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Voice.ai: GPL Violations with a Side of DRM

598 points by ronsor 4y ago

faisal_ksa 4y ago
I want to thank you for sharing this with us
arvidkahl 4y ago
I for the life of me can't understand removing people who point out such critical issues from your community. Is it greed? Ignorance? Complete unawareness of the Streisand effect?
- trzy 4y ago
  Sweep it under the rug hoping that this person is unlikely to be able to afford to litigate this.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    Their discord is now 99% full of people complaining about the GPL violations. The voice.ai discord moderators are so far handling it with aplomb.
    - mrtweetyhack 4y ago
      aplomb noun self-confidence or assurance, especially when in a demanding situation.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  I presume that this was an attempt to prevent the complainer from complaining in their public forum where it would be read by other users of their product.
- Kalium 4y ago
  Why check and see if they have a point, when it's easier to assume they're a crank and extortionist and ban them? Gets you the nice feeling of making it all go away immediately.
voakbasda 4y ago
Great to see companies getting exposed for these kinds of violations. However, their response of shooting the messenger tells me that they will not simply roll over and give up their source code. I strongly suggest contacting the owners of the open source projects and talking them into having a lawyer send a message to them. Those projects have the necessary legal standing to bring a meaningful copyright infringement case against Voice.ai. There are plenty of lawyers that will send a suitable message, at no cost to the projects, For example, the Software Freedom Law Center [0] provides free consultations and has a good track record. [0] https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/ https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/
- ronsor 4y ago
  So far I've also emailed the FSF (license-violation@gnu.org) and am currently awaiting a response.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - voakbasda 4y ago
    My understanding (which may be incorrect) is that the FSF actively defends copyright on GNU projects. They do not defend other projects, but they will consult with attorneys on matters of the licenses themselves. Nevertheless, I (and I'm sure many others here on HN) would enjoy seeing the response from the FSF.
    - ronsor 4y ago
      Praat includes code from the GNU Scientific Library (GSL)
    - jraph 4y ago
      Maybe the Software Freedom Conservancy would be more suitable? https://sfconservancy.org/ https://sfconservancy.org/
junon 4y ago
I'm not a fan of the GPL but in these cases it's a choice to simply not use it as opposed to steamroll through it. I wish the OSS community had a legal team that would represent license violations like this. I have heard the FSF doesn't go after these, and EFF doesn't really tackle licensing issues like this does it?
- EvanAnderson 4y ago
  An earlier poster mentioned SFLC: https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact The Software Freedom Conservancy is another place to look. They defend the GPL for a number of member projects, much like FSF does for GNU projects. (I don’t know how a project would go about becoming a member of the Conservancy) https://sfconservancy.org/ https://sfconservancy.org/
password4321 4y ago
I understand the GPLv3 angle where the violation is clear, but not asking for other source code under LGPL: > In accordance with the LGPL v2.1, I am requesting a copy of the libgcrypt source code plus the source code of VoiceAILib.dll and of any other components, tools, and/or scripts necessary to reproduce a working executable with my own version of libgcrypt. I thought the required binaries (needed to re-link, .obj for Windows) could be requested but the source was not required, isn't that the point of LGPL?
- rmccue 4y ago
  The point of LGPL is that it’s less viral than the GPL, specifically for linking. If you link GPL code into your project, the whole project virally becomes GPL; with LGPL, the link is the boundary. You can still request a copy of the source of that library though.
  - password4321 4y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. The wording in the original article seemed to imply turning over the source was required by the LGPL, but if I understand what you're saying (You can still request a copy of the source of that library though) it should be more of a "pretty please, if you're feeling generous".
    - voakbasda 4y ago
      IANAL but AFAIK, the license absolutely does require them to provide the source code for any LGPL libraries that they used. It does not affect/infect their other source code, as would be the case with the full GPL. However, voice.ai was foolish enough to include a GPLv3 component in their product, so all of their source code arguably has been affected by its terms.
      - password4321 4y ago
        Yes, thanks! The piece I didn't understand (under LGPL) was "source code of VoiceAILib.dll".
codeguro 4y ago
That’s it, I’m reporting this to the FSF, and the copyright holders to libgcrypt and Praat. This is exactly what the GPL license was made for!
favorited 4y ago
> I personally recommend downloading a copy of the Voice.ai software and contacting the developers to request source code. This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies. The GPLv3 explicitly includes language about how to cure a violation (spoiler alert: it's not "haha, we caught you - now hand over all of your source!"), and both of the mentioned violations are available under GPLv3. This person needs to notify the copyright holders of the GPL libraries, who can then contact the copyright holders of the violating software, starting the timer on the window in which the offending software must be cured.
- doesnt_know 4y ago
  > This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies. Good. It's literally the point of choosing the GPL that organisations producing proprietary software can't benefit and mix in GPL licensed work without publishing the source.
  - favorited 4y ago
    It still doesn't accomplish anything. There's nothing magic about the GPL as a license which can force proprietary code to be released as open-source. Emailing someone and saying "your product contains GPL'd code, so give me your proprietary source code" is meaningless. The copyright-holder can take action against an organization producing proprietary software who is violating their copyright. Legally, they're violating the rights of the copyright-holder, not the end-user. > The claim that a GPL violation could lead to the forcing open of proprietary code that has wrongfully included GPL'd components is simply wrong. There is no provision in the Copyright Act to require distribution of infringing work on altered terms. What copyright plaintiffs are entitled to, under the Act, are damages, injunctions to prevent infringing distribution, and--where appropriate--attorneys' fees. A defendant found to have wrongfully included GPL'd code in its own proprietary work can be mulcted in damages for the distribution that has already occurred, and prevented from distributing its product further. That's a sufficient disincentive to make wrongful use of GPL'd program code. And it is all that the Copyright Act permits. https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/ https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/
