4 ms·

If you run a store on Main Street, should you get to decide if people can take pictures of your store?

mkl95 3y ago
You will get a lot of replies focused on scraping. Which is exactly what Google do for a living. It's in their best interest to be the only company obtaining that valuable data.
inglor 3y ago
If someone goes to your store on Main Street, takes your inventory list and the price list, does the same to all the competitors and then sets up shop in main street selling people the information of where they should buy there is a case for me to be able to decide whether or not I give them access to that information. Especially since they're letting stores pay money to be the first recommended store.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  Isn't this what gas stations do?
riffraff 3y ago
If the shop owner is losing something when people take pictures of the shop, they may start to shoo then away every time. Robots.txt exists because shop photographers want to be allowed to take pictures rather than be blocked tout court.
manuelmoreale 3y ago
If you run a store on Main Street, should people be allowed to take pictures of your store, copy its content and put it up for sale on another store? I see this argument made over and over again here on HN and it’s puzzling that people always stop at the first part. Companies won’t stop at the “look at your content” phase. They will use the knowledge gathered by looking at your content to do something else. That’s the problematic part.
- safety1st 3y ago
  ...Yes? Retail companies research what other retail companies are doing and copy them all the time... was the answer supposed to be no here?
  - nxpnsv 3y ago
    Often they have signs forbidding you to take photos in stores… i guess that’s a bit like robots.txt
    - delfinom 3y ago
      Yes, inside the store which is private property, they can legally start enacting such restrictions. Outside the store, not so much
  - rat9988 3y ago
    It is a no depending on what you sell. If they sell original pictures, you cannot copy them. You are allowed to sell the same products, but not to copy them.
    - safety1st 3y ago
      You can take a photo of someone else's copyrighted picture (photo, art, whatever). Or any other merchandise they're selling. You can even do it while you're on their property, standing next to a sign that says no photos allowed. All legal. The business has the right to ask you to leave if you violate their policies. In fact, they can ask you to leave for (almost) any reason at all. They may have some limited right to remove you using a reasonable amount of force, depending on the jurisdiction. Once you've left or been removed from their property, you still have the legal right to take photos of it from the public place you're now standing in. If you can view the photos or are they're selling through their window, you can keep taking photos of it. They don't have the right to confiscate your camera or the pictures you took. Your rights in terms of what you can do with those photos may have limitations (e.g. redistribution, reproduction), particularly if you photographed copyrighted works. This is why the parent's comment confused me so much. In most of the world you live in a society where yeah you have the freedom to take photos of stuff, or copy it down on a clipboard or whatever, and use it as competitive intelligence to improve your own business. And thousands of businesses are doing it every day.
masswerk 3y ago
Mind that there are already countries regulating what may be in published photos and what may be not. (E.g., the Eiffel Tower illuminated is protected: https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel-tower https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel...) (Edit: How is a factual, on-topic statement, providing a source-link for its claim, downvoted? You may not favor these regulations, but they still do exist.)
simonjgreen 3y ago
It's an interesting "have your cake and eat it" debate. Where is the line? Is there a line? How should you decide, and how should anyone else decide? I find this debate very aligned to copyright debates.
ehnto 3y ago
This analogy doesn't map very well. It's a clearly different medium. The value of a store is the ability to buy products from it, you taking a photo of it doesn't impact that transaction of value that at all. The value of content online is the very act of reading it/consuming it. A scraper is getting a free lunch, that is clear. They are trading nothing for something, and as the owner of the something that is not the deal I have chosen to make.
gumballindie 3y ago
It’s more like people stealing your products because its out in the main street rather than taking pictures. IP theft has real life implications. Even taking pictures has if taken by thieves planning a crime.
kmbfjr 3y ago
That isn’t what they are doing. The goal here is to use LLM to never have the end user leave Google. Gone will be revenue sharing, gone will be users visiting other sites. The goal is for Google to keep ALL the revenue, for content written by others. Hope that works out for them. I have already taken down over 300 articles written on networking, Linux, FreeBSD, Wireguard, DSP, software defined radios. I am not feeding a machine that steals my writing, regardless if I never explicitly expected payment from the viewer.
- rafark 3y ago
  I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing for the user though. A few years ago, you could click on pretty much any blog post and you knew you were getting Hugh quality or at least relevant information related to your search query. Nowadays most blog posts in the SERPs are full of spam and unnecessary filler text. I stopped clicking on random blogs because of how awful they’ve become. I’m currently using bing chat (which uses ChatGpt 4 under the hood) and it saves me a lot of time.

