Are neural nets (the weights file) copyrightable?

[willmorton]

how is it possible that in 2021 nobody has been yet taken to court for copying something NN related? so at lease we'd know how the judge ruled that case

[syzygy]

creative expression also went into creating a net: the process was set up by one or more humans.

Not how copyright works.

[syzygy]

I agree that it's possible to see things as you describe them in the quoted text above, but I call it a "stretch" because it's being pulled into a shape that isn't normally used: when people talk about interpreters and interpreted languages, this isn't usually the meaning they intend to convey.

But if you cannot stretch it to code, the case for it having to be released under the GPLv3 only becomes weaker.

[dkappe]

how is it possible that in 2021 nobody has been yet taken to court for copying something NN related? so at lease we'd know how the judge ruled that case

Companies have been claiming copyrights and licensing pretrained models (read nn weights) for years. They’ve been watermarking them and applying other forms of piracy prevention for years as well. But it hasn’t been tested in court that I’m aware. Until then we have the ip lawyers, who think it’s possible, and the programmers who...well you’ve been through the thread.

[Alayan]

I understand. I originally thought this is what the GPL is doing. But the GPL (even the GPL-3) apparently does something different. It relies on copyright law to define a derived work (or rather something legally equivalent to it but not depending on American copyright law).

After that it puts restrictions on derived works. If you cannot meet these restrictions you lose the right to distribute the GPL'ed program on which the derived work is based, and by extension you cannot distribute the derived work itself.

This depends on the claim of the FSF that a dynamically linked program still constitutes a derived work (otherwise it would be trivial to hijack any GPL'ed program). Apparently many people claim that this interpretation by the FSF is not deducible from copyright law.

They can define 'derived work' in any way they want, as long as they don't claim copyrights on it. They could define that it includes the house of the person who distributes, and require that the roof of that would have to be painted yellow first. As long as it is used only as terminology for specifying the conditions under which you can distribute the part they hold teh copyrights on, there isn't any restriction on how they could define it.

The only way copyright law comes into this is when determining whether they have the right to forbid you copying/distributing some part of it. Once they do, they can make arbitrary demands in return for waving that right.

Precisely, it is not needed for SF authors to claim copyrights on the NN weights.

If (Stockfish+NN) forms a "work based on the Program" in the meaning of the GPL, the license grants you the right to distribute the Stockfish part of (Stockfish+NN) only if the NN is GPL-compatible. If it is not, you don't meet the licensing requirements.

The GPL license explicitly states when distributing a direct derivative of the work (in copyright law) alongside GPL-incompatible things is allowed:

A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit.

The Fat Fritz 2 weights are definitely combined with the Stockfish-based binary "to form a larger program" so they don't benefit from this exception.

Syzygy's argument earlier on was that you can take the distribution right of distributing Stockfish by itself and add the distribution right of your own NN. This ignores that the right to distribute Stockfish is conditional upon meeting licensing requirements and the bundling can affect meeting them.

[towforce]

The two issues under dispute are:

1. Whether an NN can be copyrighted

2. Whether SF's GPL license would force CB to apply GPL to their NN weights file

My position is (1) yes and (2) yes, but I accept the fact that some intelligent people here don't agree with me.

Let's say that each of (1) and (2) has a 50% chance of being either "yes" or "no". In that case, the probability of CB, if challenged, being able to keep the weights file under a licence that gives them private copyright (or other) rights to the weights file are approximately 25%.

Good thing that, for reasons already discussed, it's unlikely that anyone will challenge them then!

[syzygy]

The GPL license explicitly states when distributing a direct derivative of the work (in copyright law) alongside GPL-incompatible things is allowed:

A compilation of a covered work with other separate and independent works, which are not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an “aggregate” if the compilation and its resulting copyright are not used to limit the access or legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit.

Which words here say that something is allowed or not allowed? When I parse this text, I only see a definition of "aggregate".

Syzygy's argument earlier on was that you can take the distribution right of distributing Stockfish by itself and add the distribution right of your own NN. This ignores that the right to distribute Stockfish is conditional upon meeting licensing requirements and the bundling can affect meeting them.

If I take covered work = SF, what is the text of the GPLv3 that sets a condition that is not fulfilled when bundling SF with my own NN?

[towforce]

If I take covered work = SF...

I don't think you can do that. I think that if you didn't want your NN included in the covered work, you'd achieve this by not using SF in your project.

[syzygy]

If I take covered work = SF...

I don't think you can do that. I think that if you didn't want your NN included in the covered work, you'd achieve this by not using SF in your project.

Of course I can do that. People are distributing SF by itself all the time, for which they have permission from the GPLv3 with covered work = SF.

So SF by itself certainly is a covered work licensed under the GPLv3. (Covered work = the program or a work based on the program. There you have it.)
This license gives me permission to distribute SF under certain conditions.
Which condition does the GPLv3 text specify that is not fulfilled when I bundle SF with an NN?
Please spell out for me the relevant portion of the GPLv3. I don't want the usual "you can't do that!", I want to see the text from the GPLv3 that tells me I can't do that.

[towforce]

If I take covered work = SF...

I don't think you can do that. I think that if you didn't want your NN included in the covered work, you'd achieve this by not using SF in your project.

Of course I can do that. People are distributing SF by itself all the time, for which they have permission from the GPLv3 with covered work = SF.

So SF by itself certainly is a covered work licensed under the GPLv3. (Covered work = the program or a work based on the program. There you have it.)
This license gives me permission to distribute SF under certain conditions.
Which condition does the GPLv3 text specify that is not fulfilled when I bundle SF with an NN?
Please spell out for me the relevant portion of the GPLv3. I don't want the usual "you can't do that!", I want to see the text from the GPLv3 that tells me I can't do that.

As I was told earlier, "...not by their nature extensions of the covered work, and which are not combined with it such as to form a larger program...".

To use another book analogy, you seem to be saying that you can take a GPL book, replace chapter 3, and then distribute the book while maintaining copyright over the new chapter 3. The GPL doesn't let you do that.