StuckDuck 4y ago
Unfortunately it seems like nowadays with open source being very widespread that many companies or people simply ignore/forget that these libraries that they include in their software aren't just "public domain" because the code is public, but they have a license that should be respected and actually has legal value, so what often ends up happening is that they take advantage of open source software or libraries in their proprietary software without even giving a crap about their authors and their community
- ilaksh 4y ago
  But the first error is one that you seem to have made also: that there are different types of open source licenses. GPL or other copyleft licenses generally require you to disclose the code (or make a licensing deal in some cases). Things like the MIT license are much less restrictive.
  - ronsor 4y ago
    In this particular case, Voice.ai is also violating permissively licensed libraries. For example, libFLAC is included in VoiceAILib.dll: reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917 The license text: https://github.com/xiph/flac/blob/master/COPYING.Xiph https://github.com/xiph/flac/blob/master/COPYING.Xiph The license requires Voice.ai to include the license text somewhere in the distribution or documentation, yet they do not.
    - ilaksh 4y ago
      Okay but that's still quite different from the copyleft licenses and violations which was my point.
      - dsr_ 4y ago
        Actually, it isn't. It's the same underlying principle. All software must be paid for, with the exception of countries which have an actual public domain. Some software is paid for with money, some with acknowledgments, and some with source code sharing. Sometimes the developer demands postcards, and sometimes they demand that you not use it for evil purposes. All of these are forms of payment. If you don't pay for it, you don't have certain rights to it.
flockonus 4y ago
Thanks for this article, saved me installing a potential vector.
rvz 4y ago
See? It is good to catch grifters abusing the GPL license and holding them accountable. We can all do the same and file complaints like this one [0] about GitHub, OpenAI and Microsoft with their Copilot product and model being trained on AGPL-3.0 code and a mixture of incompatible licenses and also outputs sensitive info of developers. Give that Truth Social was caught using Mastodon's source code and violated the AGPL license by giving no attribution and no copy of the source code which they later complied, now we are starting to see this with AI projects violating licenses of open source projects; the same should also apply to GitHub, OpenAI and Microsoft with their Copilot product. [0] https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/ https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/
- kmeisthax 4y ago
  Did Truth Social ever actually comply with AGPLv3? I thought they just pointed vaguely at the original Mastodon source repository.
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > a mixture of incompatible licenses As far as copilot is concerned, those repos might as well be closed source. They are not accepting the license, and don't care about it. Their goal/claim is that the language model will not retain copyrightable sequences.
  - jimlongton 4y ago
    > Their goal/claim is that the language model will not retain copyrightable sequences. In case people are not aware, we know for a fact this is demonstrably false. It may not even be possible to achieve this with existing models. People have replicated entire sections of GPL code (with comments) using CoPilot. This is true of other models, like image generation models which can return clearly recognisable images which were present in their training sets.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      The interesting question is how hard that is to fix in future versions.
kmeisthax 4y ago
One thing I'd love to see would be a way for a copyright owner (e.g. GPL library developer) to get an injunction on an infringer prohibiting them from having "no reverse engineering" clauses in their license agreements.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  The GPL already prohibits further restrictions.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    Correct. In addition it protects from patent trolling.
jzebedee 4y ago
The installer also doesn't even let you view the Terms and Conditions. It's styled as a link but it literally can't be opened: https://imgur.com/CUzLdRQ https://imgur.com/CUzLdRQ This is ironic considering how aggressive the language is on their branding page: https://voice.ai/branding-guidelines https://voice.ai/branding-guidelines > WARNING: > We use technology to check for infringement on the Internet and on social platforms and may automatically (or manually) issue takedown notices for content that infringes on our IP. Simply add our approved clip to your content to avoid takedown notices. We reserve all rights.
- user3939382 4y ago
  Now it works: https://voice.ai/tos https://voice.ai/tos
  - mrtweetyhack 4y ago
    [dead]
  - sva_ 4y ago
    So they're reading this thread, I suppose. But no statement yet.
    - b112 4y ago
      Someone should just hack them, put the code on github, and respond to dcma requests with GPL legalities. They should be fined too, but the above at least would solve their miscreantic behaviour.
      - jahewson 4y ago
        No that would be equally wrong.
        hackmiester 4y ago
        It would be legally wrong, but morally, it would be less cut and dry. I'm not saying it is moral either, but I would like to point out that those two things aren't equal.
user3939382 4y ago
If it's not already, it would be nice if Google and Apple made these types of violations grounds for revoking approval of apps from their app stores. In general I abhor the whole concept of the "blessed app" walled garden gatekeeping, but if they're doing it anyway (and they are) they may as well do some good while they're at it.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  Isn't a copyright violation already some sort of grounds for removal? If someone uploaded an app with a bunch of disney copyrighted stuff it would be pulled pretty quickly. I imagine at the least the original developers could file a DMCA notice.
  - intelVISA 4y ago
    Seems like it should be, after all if you publish an app that plays copyrighted music it'd be folded by The Powers That Be pretty quickly.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    In law, the size of your warchest matters a whole lot more than you think. Disney has an enormous warchest. You probably don't.
- saurik 4y ago
