5 ms·
> This is obviously extremely silly, because that's exactly how OpenAI got all of its training data IANAL, but It is worth noting here that DeepSeek has explic
by miki123211 2y ago
> This is obviously extremely silly, because that's exactly how OpenAI got all of its training data
IANAL, but It is worth noting here that DeepSeek has explicitly consented to a license that doesn't allow them to do this. That is a condition of using the Chat GPT and the OpenAI API.
Even if the courts affirm that there's a fair use defence for AI training, DeepSeek may still be in the wrong here, not because of copyright infringement, but because of a breach of contract.
I don't think OpenAI would have much of a problem if you train your model on data scraped from the internet, some of which incidentally ends up being generated by Chat GPT.
Compare this to training AI models on Kindle Books randomly scraped off the internet, versus making a Kindle account, agreeing to the Kindle ToS, buying some books, breaking Amazon's DRM and then training your AI on that. What DeepSeek did is more analogous to the latter than the former.
- freen 2y agoDid OpenAI abide by my service’s terms of service when it ingested my data?
- cortesoft 2y agoDid OpenAI have to sign up for your service to gain access?
- thorncorona 2y agoCan you steal someone else’s laptop if they stood up to get a drink?
- gizajob 2y agoIf their OS is open to the internet and you can scrape it and copy it off while they’re gone, then that would be about the right analogy. And OpenAi and DeepSeek have done the same thing in that case.
- rpastuszak 2y agoWhat?
- secstate 2y agoYes, if you can pay off any witnesses.
- addicted 2y agoOpenAI itself has argued, to the degree that your analogy applies, that if the goal of stealing the laptop is to train AI then the answer is Yes.
- cortesoft 2y agoWouldn't this analogy be more like, "can you read my laptop screen if I stood up to get a drink?"
- freen 2y agoAnd steal the ip from your startup and then go public.
- lolinder 2y agoIt probably ignored hundreds of thousands of "by using this site you consent to our Terms and Conditions" notices, many of which probably would be read as prohibiting training. But that's also a great example of why these implicit contracts don't really work as contracts.
- freen 2y agoCivil law is only available to deep pockets. Contracts are enforceable to the degree to which you can pay lawyers to enforce them. I will run out of money trying to enforce my terms of service against openAI, while they have a massive war chest to enforce theirs. Ain’t libertarianism great?
- otherme123 2y agoOpenAI scrapped my blog so aggressively that I had to ban their IPs. They ignored the robots.txt (which is kind of ToS) by 2 orders of magnitude, they ignored the explicit ToS that I copypasted blindly from somewhere but turns out it forbids what they did (something like you can't make money with the content). Not that I'm going to enforce it, but they should at least shut up.
- outside1234 2y agoThat isn't required to be in violation of copyright
- freen 2y agoActually, yes, they actively agreed to them. Clicked the button and everything.
- bayindirh 2y agoNo, but some of the data is licensed. For example, my digital garden is under GFDL, and my blog is CC BY-NC-SA. IOW, They can't remix my digital garden with any other license than GFDL, and they have to credit me if they remix my blog, and can't use it for any commercial endeavor, which OpenAI certainly does now. So, by scraping my webpages, they agree to my licensing of my data. So they're de-facto breaching my licenses, but they cry "fair-use". If I tell that they're breaching the license terms, they'd laugh at me, and maybe give me 2 cents of API access to mock me further. When somebody allegedly uses their API with their unenforcable ToS, they scream like an agitated cuckatoo (which is an insult to the cuckatoo, BTW. They're devilishly intelligent birds). Drinking their own poison was mildly painful, I guess... BTW, I don't believe that Deepseek has copied/used OpenAI models' outputs or training data to train theirs, even if they did, "the cat is out of the bag", "they did something amazing so they needed no permissions", "they moved fast and broke things", and "all is fair-use because it's just research" regardless of how they did it. Heh.
- Ukv 2y ago> So, by scraping my webpages, they agree to my licensing of my data. If the fair use defense holds up, they didn't need a license to scrape your webpage. A contract should still apply if you only showed your content to people who've agreed to it. > and "all is fair-use because it's just research" Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement, not breach of contract. You can use contracts, like NDAs, to protect even non-copyright-eligible information. Morally I'd prefer what DeepSeek allegedly did to be legal, but to my understanding there is a good chance that OpenAI is found legally in the right on both sides.
- bayindirh 2y agoAt this point, what I'm afraid is the justice system will be just an instrument in this all Us vs. Them debate, so their decisions will not be bound by law or legality. Speculations aside, from what I understood, something like this shouldn't hold a drop of water under fair-use doctrine, because there's a disproportional damage, plus a huge monopolistic monetary gain because of what they did and how they did. On the other hand, I don't believe that Deepseek used OpenAI (in any capacity or way or method) to develop their models, but again, it doesn't matter how they did it in this current conjecture. What they successfully did was to upset a bunch of high level people, regardless of the technical things they achieved. IMHO, AI war has similar dynamics to MAD. The best way is not to play, but we are past the Rubicon now. Future looks dirty.
