speaker D: Recently selected by Feedspot Podcasters Database as.
[00:08:44] Speaker B: A top 10 entrepreneur interview podcast. Thank you to the P2P team, our producer Noah Fleishman and our program coordinator Alicia Morrissey, and our social media maven Carolina Tabares. Look for our podcast tomorrow anywhere you get your podcasts. Our podcast is ranked in the top 3% globally. You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram X and on our YouTube channel. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