  https://www.engadget.com/2011-01-09-the-gpl-the-app-store-and-you.html https://www.engadget.com/2011-01-09-the-gpl-the-app-store-an... http://web.archive.org/web/20110115040843/http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/08/vlc-app-removed-from-app-store http://web.archive.org/web/20110115040843/http://www.tuaw.co... http://web.archive.org/web/20110111004349/http://planet.videolan.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110111004349/http://planet.vide...
- cwillu 4y ago
  I mean, if Voice.ai doesn't have the rights to distribute a piece of software, then google and apple also do not have rights to distribute it. (They may have required that voice.ai (or whoever) indemnify them against legal action resulting from voice.ai's actions) Perhaps the authors of praat or libgcrypt could issue a DMCA takedown request to apple and google?
jimlongton 4y ago
> We use deep learning technology to create realistic AI voice clones that sound exactly like an impression of anyone in the world; whether it's your favourite reality star, game character, celebrity or cartoon character. Their business model is creepy and unethical. > Our Voice Universe community of contributors are training incredible voices every day to create hyper-realistic replicas that sound exactly like the real person! And they even get their users to do the dirty work for them. Classy.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  >> We use deep learning technology to create realistic AI voice clones that sound exactly like an impression of anyone in the world; whether it's your favourite reality star, game character, celebrity or cartoon character. >Their business model is creepy and unethical. That's the weird thing to me, at least market it in some way that's not creepy. This tech can be amazing for people who have recordings of their voice but lost the ability to speak out loud since; I certainly would want to use this software for that purpose if I were ever to lose my voice long term. Or you could go the unexplored business direction and market it for voice actors and the companies that hire them (especially the lower segment, like for ads) because a voice alone cannot be copyrighted. But no, they went the "creepy internet stalker/misinformation generator/scammer" way. Quite unimaginative.
dmitrygr 4y ago
IS there a donation link to help take this to court by copyright owners? I'd be glad to spend some dough on this
SomaticPirate 4y ago
Blatant disregard for GPL. I hope to see some lawsuits for this. Doing things like this really should be an ethical violation for engineers. Every engineer should be able to say no to building something like this
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  > Every engineer should be able to say no to building something like this Considering it is illegal, every person is able to say no. The engineers are likely complicit, either that they didn't check, or didn't care about the license.
neilv 4y ago
A lot of tech industry doesn't seem to take FLOSS license violations very seriously. Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how this would work, but something like the following seems interesting... In those cases in which IP theft appears to be intentional or grossly negligent, don't respond like a nonprofit flowerchild bringing peace and love to someone who simply didn't know. Instead, get a pitbull of a lawyer, to make the perpetrator actually regret it. Which, for startups that made claims to investors regarding ownership/rights to the IP they used, could then trigger an additional concern: defrauding investors. Then, after news of companies sorely regretting IP theft, a lot of companies proactively ban IP-theft-laundering tools like Copilot. And the companies that keep using tools like Copilot (or who don't excise existing stolen IP code quick enough, before forensic tools catch up, and catch them), start getting called to account by the pitbulls.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious. It's not a problem of naming but of who can afford fighting a legal battle in court and who cannot. There's been many famous episode of big companies going to court for copyright infringement. But they know they can ignore individual developers.
  - neilv 4y ago
    Is this a startup or law firm waiting to happen? (Preferably driven by true-believer public interest lawyers.)
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lmm 4y ago
    It's less about the money than the will. FOSS types tend to not want to sue.
    - JohnFen 4y ago
BillSaysThis 4y ago
Not to mention they have the gall to include an ethics page on their site: https://voice.ai/ethics https://voice.ai/ethics. Not that it mentions following the licenses discussed on this thread. ROFL but in a sad way.
- klyrs 4y ago
  ROFG (rolling on the floor grieving)
jfengel 4y ago
It's weird reading this thread on a site where I so often read "I don't believe in invisible property." Often applied to music, movies, or art. I'm sure it's not as simple or hypocritical as the same people saying both things. And this specific story is about a very specific subversion of intellectual property rules to make it open. But it's a little weird hearing a complete lack of "information wants to be free" when the thing being "stolen" is our work.
- runnerup 4y ago
  I think the “information wants to be free” crowd would be happier if all work was free to be stolen. GPL enforcement is currently necessary to make that happen. It would be better if it wasn’t.
- RobotToaster 4y ago
  Copyleft ensures the continuation of a freedom already given, copyright restricts freedom. (Yes I know de jure copyleft relies on copyright to exist, but morally they are diametrically opposite)
- PeterisP 4y ago
  The original post is consistent with "information wants to be free" - we should be free to use and view Voice.ai source code, just as Voice.ai could use and view the code of these other projects they did. The only hypocrisy I see here is from Voice.ai, taking open source code themselves but then insisting (without any right to do so) that the result has become their proprietary "invisible property" and others can't do stuff with it.
- funnymony 4y ago
  GPL is a briliant trick. It is a extreme reaction to extremely dire copyright situation. If information cant be free in this system, then let’s add a restriction that it must be free. Briliant!
- pessimizer 4y ago
  The same people are saying both things. The day we end copyright I'd be happy to end the GPL.
Joel_Mckay 4y ago
The problem with GPL is its a contaminating license, there are problems proving violations, and shaking people down like a commercial entity is toxic. I prefer Apache 2.0, as who knows where chunks of code end up 10 years from now. If you are able, than its good karma to support the community with your own development hours and or fiscal donations. =)
- bitL 4y ago
  The whole point of GPL is that nobody gets to ride free without contributing sources back to community. Of course companies prefer Apache or similar licenses. But then you end up with Amazon taking over products they didn't develop, never paid a cent to original developers and squeezed all fiscal potential out of the product, killing off the original.
  - Joel_Mckay 4y ago
