Josh Hawley Mercilessly Grills Professor Over AI Copyright 'Mass Theft'

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During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) asked Santa Clara University Professor Edward Lee about artificial intelligence companies using copyrighted material to train their models.

Transcript

00:00I just want to follow up on this line of questioning, Professor Lee. When you say

00:04that it would be to the benefit of the United States, isn't Mr. Baldacci a

00:07citizen of the United States? Entirely. I'm not saying that Mr. Baldacci does not

00:12benefit from the copyright. There is another- So is it, but let's take a

00:17different author. Professor Viswanathan, she's a citizen of the United States?

00:21Yes. So I'm just struggling to understand when you say that it will benefit, that

00:25the mass theft of their works will benefit the United States ultimately,

00:28you're saying that the mass theft and potential impoverishment of American

00:34citizens ultimately redounds to the good of America? Not at all, Senator. I think

00:38you're being a little too imprecise, right? What you mean to say is it may benefit

00:41American corporations. It may impoverish American citizens, but it will benefit

00:48American corporations. Well, Senator, there is a balance to be struck and the courts-

00:55Well, indeed, but it's- you are waving the wand, the magic wand, that this will benefit

01:00the United States, so we're in an arms race with China. I'm just trying to drill

01:04down on your assertion. I think what you're really saying is, is that the

01:08enrichment of certain multinational corporations that are incidentally based in

01:12the United States taking the works and personal property of American citizens is a

01:17good thing. That's a little bit less clear to me. Well, the way that I view the

01:22national interest, as stated by President Trump's executive order, is that there is a

01:28national priority in maintaining the United States dominance and leadership

01:34globally in AI. And I would defer to the view of the AI czar, David Sachs, who said, if

01:42there is no pathway to fair use in AI training, we will lose the race with China.

01:49Well, you think that we should allow an unelected AI czar to decide what the

01:54rights of American citizens are? No, not at all. This is going through the courts. I

01:58would let the courts decide all of these disputes, and there are presently 44

02:04lawsuits around the country. So this is not a time for Congress to intervene in

02:11terms of deciding these very difficult- It just sounds strange to me to say that the

02:18United States, as a nation, is going to benefit from the mass violations of its

02:24citizens' rights. I thought what made us a nation was our common citizenship, the

02:30things that we agree on together, the rights that we hold in common. And your

02:34argument seems to be it's fine to violate those rights in mass if it redounds to

02:37the benefit of the nation. I think what you're really seeing is to the benefit of

02:40certain people in the nation and their immediate interests. Let me ask you about

02:44something else you said, fair use- Can I respond? Well, just a second. I have limited

02:50time here. Fair use, you said, is a flexible doctrine. It's an equitable doctrine. And

02:56these companies aren't exactly coming to this with clean hands, are they? They're

02:59coming to claiming fair use after they've stolen Mr. Baldacci's work. They didn't

03:05take it from the library. They didn't license it. They didn't buy it. They went to a

03:09pirated, illegal site and took it. And now they're coming and claiming the cover of

03:16equity. That seems kind of strange, doesn't it? Is that how equitable law

03:19works? That is the very question, the initial acquisition, whether that was

03:26justified as fair use. And the two judges disagreed on how to treat that initial

03:34acquisition from the shadow libraries. So I think it would be incorrect for us to

03:40assume that it is necessarily a violation. And the Supreme Court in Google

03:47versus Oracle had an opportunity to discuss or require considerations of bad

03:55faith in the fair use analysis. And it rejected that opportunity and even cited

04:01Judge Laval's very influential fair use article saying that fair use is not

04:07limited to the well-behaved.

04:09Okay. Now, you're making these, we appreciate you being here and thank you're

04:14making these arguments very gamely. That's helpful, I think, to have this debate. But

04:18I just want to point out that there seems to be, there's a lot of hand-waving going on

04:24here. Every time we get down to the nub of the question, can you take, can these giant

04:29corporations take the copyrighted work of individual citizens, we get distracted

04:35with, well, it's for the good of the country, maybe it's not so bad, we have an

04:40arms race on, there's an AI czar. I actually think that's, I don't think it's that

04:44complicated. I think it's pretty simple. I think in America we have rights, those

04:47rights are what protect us, these rights are being violated, and if we're going to

04:51succeed as a nation and uphold our principles as a nation, we better darn well

04:55enforce the individual rights on which the nation's founded. I mean, it's just a

04:59thought. Senator Welch.

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