- addicted 2y agoThey probably did to access the NYTimes articles.
- baq 2y agoHave their scraping bots consented to cookies?
- krust 2y ago>IANAL, but It is worth noting here that DeepSeek has explicitly consented to a license that doesn't allow them to do this. That is a condition of using the Chat GPT and the OpenAI API. I have some news for you
- dartos 2y agoTOS are not contracts.
- lolinder 2y agoCitation? My understanding was that they are provided that someone has to affirmatively accept them in order to use your site. So Terms of Service stuck at the bottom in the footer likely would not count as a contract because there's no consent, but Terms of Service included in a check box on a login form likely would count. But IANAL, so if you have a citation that says otherwise I'd be happy to see it!
- xdennis 2y agoIANAGL, but in Germany a ToS is not a contract and can be declared void if it's deemed by courts to be unfair.
- vanviegen 2y agoYes, though this is especially true when it's consumers 'agreeing' to the TOS. Anything even somewhat surprising within such a TOS is basically thrown out the window in European courtrooms without a second look. For actual, legally binding consent, you'll need to make some real effort to make sure the consumer understands what they are agreeing to.
- addicted 2y agoYou don’t need a citation. You just need to read OpenAI’s arguments about why TOS and copyright laws don’t apply to them when they’re training on other people’s copyrighted and TOS protected data and running roughshod over every legal protection.
- Spooky23 2y agoPeople here will argue that. But the Chinese DNGAF.
- anon373839 2y ago> DeepSeek has explicitly consented to a license that doesn't allow them to do this. You actually don’t know this. Even if it were true that they used OpenAI outputs (and I’m very doubtful) it’s not necessary to sign an agreement with OpenAI to get API outputs. You simply acquire them from an intermediary, so that you have no contractual relationship with OpenAI to begin with.
- shishy 2y agoI figured those contracts with an intermediary would extend to anyone they re-sell to, or prohibit them from re-selling...
- fdsjgfklsfd 2y agoYou are free to publish your conversations with ChatGPT on the Internet, where they can be picked up by scrapers. US ruled that they are not covered by copyright...
- dmitrygr 2y ago> DeepSeek has explicitly consented to a license that doesn't allow them to do this. By existing in USA, OpenAI consented to comply with copyright law, and how did that go?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- katamari-damacy 2y ago[dead]
- like_any_other 2y agoLegally, I understand your point, but morally, I find it repellent that a breach of contract (especially terms-of-service) could be considered more important than a breach of law. Especially since simply existing in modern society requires us to "agree" to dozens of such "contracts" daily. I hope voters and governments put a long-overdue stop to this cancer of contract-maximalism that has given us such benefits as mandatory arbitration, anti-benchmarking, general circumvention of consumer rights, or, in this case, blatantly anti-competitive terms, by effectively banning reverse-engineering (i.e. examining how something works, i.e. mandating that we live in ignorance). Because if they don't, laws will slowly become irrelevant, and our lives governed by one-sided contracts.
- blibble 2y agotraining is either fair use, or it isn't OpenAI can't have it both ways
- chefandy 2y agoRight, but it was never about doing the right thing for humanity, it was about doing the right thing for their profits. Like I’ve said time and time again, nobody in this space gives a fuck about anyone that isn’t directly contributing money to their bottom line at that particular instant. The fundamental idea is selfish, damages the fundamental machinery that makes the internet useful by penalizing people that actually make things, and will never, ever do anything for the greater good if it even stands a chance of reducing their standing in this ridiculously overhyped market. Giving people free access to what is for all intents and purposes a black box is not “open” anything, is no more free (as in speech) than Slack is, and all of this is obviously them selling a product at a huge loss to put competing media out of business and grab market share.
- windexh8er 2y ago"Free for me, not for thee!" - Sam Altman /s But in all reality I'm happy to see this day. The fact that OpenAI ripped off everyone and everything they could and, to this day pretend like they didn't, is fantastic. Sam Altman is a con and it's not surprising that given all the positive press DeepSeek got that it was a full court assault on them within 48 hours.
- avs733 2y agoThey can sure try though, and I would be damned surprise if this wasn’t related to Sam’s event with trump last week.
- miki123211 2y agoThe issue here is breach of contract, not copyright.
- staticman2 2y agoSimilar to how a patent contract becomes void when a patent expires regardless of what the terms of the contract says, it's not clear to me OpenAI can enforce a contract provision for an API output they own no copyright in. Since they have no intellectual property rights in the output, it's not clear to me they have a cause of action to sue over how the output is used. I wonder if any lawyers have written about this topic.
- anothernewdude 2y agoIt's not hard to get someone else to submit queries and post the results, without agreeing to the license.