    Actually, if you can make money from my old code it makes me happy. You are correct in that Bezos does little for the community, and AWS tends to repackage community projects. Yet, most firms do put in many paid hours on kernel development etc. Have a wonderful day =)
    - funnymony 4y ago
      > Yet, most firms do put in many paid hours on kernel development etc. Linux kernel uses GPL.
      - Joel_Mckay 4y ago
        Indeed, but my point was the license is not always appropriate for some businesses who still wish to participate in FOSS. Have a great day =)
  - pabs3 4y ago
    > contributing sources back to community Nothing in the GPL requires this, only distributing sources down to your users, who may or may not then redistribute the sources back upstream.
esskay 4y ago
Time to let the free software foundation know. Is this something they are likely to help the authors of the IP theft take action against Voice AI for if they refuse to comply?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
madsbuch 4y ago
Is it safe to assume that GPT3 has been trained on GPLed code? And in that case, should the GPT3 source code be freely available?
- yokem55 4y ago
  The healthy approach would be that AI models can 'study' code as much as they want and aggregate what they learn into a model. The 'right to read' is a thing. But the end user of the model should take care that the output they get is not infringing on anyone's copyright.
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  We'll find out when this issue eventually ends up in court. Copilot is the most notable example of this mess. If a judge rules that AI will regurgitate existing code or that the network stores this code, these models will very quickly infringe the GPL and all matter of licenses at the same time. If this is the case, you'll also need to figure out what GPL compliance looks like. The code training the network likely doesn't contain any code that must be shared, only the model being executed. Does that mean that providing the entire data set complies with GPL, leaving it up to the user to spend millions on training their own network? Or does the model file itself need to be distributed as-is? The AI people argue that AI learns concepts from code and does not store or replicate the input code directly, though I very much doubt that given that AI will spit out code it has been trained on verbatim. If this is the case then the code may have been processed by the algorithm, but the license impact would be similar to processing it in another way: just because you compress up a bunch of code doesn't mean you need to open source your compression tool. We need clear legislation for this because the court cases are going to be a clusterfuck.
- kevincox 4y ago
  I've also read GPL code and that doesn't make anything I write GPL. It matters if the code was substationally copied or not. So I think I would apply the same rules to AI. In general not all code produced is infringing on the copyright of all authors of training data. However there have been some clear cases of copying (GPL license text and a matrix multiplication routine for example) that do appear as copyright violations.
DDBE 4y ago
To clear up this confusion about "lashing out": You gave the impression of violating the TOS by debating an offline version and offering to provide information about it, so you could circumvent DMCA takedowns. That's when the volunteer mods had a group chat and decided a ban.
- TheRealPomax 4y ago
  We've been here before - if someone points out that the contract is void, and you ban them for then talking about or doing things that the contract forbids, the proper action is to turn around to the people who make the product you're a community mod for and go "hey, uh, it looks like you've tricked us into enforcing an illegal contract" instead of banning the person pointing out the thing you're community modding for is in multiple violations of the law.
- stefan_ 4y ago
  Volunteer mods? You mean racketeers?
nylonstrung 4y ago
I'm very tempted to have my IP lawyers reach out to with a near-identical request. Would anyone want to participate in a more coordinated effort urging them to comply?
- ronsor 4y ago
  I would personally love to participate. The more people behind it, the better.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
c2h5oh 4y ago
I wonder if GPL provisions regarding DRM removal and modification supersede anything in voice.ai license. If yes deobfuscating it, removing DRM and releasing it should be perfectly legal.
- ronsor 4y ago
  The GPLv3 prohibits adding additional restrictions and requires the distributor to waive their right to prohibit DRM circumvention. If Voice.AI attempts to enforce their ToS anyway, they are violating the GPL. IANAL, but because of the clean-hands doctrine, such a suit would fail.
  - c2h5oh 4y ago
    That's my understanding as well, but lacking the knowledge to remove DRM and willingness to become a target of a lawsuit to prove a point I am not going to test that legal theory just yet.
  - robocat 4y ago
    They can sue for damages, because the clean-hands doctrine doesn’t apply to suing for money, only applies to suing for equity (anything that isn’t money). The doctrine if unclean hands may only be used as a defense in claims of equity – which are claims in which the court seeks to make things equal or fair, though not by ordering the payment of damages IANAL - just noticed that and thought you might find it interesting…
habibur 4y ago
Here's one way to by pass GPL restrictions when you must use it for whatever reason. Create a separate service with all the GPL codes. Write your own micro service API to communicate with it. And then open source your micro service code without opening up your propitiatory part. Of course someone else should have thought of it before. Searched and found first hit on stackoverflow. That says it's OK at least when used in a separate VM, no shared memory between the two. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/40420/gpl-licensed-code-as-separate-process https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/40420/gpl-licensed-c...
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  If you run the server locally you'll still need to hand out the GPL'd code but that would likely work. The moment you include an AGPL licensed piece of code this no longer works, though. The post only mentions GPL and LGPL, but they're also violating other licenses as pointed out here in the comments. I wouldn't be surprised if there's also an AGPL licensed piece of code in there that makes this workaround impossible. Honestly, this workaround sounds like a lot of work to maintain long term while also putting you at the whims of library maintainers who may just switch out the license on you with newer versions, leaving you to do the maintenance and security monitoring of your dependency. If you need to put so much work into avoiding complying with the license you should consider just writing your own code instead.
bigape911 4y ago
Well, they are going to "fix" the problem by removing the FPL code. I don't trust that for a moment. They'll morr likely remove any identifying clues so no more gpl. Don't trust anyone

