4 ms·

Strange smear against NYT. If NYT has a case, and the court approves that, it's bizarre to to use the court order to smear NYT. If there is no case, "Open"AI wi

Strange smear against NYT. If NYT has a case, and the court approves that, it's bizarre to to use the court order to smear NYT. If there is no case, "Open"AI will have a chance to prove its case in court.

eviks 1y ago
And if NYT has no case, but the court approves it, is that still bizarre?
tptacek 1y ago
They're a party to the case! Saying it's baseless isn't a "smear". There is literally nothing else they can say (other than something synonymous with "baseless", like "without merit").
- lucianbr 1y ago
  Oh they definitely can say other things. It's just that it would be inconvenient. They might lose money. I wonder if the laws and legal procedures are written considering this general assumption that a party to a lawsuit will naturally lie if it is in their interest. And then I read articles and comments about a "trust based society"...
  - tptacek 1y ago
    I'm not taking one side or the other in the case itself, but it's lazy and superficial to suggest that the defendant in a civil suit would say anything other than that the suit has no merit. The version of this statement where they generously interpret anything the NYT (I subscribe) says, they might as well just surrender. I'm not sticking up for OpenAI so much as just for decent, interesting threads here.
  - wilg 1y ago
    > They might lose money. I expect it's more about them losing the _case_. Silly to expect someone fighting a lawsuit not to try to win it.
  - fastball 1y ago
    This is the nature of the civil court system – it exists for when parties disagree. Why would a defendant who agrees a case has merit go to court at all? Much easier (and generally less expensive) to make the other party whole, assuming the parties agree on what "whole" is. And if they don't agree on what "whole" is, we are back to square one and of course you'd maintain that the other side's suit is baseless.
- mmooss 1y ago
  They could say nothing about the merits of the case.
lxgr 1y ago
The NYT is, in my view, exploiting a systematic weakness of the US legal system here, i.e. extremely wide reaching discovery laws with almost no regard for the privacy of parties not involved to a given dispute, or aspects of their lives not relevant to the dispute at hand. Of course it's out of self-serving interests, but I find it hard to disagree with OpenAI on this one.
- Arainach 1y ago
  What right to privacy? There is no right to have your interactions with a company (1) remain private, nor should there be. Even if there was you agree to let OpenAI do essentially whatever they want with your data - including hand it over to the courts in response to a subpoena. (1) With limited well scoped exclusions for lawyers, medical records, erc.
  - lxgr 1y ago
    That may be your or your jurisdiction's view, but such privacy rights definitely exist in many countries. You might have heard of the GDPR, but even before that, several countries had "privacy by default" laws on the books.
  - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
    But if both the parties agree, then there should be The freedom to stay private. Your comment is dystopian given how the interaction is basically like how some people treat ai as their "friend" imagine no matter what encrypted messaging app or smth they use, the govt still snoops
    - fastball 1y ago
      Dealer-Client privilege.
  - bionhoward 1y ago
    It’s also a matter of competition…there are other AI services available today with various privacy policies ranging from no training by default, ability to opt out of training, ability to turn off data retention, or e2e encryption. A lot of workloads (cough, working on private git repos) logically require private AI to make sense
wyager 1y ago
Lots of people abuse the legal system in various ways. They don't get a free pass just because their abuse is technically legal itself.
visarga 1y ago
NYT wants it both ways. When they were the ones putting freelancer articles into a database to rent, they argued against enforcing copyright and for supporting the new industry, and that it was too hard to revert their original assumptions. Now they absolutely love copyright. https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2024/04/nyt-v-openai-the-timess-about-face/ https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2024/04/nyt-v-openai-the-t...
- moefh 1y ago
  Another way of looking at it is that they lost that case over 20 years ago, and have been building their business model for 20 years accordingly. In other words, they want everyone to be forced to follow the same rules they were forced to follow 20 years ago.
tootie 1y ago
It's PR. OpenAI stole mountains of copyrighted content and are trying to make NYT look like bad guys. OpenAI would not be in the position of defending a lawsuit if they hadn't done something that is very likely illegal. OpenAI can also end this requirement right now by offering a settlement.

