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I think calling this "scraping" is hiding an important point. Scraping tends to mean crawling the web and pulling down stuff people put up. In the US (and yes,

by tedivm 1y ago

I think calling this "scraping" is hiding an important point. Scraping tends to mean crawling the web and pulling down stuff people put up. In the US (and yes, I know that this is a UK article) it is legal to scrape, with the idea being that if people responded to the request that's on them. This is why lots of sites have login gates to access data, since to log in you have to agree to a TOS. AI companies haven't just been scraping, they've been pirating. I think it's important because people consent to put their comments on websites, but authors don't consent to have their work stolen. Mixing the two together as if they are the same is an attempt by AI companies to muddy the ethical waters a bit more than I'm comfortable with.

graemep 1y ago
Its not necessarily OK with comments. A lot of people posted comments before LLMs, a lot of people posted comments in places with T & Cs that said the comments would be used in connection with the service. Because I consented to a comment being posted on a website to be read by people does not mean I consented to it being used to train LLMs.
eWeSaYYY 1y ago
Copyright is pirating our attention to boost a minority of creatives who have immense resource and political influence at the expense of the rest of us. Life of author + 100 years is beyond the life of many. While the Constitution provides copyright for a limited time. The rest of any givens persons life is effectively “infinite amount of time”. It’s just another Boomer Ponzi scheme, extracting as much as possible, trickling down as little as possible. Americans have disassociated from reality into a world of propaganda narratives of corporations. This is just sad how little pushback there is to these obviously exploitative economic schemes that conveniently allow all the elders to funnel all wealth into their hands and control society’s agency.
alganet 1y ago
Terms of service cannot override the law. For example, lots of TOS make the works of users property of the platform owners. All of that can stop being relevant if that practice becomes illegal. People consented to put their comments publicly, they didn't consented to feeding a machine that steals their ideas. One ruling establishing that the wording on the terms is not good enough, and all of that can fall.
- tedivm 1y ago
  No one said that TOS's override the law. If you shout something in public, someone might hear you. If you shout in a locked house they won't hear you unless they break in. If you post something publicly on the internet, then people can look at it. If you post something privately on the internet, people have to agree to your terms to view it. That's it, that's the logic the government uses to allow website scraping.
  - alganet 1y ago
    It doesn't matter who does it. Government, private sector, individuals. It's a gray area for all, and a risk for all.
1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago
FWIW, the proposed amendment never uses the word "scraping". It's only used in the title from The Register.

by tedivm 1y ago

graemep 1y ago

Its not necessarily OK with comments. A lot of people posted comments before LLMs, a lot of people posted comments in places with T & Cs that said the comments would be used in connection with the service. Because I consented to a comment being posted on a website to be read by people does not mean I consented to it being used to train LLMs.

eWeSaYYY 1y ago

Copyright is pirating our attention to boost a minority of creatives who have immense resource and political influence at the expense of the rest of us. Life of author + 100 years is beyond the life of many. While the Constitution provides copyright for a limited time. The rest of any givens persons life is effectively “infinite amount of time”. It’s just another Boomer Ponzi scheme, extracting as much as possible, trickling down as little as possible. Americans have disassociated from reality into a world of propaganda narratives of corporations. This is just sad how little pushback there is to these obviously exploitative economic schemes that conveniently allow all the elders to funnel all wealth into their hands and control society’s agency.

alganet 1y ago

Terms of service cannot override the law. For example, lots of TOS make the works of users property of the platform owners. All of that can stop being relevant if that practice becomes illegal. People consented to put their comments publicly, they didn't consented to feeding a machine that steals their ideas. One ruling establishing that the wording on the terms is not good enough, and all of that can fall.

tedivm 1y ago
No one said that TOS's override the law. If you shout something in public, someone might hear you. If you shout in a locked house they won't hear you unless they break in. If you post something publicly on the internet, then people can look at it. If you post something privately on the internet, people have to agree to your terms to view it. That's it, that's the logic the government uses to allow website scraping.
- alganet 1y ago
  It doesn't matter who does it. Government, private sector, individuals. It's a gray area for all, and a risk for all.

1vuio0pswjnm7 1y ago

FWIW, the proposed amendment never uses the word "scraping". It's only used in the title from The Register.