598 points by ronsor 4y ago

I want to thank you for sharing this with us

I for the life of me can't understand removing people who point out such critical issues from your community. Is it greed? Ignorance? Complete unawareness of the Streisand effect?

trzy 4y ago
Sweep it under the rug hoping that this person is unlikely to be able to afford to litigate this.
- runnerup 4y ago
  Their discord is now 99% full of people complaining about the GPL violations. The voice.ai discord moderators are so far handling it with aplomb.
  - mrtweetyhack 4y ago
    aplomb noun self-confidence or assurance, especially when in a demanding situation.
PeterisP 4y ago
I presume that this was an attempt to prevent the complainer from complaining in their public forum where it would be read by other users of their product.
Kalium 4y ago
Why check and see if they have a point, when it's easier to assume they're a crank and extortionist and ban them? Gets you the nice feeling of making it all go away immediately.

voakbasda 4y ago

Great to see companies getting exposed for these kinds of violations. However, their response of shooting the messenger tells me that they will not simply roll over and give up their source code. I strongly suggest contacting the owners of the open source projects and talking them into having a lawyer send a message to them. Those projects have the necessary legal standing to bring a meaningful copyright infringement case against Voice.ai. There are plenty of lawyers that will send a suitable message, at no cost to the projects, For example, the Software Freedom Law Center [0] provides free consultations and has a good track record. [0] https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/ https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact/

ronsor 4y ago
So far I've also emailed the FSF (license-violation@gnu.org) and am currently awaiting a response.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- voakbasda 4y ago
  My understanding (which may be incorrect) is that the FSF actively defends copyright on GNU projects. They do not defend other projects, but they will consult with attorneys on matters of the licenses themselves. Nevertheless, I (and I'm sure many others here on HN) would enjoy seeing the response from the FSF.
  - ronsor 4y ago
    Praat includes code from the GNU Scientific Library (GSL)
  - jraph 4y ago
    Maybe the Software Freedom Conservancy would be more suitable? https://sfconservancy.org/ https://sfconservancy.org/

junon 4y ago

I'm not a fan of the GPL but in these cases it's a choice to simply not use it as opposed to steamroll through it. I wish the OSS community had a legal team that would represent license violations like this. I have heard the FSF doesn't go after these, and EFF doesn't really tackle licensing issues like this does it?

EvanAnderson 4y ago
An earlier poster mentioned SFLC: https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact https://softwarefreedom.org/about/contact The Software Freedom Conservancy is another place to look. They defend the GPL for a number of member projects, much like FSF does for GNU projects. (I don’t know how a project would go about becoming a member of the Conservancy) https://sfconservancy.org/ https://sfconservancy.org/

password4321 4y ago

I understand the GPLv3 angle where the violation is clear, but not asking for other source code under LGPL: > In accordance with the LGPL v2.1, I am requesting a copy of the libgcrypt source code plus the source code of VoiceAILib.dll and of any other components, tools, and/or scripts necessary to reproduce a working executable with my own version of libgcrypt. I thought the required binaries (needed to re-link, .obj for Windows) could be requested but the source was not required, isn't that the point of LGPL?

rmccue 4y ago
The point of LGPL is that it’s less viral than the GPL, specifically for linking. If you link GPL code into your project, the whole project virally becomes GPL; with LGPL, the link is the boundary. You can still request a copy of the source of that library though.
- password4321 4y ago
  Thanks for the clarification. The wording in the original article seemed to imply turning over the source was required by the LGPL, but if I understand what you're saying (You can still request a copy of the source of that library though) it should be more of a "pretty please, if you're feeling generous".
  - voakbasda 4y ago
    IANAL but AFAIK, the license absolutely does require them to provide the source code for any LGPL libraries that they used. It does not affect/infect their other source code, as would be the case with the full GPL. However, voice.ai was foolish enough to include a GPLv3 component in their product, so all of their source code arguably has been affected by its terms.
    - password4321 4y ago
      Yes, thanks! The piece I didn't understand (under LGPL) was "source code of VoiceAILib.dll".

codeguro 4y ago

That’s it, I’m reporting this to the FSF, and the copyright holders to libgcrypt and Praat. This is exactly what the GPL license was made for!

favorited 4y ago

> I personally recommend downloading a copy of the Voice.ai software and contacting the developers to request source code. This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies. The GPLv3 explicitly includes language about how to cure a violation (spoiler alert: it's not "haha, we caught you - now hand over all of your source!"), and both of the mentioned violations are available under GPLv3. This person needs to notify the copyright holders of the GPL libraries, who can then contact the copyright holders of the violating software, starting the timer on the window in which the offending software must be cured.

doesnt_know 4y ago
> This approach is what drives corporations to adopt zero-GPL policies. Good. It's literally the point of choosing the GPL that organisations producing proprietary software can't benefit and mix in GPL licensed work without publishing the source.
- favorited 4y ago
  It still doesn't accomplish anything. There's nothing magic about the GPL as a license which can force proprietary code to be released as open-source. Emailing someone and saying "your product contains GPL'd code, so give me your proprietary source code" is meaningless. The copyright-holder can take action against an organization producing proprietary software who is violating their copyright. Legally, they're violating the rights of the copyright-holder, not the end-user. > The claim that a GPL violation could lead to the forcing open of proprietary code that has wrongfully included GPL'd components is simply wrong. There is no provision in the Copyright Act to require distribution of infringing work on altered terms. What copyright plaintiffs are entitled to, under the Act, are damages, injunctions to prevent infringing distribution, and--where appropriate--attorneys' fees. A defendant found to have wrongfully included GPL'd code in its own proprietary work can be mulcted in damages for the distribution that has already occurred, and prevented from distributing its product further. That's a sufficient disincentive to make wrongful use of GPL'd program code. And it is all that the Copyright Act permits. https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/ https://lwn.net/Articles/61292/

