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The courts ruled that content can be scraped from the open web legally. From your examples 1. YouTube content: ok because the scraped content becomes derivative

The courts ruled that content can be scraped from the open web legally. From your examples 1. YouTube content: ok because the scraped content becomes derivative works which falls under free use 2. Doxxing people: if the data was already on the web and a human found it then the person was already doxed 3. Bank transactions: are they behind a login wall? Not Ok to scrap 4. VoIP calls: again behind a wall? Not Ok to scrape If a human can find it online without doing anything beyond accessing a public web link then it is Ok to scrape it. It's not the complicated and the law has a series of frameworks that for existing cases. It's not particularly complicated.

dingosity 2y ago
Derivative works are not automatically fair use. Otherwise I could release an album with a Prince song and a Taylor Swift song, claim it's a derivative work and covered under fair use. Again. Try to do this on YouTube (even though YouTube is not the arbiter of what is and isn't fair use, they're just aggressive about removing content.) Doxxing people can give cause to restraint if it's inciting speech. Consider a situation where you say "Hey. I just found Joe Schmo's Address. He lives at 123 Main St., Anytown, DK 10010." Now compare it to when you say "Hey. I just found Joe Schmo's Address. He lives at 123 Main St., Anytown, DK 10010. Joe's a child molester. Let's go burn down his house." or if you call up the local police department and said "Hey. I saw Joe Schmo with Goody Parker in their house at 123 Main St., Anytown, DK 10010. They're molesting a child right now! Hurry, if you're fast you might stop them!" Yeah... I don't remember saying bank transactions were copyrighted or in the public domain. Probably someone elses' comment. VoIP calls? uh... you may want to review the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18USC2510-2522 before assuming VoIP calls can be intercepted for the purpose of training an AI. You are free to believe anything you can access is fair use. (I mean, maybe in Iceland or Sweden.) But give me a call if you get caught doing this, I can refer you to a decent attorney. (Again... this all assumes you're in the states. International copyright is sort of a wild west. But you would expect MSFT to open up a fully owned offshore subsidiary in a country like Vanuatu or Iceland to evade continental copyright (what is it with islands and copyright???)
cameldrv 2y ago
It’s very complicated, and if a lawyer tells you it’s not you need to get a new lawyer. Whether something is fair use is determined based on a number of different factors that all are weighed. There’s not some simple if-then algorithm to tell you the answer. There is case law which sets up some known points in the space, but if you walk off that manifold, no one knows how things will be weighed. LLMs are off the manifold in a lot of ways. We’ve never had a form of information digestion/encoding quite like them. Politically, both content creators and AI companies see this decision as existential. Ruling one way or the other is actually almost unthinkable. The only solution is going to be some compromise that comes from Congress, because the sorts of things that would be in such a compromise can’t be imposed by the courts with existing legislation.
orev 2y ago
No, the courts ruled that in the case of a search engine, scraping was ok because the results are displayed to the user who then clicks on a link that brings them back to the original source. Seems like many in the web development world like to ignore that second part. AI responses do not bring the user back to the original source/site, the therefore the data use isn’t in line with that reasoning, and thus is a copyright violation.

dingosity 2y ago

Derivative works are not automatically fair use. Otherwise I could release an album with a Prince song and a Taylor Swift song, claim it's a derivative work and covered under fair use. Again. Try to do this on YouTube (even though YouTube is not the arbiter of what is and isn't fair use, they're just aggressive about removing content.) Doxxing people can give cause to restraint if it's inciting speech. Consider a situation where you say "Hey. I just found Joe Schmo's Address. He lives at 123 Main St., Anytown, DK 10010." Now compare it to when you say "Hey. I just found Joe Schmo's Address. He lives at 123 Main St., Anytown, DK 10010. Joe's a child molester. Let's go burn down his house." or if you call up the local police department and said "Hey. I saw Joe Schmo with Goody Parker in their house at 123 Main St., Anytown, DK 10010. They're molesting a child right now! Hurry, if you're fast you might stop them!" Yeah... I don't remember saying bank transactions were copyrighted or in the public domain. Probably someone elses' comment. VoIP calls? uh... you may want to review the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, 18USC2510-2522 before assuming VoIP calls can be intercepted for the purpose of training an AI. You are free to believe anything you can access is fair use. (I mean, maybe in Iceland or Sweden.) But give me a call if you get caught doing this, I can refer you to a decent attorney. (Again... this all assumes you're in the states. International copyright is sort of a wild west. But you would expect MSFT to open up a fully owned offshore subsidiary in a country like Vanuatu or Iceland to evade continental copyright (what is it with islands and copyright???)

cameldrv 2y ago

It’s very complicated, and if a lawyer tells you it’s not you need to get a new lawyer. Whether something is fair use is determined based on a number of different factors that all are weighed. There’s not some simple if-then algorithm to tell you the answer. There is case law which sets up some known points in the space, but if you walk off that manifold, no one knows how things will be weighed. LLMs are off the manifold in a lot of ways. We’ve never had a form of information digestion/encoding quite like them. Politically, both content creators and AI companies see this decision as existential. Ruling one way or the other is actually almost unthinkable. The only solution is going to be some compromise that comes from Congress, because the sorts of things that would be in such a compromise can’t be imposed by the courts with existing legislation.

orev 2y ago

No, the courts ruled that in the case of a search engine, scraping was ok because the results are displayed to the user who then clicks on a link that brings them back to the original source. Seems like many in the web development world like to ignore that second part. AI responses do not bring the user back to the original source/site, the therefore the data use isn’t in line with that reasoning, and thus is a copyright violation.