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> She was shocked to find a clause titled “Machine Learning” near the bottom of her lengthy agreement with Findaway I have mixed feelings about this. If you're

> She was shocked to find a clause titled “Machine Learning” near the bottom of her lengthy agreement with Findaway I have mixed feelings about this. If you're signing a contract for work you're doing, it should be expected that you've read and understood what it is you're agreeing to. The excuse of "It was buried in with other clauses" doesn't seem terribly convincing. This just seems like the panic du-jour.

malfist 4y ago
Do you read and understand all the legalese of every contract you sign?
- badwolf 4y ago
  Every work contract I've signed, yes. If I don't understand something I ask about it, or talk to the other party to have it clarified, re-worded, or removed.
  - Teever 4y ago
    How do you know if you truly understand something? I find it highly unlikely that you have correctly interpreted every single clause of every single document that you've ever signed for work, and I find it even less likely that your interpretation of these clauses would match how a court would interpret them if it ever went to court.
    - badwolf 4y ago
      There's not understanding the exact verbiage of a specific clause, and then there's "I just didn't see it" Nothing in the article seems to imply anyone misinterpreted their contract. They didn't read it.
      - Teever 4y ago
        from your response it appeara thst you have misunderstood my comment, which leads me to believe that you frequently misunderstand contracts that you sign.
Teever 4y ago
I can agree with that in principle. But take a look at the reading level of a ToS, now compare that to the average reading level of a person who signs that contract. There is a vast gap between those two numbers, and that gap is intentional. When two parties meet to sign a contract and that contract is entirely crafted by one party, the only party with unfathomably large resources and that contract is so hideously one sided in all facets down to the reading level it isn't hard to see that this one party is behaving unethically. Apple is the 40 something dude with a bit of money and life experiences who uses these things to court exclusively emotionally vulnerable 18-22 year olds. It's not illegal it's just scummy as fuck and they should be judged for it.
- badwolf 4y ago
  I agree, most ToS are essentially nonsense to most people. This is also not a contract between the narrator and apple, it's the narrator and their distributor. They should absolutely be reviewing that thoroughly, and ideally with their own counsel.
mint2 4y ago
So the audio book narrators have two bad options: A. refuse to let their voice be used to train ML I.e don’t work because I’m sure all contracts have or will soon have that clause, or B. Work for a few years training their robot replacements and then lose work due to being replaced by robots.
skyewarren 4y ago
Author here. These are not "work contracts" the way you may be thinking. When we sign with publishers etc we do have agents and lawyers. This was basically in the terms of service and was slipped in quietly after not including it for years. It would be like Photoshop quietly adding a clause that they had the rights to use your art in AI. Should every digital artist read the TOS... again and again? Every year? Every month? It's a nice idea to be that informed but not realistic especially with the number of websites we use to do our work. Additionally a lot of times it's the authors who upload not the narrator so technically the narrator did not even agree to even that much.
- yunohn 4y ago
  > It would be like Photoshop quietly adding a clause that they had the rights to use your art in AI. They literally did this. I fully sympathise with you, not sure why OP thinks contracts are always simple and innocent. https://m.dpreview.com/news/6341509927/adobes-content-analysis-program-raises-privacy-concern https://m.dpreview.com/news/6341509927/adobes-content-analys...

malfist 4y ago

Do you read and understand all the legalese of every contract you sign?

badwolf 4y ago
Every work contract I've signed, yes. If I don't understand something I ask about it, or talk to the other party to have it clarified, re-worded, or removed.
- Teever 4y ago
  How do you know if you truly understand something? I find it highly unlikely that you have correctly interpreted every single clause of every single document that you've ever signed for work, and I find it even less likely that your interpretation of these clauses would match how a court would interpret them if it ever went to court.
  - badwolf 4y ago
    There's not understanding the exact verbiage of a specific clause, and then there's "I just didn't see it" Nothing in the article seems to imply anyone misinterpreted their contract. They didn't read it.
    - Teever 4y ago
      from your response it appeara thst you have misunderstood my comment, which leads me to believe that you frequently misunderstand contracts that you sign.

Teever 4y ago

I can agree with that in principle. But take a look at the reading level of a ToS, now compare that to the average reading level of a person who signs that contract. There is a vast gap between those two numbers, and that gap is intentional. When two parties meet to sign a contract and that contract is entirely crafted by one party, the only party with unfathomably large resources and that contract is so hideously one sided in all facets down to the reading level it isn't hard to see that this one party is behaving unethically. Apple is the 40 something dude with a bit of money and life experiences who uses these things to court exclusively emotionally vulnerable 18-22 year olds. It's not illegal it's just scummy as fuck and they should be judged for it.

badwolf 4y ago
I agree, most ToS are essentially nonsense to most people. This is also not a contract between the narrator and apple, it's the narrator and their distributor. They should absolutely be reviewing that thoroughly, and ideally with their own counsel.

mint2 4y ago

So the audio book narrators have two bad options: A. refuse to let their voice be used to train ML I.e don’t work because I’m sure all contracts have or will soon have that clause, or B. Work for a few years training their robot replacements and then lose work due to being replaced by robots.

skyewarren 4y ago

Author here. These are not "work contracts" the way you may be thinking. When we sign with publishers etc we do have agents and lawyers. This was basically in the terms of service and was slipped in quietly after not including it for years. It would be like Photoshop quietly adding a clause that they had the rights to use your art in AI. Should every digital artist read the TOS... again and again? Every year? Every month? It's a nice idea to be that informed but not realistic especially with the number of websites we use to do our work. Additionally a lot of times it's the authors who upload not the narrator so technically the narrator did not even agree to even that much.

yunohn 4y ago
> It would be like Photoshop quietly adding a clause that they had the rights to use your art in AI. They literally did this. I fully sympathise with you, not sure why OP thinks contracts are always simple and innocent. https://m.dpreview.com/news/6341509927/adobes-content-analysis-program-raises-privacy-concern https://m.dpreview.com/news/6341509927/adobes-content-analys...