StuckDuck 4y ago

Unfortunately it seems like nowadays with open source being very widespread that many companies or people simply ignore/forget that these libraries that they include in their software aren't just "public domain" because the code is public, but they have a license that should be respected and actually has legal value, so what often ends up happening is that they take advantage of open source software or libraries in their proprietary software without even giving a crap about their authors and their community

ilaksh 4y ago
But the first error is one that you seem to have made also: that there are different types of open source licenses. GPL or other copyleft licenses generally require you to disclose the code (or make a licensing deal in some cases). Things like the MIT license are much less restrictive.
- ronsor 4y ago
  In this particular case, Voice.ai is also violating permissively licensed libraries. For example, libFLAC is included in VoiceAILib.dll: reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917 The license text: https://github.com/xiph/flac/blob/master/COPYING.Xiph https://github.com/xiph/flac/blob/master/COPYING.Xiph The license requires Voice.ai to include the license text somewhere in the distribution or documentation, yet they do not.
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    Okay but that's still quite different from the copyleft licenses and violations which was my point.
    - dsr_ 4y ago
      Actually, it isn't. It's the same underlying principle. All software must be paid for, with the exception of countries which have an actual public domain. Some software is paid for with money, some with acknowledgments, and some with source code sharing. Sometimes the developer demands postcards, and sometimes they demand that you not use it for evil purposes. All of these are forms of payment. If you don't pay for it, you don't have certain rights to it.

flockonus 4y ago

Thanks for this article, saved me installing a potential vector.

rvz 4y ago

See? It is good to catch grifters abusing the GPL license and holding them accountable. We can all do the same and file complaints like this one [0] about GitHub, OpenAI and Microsoft with their Copilot product and model being trained on AGPL-3.0 code and a mixture of incompatible licenses and also outputs sensitive info of developers. Give that Truth Social was caught using Mastodon's source code and violated the AGPL license by giving no attribution and no copy of the source code which they later complied, now we are starting to see this with AI projects violating licenses of open source projects; the same should also apply to GitHub, OpenAI and Microsoft with their Copilot product. [0] https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/ https://githubcopilotlitigation.com/

kmeisthax 4y ago
Did Truth Social ever actually comply with AGPLv3? I thought they just pointed vaguely at the original Mastodon source repository.
Dylan16807 4y ago
> a mixture of incompatible licenses As far as copilot is concerned, those repos might as well be closed source. They are not accepting the license, and don't care about it. Their goal/claim is that the language model will not retain copyrightable sequences.
- jimlongton 4y ago
  > Their goal/claim is that the language model will not retain copyrightable sequences. In case people are not aware, we know for a fact this is demonstrably false. It may not even be possible to achieve this with existing models. People have replicated entire sections of GPL code (with comments) using CoPilot. This is true of other models, like image generation models which can return clearly recognisable images which were present in their training sets.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    The interesting question is how hard that is to fix in future versions.

kmeisthax 4y ago

One thing I'd love to see would be a way for a copyright owner (e.g. GPL library developer) to get an injunction on an infringer prohibiting them from having "no reverse engineering" clauses in their license agreements.

RobotToaster 4y ago
The GPL already prohibits further restrictions.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  Correct. In addition it protects from patent trolling.

jzebedee 4y ago

The installer also doesn't even let you view the Terms and Conditions. It's styled as a link but it literally can't be opened: https://imgur.com/CUzLdRQ https://imgur.com/CUzLdRQ This is ironic considering how aggressive the language is on their branding page: https://voice.ai/branding-guidelines https://voice.ai/branding-guidelines > WARNING: > We use technology to check for infringement on the Internet and on social platforms and may automatically (or manually) issue takedown notices for content that infringes on our IP. Simply add our approved clip to your content to avoid takedown notices. We reserve all rights.

user3939382 4y ago
Now it works: https://voice.ai/tos https://voice.ai/tos
- mrtweetyhack 4y ago
  [dead]
- sva_ 4y ago
  So they're reading this thread, I suppose. But no statement yet.
  - b112 4y ago
    Someone should just hack them, put the code on github, and respond to dcma requests with GPL legalities. They should be fined too, but the above at least would solve their miscreantic behaviour.
    - jahewson 4y ago
      No that would be equally wrong.
      - hackmiester 4y ago
        It would be legally wrong, but morally, it would be less cut and dry. I'm not saying it is moral either, but I would like to point out that those two things aren't equal.

user3939382 4y ago

If it's not already, it would be nice if Google and Apple made these types of violations grounds for revoking approval of apps from their app stores. In general I abhor the whole concept of the "blessed app" walled garden gatekeeping, but if they're doing it anyway (and they are) they may as well do some good while they're at it.