You will get a lot of replies focused on scraping. Which is exactly what Google do for a living. It's in their best interest to be the only company obtaining that valuable data.

inglor 3y ago

If someone goes to your store on Main Street, takes your inventory list and the price list, does the same to all the competitors and then sets up shop in main street selling people the information of where they should buy there is a case for me to be able to decide whether or not I give them access to that information. Especially since they're letting stores pay money to be the first recommended store.

Aerroon 3y ago
Isn't this what gas stations do?

riffraff 3y ago

If the shop owner is losing something when people take pictures of the shop, they may start to shoo then away every time. Robots.txt exists because shop photographers want to be allowed to take pictures rather than be blocked tout court.

manuelmoreale 3y ago

If you run a store on Main Street, should people be allowed to take pictures of your store, copy its content and put it up for sale on another store? I see this argument made over and over again here on HN and it’s puzzling that people always stop at the first part. Companies won’t stop at the “look at your content” phase. They will use the knowledge gathered by looking at your content to do something else. That’s the problematic part.

safety1st 3y ago
...Yes? Retail companies research what other retail companies are doing and copy them all the time... was the answer supposed to be no here?
- nxpnsv 3y ago
  Often they have signs forbidding you to take photos in stores… i guess that’s a bit like robots.txt
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Yes, inside the store which is private property, they can legally start enacting such restrictions. Outside the store, not so much
- rat9988 3y ago
  It is a no depending on what you sell. If they sell original pictures, you cannot copy them. You are allowed to sell the same products, but not to copy them.
  - safety1st 3y ago
    You can take a photo of someone else's copyrighted picture (photo, art, whatever). Or any other merchandise they're selling. You can even do it while you're on their property, standing next to a sign that says no photos allowed. All legal. The business has the right to ask you to leave if you violate their policies. In fact, they can ask you to leave for (almost) any reason at all. They may have some limited right to remove you using a reasonable amount of force, depending on the jurisdiction. Once you've left or been removed from their property, you still have the legal right to take photos of it from the public place you're now standing in. If you can view the photos or are they're selling through their window, you can keep taking photos of it. They don't have the right to confiscate your camera or the pictures you took. Your rights in terms of what you can do with those photos may have limitations (e.g. redistribution, reproduction), particularly if you photographed copyrighted works. This is why the parent's comment confused me so much. In most of the world you live in a society where yeah you have the freedom to take photos of stuff, or copy it down on a clipboard or whatever, and use it as competitive intelligence to improve your own business. And thousands of businesses are doing it every day.

masswerk 3y ago

Mind that there are already countries regulating what may be in published photos and what may be not. (E.g., the Eiffel Tower illuminated is protected: https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel-tower https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel...) (Edit: How is a factual, on-topic statement, providing a source-link for its claim, downvoted? You may not favor these regulations, but they still do exist.)

simonjgreen 3y ago

It's an interesting "have your cake and eat it" debate. Where is the line? Is there a line? How should you decide, and how should anyone else decide? I find this debate very aligned to copyright debates.

ehnto 3y ago

This analogy doesn't map very well. It's a clearly different medium. The value of a store is the ability to buy products from it, you taking a photo of it doesn't impact that transaction of value that at all. The value of content online is the very act of reading it/consuming it. A scraper is getting a free lunch, that is clear. They are trading nothing for something, and as the owner of the something that is not the deal I have chosen to make.

gumballindie 3y ago

It’s more like people stealing your products because its out in the main street rather than taking pictures. IP theft has real life implications. Even taking pictures has if taken by thieves planning a crime.

kmbfjr 3y ago

That isn’t what they are doing. The goal here is to use LLM to never have the end user leave Google. Gone will be revenue sharing, gone will be users visiting other sites. The goal is for Google to keep ALL the revenue, for content written by others. Hope that works out for them. I have already taken down over 300 articles written on networking, Linux, FreeBSD, Wireguard, DSP, software defined radios. I am not feeding a machine that steals my writing, regardless if I never explicitly expected payment from the viewer.

rafark 3y ago
I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing for the user though. A few years ago, you could click on pretty much any blog post and you knew you were getting Hugh quality or at least relevant information related to your search query. Nowadays most blog posts in the SERPs are full of spam and unnecessary filler text. I stopped clicking on random blogs because of how awful they’ve become. I’m currently using bing chat (which uses ChatGpt 4 under the hood) and it saves me a lot of time.