> Questions of fair use are famously gray, and anyone who declares something as "entirely fair use", with no caveats, is nearly always wrong except for the must obvious cases, which the given example is most definitely not. A judge has wide latitude in determining fair use.
You're the one presenting unfounded claims with confidence here. There is well established case law about not being able to copyright facts. If you are actually fully paraphrasing a presentation of facts / ideas and not just altering a couple of words here and there, then there is a very strong case for non-infringement.
> You're the one presenting unfounded claims with confidence here.
No, I'm not. On the contrary, I'm really looking forward to this case because I believe it will be a great test of a bunch of concepts that are totally novel in the world of copyright law as it applies to generative AI. The only things I am presenting with confidence are:
1. That anyone who declares that something is unambiguously fair use (or, contrarily, unambiguously infringing) is likely wrong. There is simply too much latitude by judges, and there have certainly been cases where a ruling went one way, only to be overturned on appeal.
2. While I certainly have an opinion on how I think this case will be decided, I'm not presenting that with unwarranted confidence. Instead, I linked that great article on the 4 factors of fair use determination because it's clear to me lots of people are saying "fair use!" on one side or the other with no understanding of the factors judges must actually consider when making a determination.
You seem to be shifting the topic of this thread. The GP comment is about paraphrasing news articles while I don't see anything in the NYT lawsuit about paraphrasing. Rather, the NYT is concerned with exact reproduction or near exact reproduction. I too am very curious about the outcome of this case and wouldn't care bet either way on the outcome. I do have an opinion on what precedent would be better for our society but that doesn't mean I think that outcome is more likely.
However, none of that matters in this particular thread. There are well established precedents about paraphrasing news articles and they do not support the claim you made
The "unfounded claims" were backed up by a link to Stanford on fair use and copyright. That's the opposite of being unfounded.
Remember. The NY Times does not have a record of filing frivolous lawsuits. Particularly not against companies with deep pockets. So it is almost certainly true that a lawyer who knows the law better than you thinks that this has a real chance. So you should be looking for flaws in trivial defenses that you can think up, rather than assuming that you know best.
For example take your copyright facts defense. That would be great if the NY Times was a phone book. They aren't, in addition to facts they offer analysis, editorial positions, and so on. For example I just asked ChatGPT, "In 2016, did the New York Times generally support or oppose President Trump?" I got back an answer talking about various kinds of concerns that the New York Times had, including an editorial titled, "Why Donald Trump Should Not Be President". The copy that ChatGPT needed to have to do that has a lot more than just facts in it.
Now if you paraphrased the NY Times like ChatGPT did when it answered me, you'd have a perfect fair use defense. But you aren't doing it for money, you didn't make a copy of all the NY Times, you aren't destroying the market for the NY Times, and you're legally able to own copyright in your transformed work. OpenAI is doing it for money, did copy all of the NY Times, is seriously impacting the market for NY Times articles, and ChatGPT generated text does not get a copyright.
Fair use is filled with shades of grey. Even if ChatGPT appears to do the same thing that you do, it is far less clear that OpenAI will enjoy the same level of fair use defense.
The Stanford link is just generic information about the fair use tests and does nothing to backup the assertion.
> They aren't, in addition to facts they offer analysis, editorial positions, and so on.
Those opinions and ideas are also not copyrightable. Only expressions of them are copyrightable, which is why paraphrasing facts, ideas and opinions is not a violation of copyright.
> Fair use is filled with shades of grey.
Yes, but not all those shade are equal. There is a long history of litigation showing that paraphrasing news articles is fine.
You're the one presenting unfounded claims with confidence here. There is well established case law about not being able to copyright facts. If you are actually fully paraphrasing a presentation of facts / ideas and not just altering a couple of words here and there, then there is a very strong case for non-infringement.