RobotToaster 4y ago
Isn't a copyright violation already some sort of grounds for removal? If someone uploaded an app with a bunch of disney copyrighted stuff it would be pulled pretty quickly. I imagine at the least the original developers could file a DMCA notice.
- intelVISA 4y ago
  Seems like it should be, after all if you publish an app that plays copyrighted music it'd be folded by The Powers That Be pretty quickly.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  In law, the size of your warchest matters a whole lot more than you think. Disney has an enormous warchest. You probably don't.
saurik 4y ago
https://www.engadget.com/2011-01-09-the-gpl-the-app-store-and-you.html https://www.engadget.com/2011-01-09-the-gpl-the-app-store-an... http://web.archive.org/web/20110115040843/http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/08/vlc-app-removed-from-app-store http://web.archive.org/web/20110115040843/http://www.tuaw.co... http://web.archive.org/web/20110111004349/http://planet.videolan.org/ http://web.archive.org/web/20110111004349/http://planet.vide...
cwillu 4y ago
I mean, if Voice.ai doesn't have the rights to distribute a piece of software, then google and apple also do not have rights to distribute it. (They may have required that voice.ai (or whoever) indemnify them against legal action resulting from voice.ai's actions) Perhaps the authors of praat or libgcrypt could issue a DMCA takedown request to apple and google?

jimlongton 4y ago

> We use deep learning technology to create realistic AI voice clones that sound exactly like an impression of anyone in the world; whether it's your favourite reality star, game character, celebrity or cartoon character. Their business model is creepy and unethical. > Our Voice Universe community of contributors are training incredible voices every day to create hyper-realistic replicas that sound exactly like the real person! And they even get their users to do the dirty work for them. Classy.

jeroenhd 4y ago
>> We use deep learning technology to create realistic AI voice clones that sound exactly like an impression of anyone in the world; whether it's your favourite reality star, game character, celebrity or cartoon character. >Their business model is creepy and unethical. That's the weird thing to me, at least market it in some way that's not creepy. This tech can be amazing for people who have recordings of their voice but lost the ability to speak out loud since; I certainly would want to use this software for that purpose if I were ever to lose my voice long term. Or you could go the unexplored business direction and market it for voice actors and the companies that hire them (especially the lower segment, like for ads) because a voice alone cannot be copyrighted. But no, they went the "creepy internet stalker/misinformation generator/scammer" way. Quite unimaginative.

dmitrygr 4y ago

IS there a donation link to help take this to court by copyright owners? I'd be glad to spend some dough on this

SomaticPirate 4y ago

Blatant disregard for GPL. I hope to see some lawsuits for this. Doing things like this really should be an ethical violation for engineers. Every engineer should be able to say no to building something like this

vineyardmike 4y ago
> Every engineer should be able to say no to building something like this Considering it is illegal, every person is able to say no. The engineers are likely complicit, either that they didn't check, or didn't care about the license.

neilv 4y ago

A lot of tech industry doesn't seem to take FLOSS license violations very seriously. Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious. I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know how this would work, but something like the following seems interesting... In those cases in which IP theft appears to be intentional or grossly negligent, don't respond like a nonprofit flowerchild bringing peace and love to someone who simply didn't know. Instead, get a pitbull of a lawyer, to make the perpetrator actually regret it. Which, for startups that made claims to investors regarding ownership/rights to the IP they used, could then trigger an additional concern: defrauding investors. Then, after news of companies sorely regretting IP theft, a lot of companies proactively ban IP-theft-laundering tools like Copilot. And the companies that keep using tools like Copilot (or who don't excise existing stolen IP code quick enough, before forensic tools catch up, and catch them), start getting called to account by the pitbulls.

goodpoint 4y ago
> Maybe it'd help to instead call it "IP theft", which still sounds a bit serious. It's not a problem of naming but of who can afford fighting a legal battle in court and who cannot. There's been many famous episode of big companies going to court for copyright infringement. But they know they can ignore individual developers.
- neilv 4y ago
  Is this a startup or law firm waiting to happen? (Preferably driven by true-believer public interest lawyers.)
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lmm 4y ago
  It's less about the money than the will. FOSS types tend to not want to sue.
  - JohnFen 4y ago

BillSaysThis 4y ago

Not to mention they have the gall to include an ethics page on their site: https://voice.ai/ethics https://voice.ai/ethics. Not that it mentions following the licenses discussed on this thread. ROFL but in a sad way.

klyrs 4y ago
ROFG (rolling on the floor grieving)

jfengel 4y ago

It's weird reading this thread on a site where I so often read "I don't believe in invisible property." Often applied to music, movies, or art. I'm sure it's not as simple or hypocritical as the same people saying both things. And this specific story is about a very specific subversion of intellectual property rules to make it open. But it's a little weird hearing a complete lack of "information wants to be free" when the thing being "stolen" is our work.

runnerup 4y ago
I think the “information wants to be free” crowd would be happier if all work was free to be stolen. GPL enforcement is currently necessary to make that happen. It would be better if it wasn’t.
RobotToaster 4y ago
Copyleft ensures the continuation of a freedom already given, copyright restricts freedom. (Yes I know de jure copyleft relies on copyright to exist, but morally they are diametrically opposite)
PeterisP 4y ago
The original post is consistent with "information wants to be free" - we should be free to use and view Voice.ai source code, just as Voice.ai could use and view the code of these other projects they did. The only hypocrisy I see here is from Voice.ai, taking open source code themselves but then insisting (without any right to do so) that the result has become their proprietary "invisible property" and others can't do stuff with it.
funnymony 4y ago
GPL is a briliant trick. It is a extreme reaction to extremely dire copyright situation. If information cant be free in this system, then let’s add a restriction that it must be free. Briliant!
pessimizer 4y ago
The same people are saying both things. The day we end copyright I'd be happy to end the GPL.