eviks 1y ago

And if NYT has no case, but the court approves it, is that still bizarre?

tptacek 1y ago

They're a party to the case! Saying it's baseless isn't a "smear". There is literally nothing else they can say (other than something synonymous with "baseless", like "without merit").

lucianbr 1y ago
Oh they definitely can say other things. It's just that it would be inconvenient. They might lose money. I wonder if the laws and legal procedures are written considering this general assumption that a party to a lawsuit will naturally lie if it is in their interest. And then I read articles and comments about a "trust based society"...
- tptacek 1y ago
  I'm not taking one side or the other in the case itself, but it's lazy and superficial to suggest that the defendant in a civil suit would say anything other than that the suit has no merit. The version of this statement where they generously interpret anything the NYT (I subscribe) says, they might as well just surrender. I'm not sticking up for OpenAI so much as just for decent, interesting threads here.
- wilg 1y ago
  > They might lose money. I expect it's more about them losing the _case_. Silly to expect someone fighting a lawsuit not to try to win it.
- fastball 1y ago
  This is the nature of the civil court system – it exists for when parties disagree. Why would a defendant who agrees a case has merit go to court at all? Much easier (and generally less expensive) to make the other party whole, assuming the parties agree on what "whole" is. And if they don't agree on what "whole" is, we are back to square one and of course you'd maintain that the other side's suit is baseless.
mmooss 1y ago
They could say nothing about the merits of the case.

lxgr 1y ago

The NYT is, in my view, exploiting a systematic weakness of the US legal system here, i.e. extremely wide reaching discovery laws with almost no regard for the privacy of parties not involved to a given dispute, or aspects of their lives not relevant to the dispute at hand. Of course it's out of self-serving interests, but I find it hard to disagree with OpenAI on this one.

Arainach 1y ago
What right to privacy? There is no right to have your interactions with a company (1) remain private, nor should there be. Even if there was you agree to let OpenAI do essentially whatever they want with your data - including hand it over to the courts in response to a subpoena. (1) With limited well scoped exclusions for lawyers, medical records, erc.
- lxgr 1y ago
  That may be your or your jurisdiction's view, but such privacy rights definitely exist in many countries. You might have heard of the GDPR, but even before that, several countries had "privacy by default" laws on the books.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
  But if both the parties agree, then there should be The freedom to stay private. Your comment is dystopian given how the interaction is basically like how some people treat ai as their "friend" imagine no matter what encrypted messaging app or smth they use, the govt still snoops
  - fastball 1y ago
    Dealer-Client privilege.
- bionhoward 1y ago
  It’s also a matter of competition…there are other AI services available today with various privacy policies ranging from no training by default, ability to opt out of training, ability to turn off data retention, or e2e encryption. A lot of workloads (cough, working on private git repos) logically require private AI to make sense

wyager 1y ago

Lots of people abuse the legal system in various ways. They don't get a free pass just because their abuse is technically legal itself.

visarga 1y ago

NYT wants it both ways. When they were the ones putting freelancer articles into a database to rent, they argued against enforcing copyright and for supporting the new industry, and that it was too hard to revert their original assumptions. Now they absolutely love copyright. https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2024/04/nyt-v-openai-the-timess-about-face/ https://harvardlawreview.org/blog/2024/04/nyt-v-openai-the-t...

moefh 1y ago
Another way of looking at it is that they lost that case over 20 years ago, and have been building their business model for 20 years accordingly. In other words, they want everyone to be forced to follow the same rules they were forced to follow 20 years ago.

tootie 1y ago

It's PR. OpenAI stole mountains of copyrighted content and are trying to make NYT look like bad guys. OpenAI would not be in the position of defending a lawsuit if they hadn't done something that is very likely illegal. OpenAI can also end this requirement right now by offering a settlement.