Joel_Mckay 4y ago

The problem with GPL is its a contaminating license, there are problems proving violations, and shaking people down like a commercial entity is toxic. I prefer Apache 2.0, as who knows where chunks of code end up 10 years from now. If you are able, than its good karma to support the community with your own development hours and or fiscal donations. =)

bitL 4y ago
The whole point of GPL is that nobody gets to ride free without contributing sources back to community. Of course companies prefer Apache or similar licenses. But then you end up with Amazon taking over products they didn't develop, never paid a cent to original developers and squeezed all fiscal potential out of the product, killing off the original.
- Joel_Mckay 4y ago
  Actually, if you can make money from my old code it makes me happy. You are correct in that Bezos does little for the community, and AWS tends to repackage community projects. Yet, most firms do put in many paid hours on kernel development etc. Have a wonderful day =)
  - funnymony 4y ago
    > Yet, most firms do put in many paid hours on kernel development etc. Linux kernel uses GPL.
    - Joel_Mckay 4y ago
      Indeed, but my point was the license is not always appropriate for some businesses who still wish to participate in FOSS. Have a great day =)
- pabs3 4y ago
  > contributing sources back to community Nothing in the GPL requires this, only distributing sources down to your users, who may or may not then redistribute the sources back upstream.

esskay 4y ago

Time to let the free software foundation know. Is this something they are likely to help the authors of the IP theft take action against Voice AI for if they refuse to comply?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

madsbuch 4y ago

Is it safe to assume that GPT3 has been trained on GPLed code? And in that case, should the GPT3 source code be freely available?

yokem55 4y ago
The healthy approach would be that AI models can 'study' code as much as they want and aggregate what they learn into a model. The 'right to read' is a thing. But the end user of the model should take care that the output they get is not infringing on anyone's copyright.
jeroenhd 4y ago
We'll find out when this issue eventually ends up in court. Copilot is the most notable example of this mess. If a judge rules that AI will regurgitate existing code or that the network stores this code, these models will very quickly infringe the GPL and all matter of licenses at the same time. If this is the case, you'll also need to figure out what GPL compliance looks like. The code training the network likely doesn't contain any code that must be shared, only the model being executed. Does that mean that providing the entire data set complies with GPL, leaving it up to the user to spend millions on training their own network? Or does the model file itself need to be distributed as-is? The AI people argue that AI learns concepts from code and does not store or replicate the input code directly, though I very much doubt that given that AI will spit out code it has been trained on verbatim. If this is the case then the code may have been processed by the algorithm, but the license impact would be similar to processing it in another way: just because you compress up a bunch of code doesn't mean you need to open source your compression tool. We need clear legislation for this because the court cases are going to be a clusterfuck.
kevincox 4y ago
I've also read GPL code and that doesn't make anything I write GPL. It matters if the code was substationally copied or not. So I think I would apply the same rules to AI. In general not all code produced is infringing on the copyright of all authors of training data. However there have been some clear cases of copying (GPL license text and a matrix multiplication routine for example) that do appear as copyright violations.

DDBE 4y ago

To clear up this confusion about "lashing out": You gave the impression of violating the TOS by debating an offline version and offering to provide information about it, so you could circumvent DMCA takedowns. That's when the volunteer mods had a group chat and decided a ban.

TheRealPomax 4y ago
We've been here before - if someone points out that the contract is void, and you ban them for then talking about or doing things that the contract forbids, the proper action is to turn around to the people who make the product you're a community mod for and go "hey, uh, it looks like you've tricked us into enforcing an illegal contract" instead of banning the person pointing out the thing you're community modding for is in multiple violations of the law.
stefan_ 4y ago
Volunteer mods? You mean racketeers?

nylonstrung 4y ago

I'm very tempted to have my IP lawyers reach out to with a near-identical request. Would anyone want to participate in a more coordinated effort urging them to comply?

ronsor 4y ago
I would personally love to participate. The more people behind it, the better.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

c2h5oh 4y ago

I wonder if GPL provisions regarding DRM removal and modification supersede anything in voice.ai license. If yes deobfuscating it, removing DRM and releasing it should be perfectly legal.

ronsor 4y ago
The GPLv3 prohibits adding additional restrictions and requires the distributor to waive their right to prohibit DRM circumvention. If Voice.AI attempts to enforce their ToS anyway, they are violating the GPL. IANAL, but because of the clean-hands doctrine, such a suit would fail.
- c2h5oh 4y ago
  That's my understanding as well, but lacking the knowledge to remove DRM and willingness to become a target of a lawsuit to prove a point I am not going to test that legal theory just yet.
- robocat 4y ago
  They can sue for damages, because the clean-hands doctrine doesn’t apply to suing for money, only applies to suing for equity (anything that isn’t money). The doctrine if unclean hands may only be used as a defense in claims of equity – which are claims in which the court seeks to make things equal or fair, though not by ordering the payment of damages IANAL - just noticed that and thought you might find it interesting…

habibur 4y ago

Here's one way to by pass GPL restrictions when you must use it for whatever reason. Create a separate service with all the GPL codes. Write your own micro service API to communicate with it. And then open source your micro service code without opening up your propitiatory part. Of course someone else should have thought of it before. Searched and found first hit on stackoverflow. That says it's OK at least when used in a separate VM, no shared memory between the two. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/40420/gpl-licensed-code-as-separate-process https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/40420/gpl-licensed-c...

jeroenhd 4y ago
If you run the server locally you'll still need to hand out the GPL'd code but that would likely work. The moment you include an AGPL licensed piece of code this no longer works, though. The post only mentions GPL and LGPL, but they're also violating other licenses as pointed out here in the comments. I wouldn't be surprised if there's also an AGPL licensed piece of code in there that makes this workaround impossible. Honestly, this workaround sounds like a lot of work to maintain long term while also putting you at the whims of library maintainers who may just switch out the license on you with newer versions, leaving you to do the maintenance and security monitoring of your dependency. If you need to put so much work into avoiding complying with the license you should consider just writing your own code instead.

bigape911 4y ago

Well, they are going to "fix" the problem by removing the FPL code. I don't trust that for a moment. They'll morr likely remove any identifying clues so no more gpl. Don't trust anyone