4 ms·

Right, but they're scraping photos of people from the whole web, which of course includes photos of British and EU citizens. So it's not just a normal American

by _el1s7 1y ago

Right, but they're scraping photos of people from the whole web, which of course includes photos of British and EU citizens. So it's not just a normal American company in the American market, it wants to be an international company but without respecting international laws, and that's not going to end up well.

_heimdall 1y ago
So is your argument that a company must follow laws of any locality they scrape information on the internet from? Is that decided based on where the public content is hosted, where it was created, or based on the individuals created it or are portrayed in it? If companies have to follow that then in all likelihood every big tech company would have to follow every law in the world, virtually all of them scrape data from the public internet.
- tgv 1y ago
  Bad luck. They don't have to scrape, you know.
- _el1s7 1y ago
  It depends on what information is being scraped and what is it used for. Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. The intention is important. And respecting people's privacy and copyrights.
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    I disagree that those two cases are really all that ethically different, personally. They're both harmful practices. A pox on both their houses.
  - inetknght 1y ago
    > Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. Hard disagree. They both violate people's privacy and copyrights.
    - _heimdall 1y ago
      I don't believe privacy rights can be violated when the information is available publicly. Copyrights are a separate issue and one that LLM companies almost certainly violated.
- piltdownman 1y ago
  Well yes, that should be self-evident. A company must follow laws of any locality under which it engages with or utilises resources from as a component of its business. They're previously tried this domestically in every way possible under the purview of things like the MPA and the DMCA. The United States International Trade Commission went so far as to consider electronic transmissions to the U.S. as "articles" so that it could prevent the importation of digital files of counterfeit goods. In the meantime, AI companies are forgetting when the shoe was on the other foot regarding Russian MP3 websites accessible from the US - with the US trade negotiators warning Russia that allowing AllOfMP3 to continue to operate would jeopardize Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization, and the US copyright lobby subsequently filing a $1.7 trillion lawsuit against them. "AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York. This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the meantime, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws."." On May 20, 2008, the RIAA dropped all copyright infringement charges against AllOfMP3.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    > engages with or utilises resources This phrase does a lot of heavy lifting. I have a small business for consulting and occasionally need to use hardware made in a foreign country to search online content created and hosted in another country. I wouldn't expect buying that foreign hardware or searching foreign content would put me under the jurisdiction of laws from the various foreign countries involved.
    - piltdownman 1y ago
      But it always has - if a given user improperly gains access to an American computer system, they violate federal law, specifically the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1986. By making these activities federal crimes, the CFAA creates a legal foundation for pursuing alleged infringers, regardless of their location. In deciding whether a U.S. statute may be applied extraterritorially, courts look to two potential foundations for jurisdiction: first, the jurisdictional basis, “territoriality, nationality, passive personality, universality, or the protective principle”; and second, legislative intent. CFAA Passes both these tests. This is clarified in U.S. Const. art. I, § 8s. 10, 3; art. VI, cl. 2. Cf. United States v. Baston, 818 F.3d 651, 666-67 (11th Cir. 2016) (“Congress’s power to enact extraterritorial laws is not limited to the Offenses Clause”). i.e. the Chinese Military Personnel Charged with Computer Fraud, Economic Espionage and Wire Fraud for Hacking into Credit Reporting Agency Equifax, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-military-personnel-charged-computer-fraud-economic-espionage-and-wire-fraud-hacking https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-military-personnel-ch... If you want a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting, the specific computers in scope are defined under section 18 U.S.C. § 1030(e)(2) - "...including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States." Similarly, in United States v. Neil Scott Kramer (2011) it was determined that ALL cell-phones represent computers in scope - "...the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found that a cell phone can be considered a computer if "the phone perform[s] arithmetic, logical, and storage functions." My favourite, however, is the precedent set by Pulte Homes, Inc. v. Laborers' International Union (2011) - urging legitimate communications via official digital channels constitutes a DDOS and breach of the CFAA if the official channel cannot handle the subsequent spike in volume! This travesty arose after Pulte fired an employee represented by the union and LIUNA urged members to call and send email to the company to express their dissatisfaction. As a result of the increased traffic, the company's email system crashed. The Sixth Circuit ruled that the LIUNA's instruction to call and email "intentionally caused damage".
- toofy 1y ago
  > So is your argument that a company must follow laws of any locality they scrape information on the internet from? i mean… yes? it’s entirely normal for a company to be bound to the laws of jurisdiction it wants to open a store or restaurant in or whatever. why on earth would this be any different?
  - chatmasta 1y ago
    What if they’re scraping from a US exit IP hitting a local Cloudflare cache node proxying to an origin in the UK? Their scraper only interacts with the US node, and in fact Cloudflare by design doesn’t tell the scraper where the origin node is. So are they subject to UK law in this case? No internet traffic left the US, aside from when the target site sent its data to a US server for publishing.
    - toofy 1y ago
      that’s a lot of “what if” wild hypotheticals. clearview knows for absolute certain they’ve been operating in the eu.
      - anonym29 1y ago
        >that’s a lot of “what if” wild hypotheticals. What? No it's not at all - that exact flow happens tens of millions of times per day every single day. Cloudflare handles a plurality of all global internet traffic and makes extensive use of a geographically distributed CDN.
- hitarpetar 1y ago
  > So is your argument that a company must follow laws in principal, yes
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    You removed the important context

by _el1s7 1y ago

_heimdall 1y ago

So is your argument that a company must follow laws of any locality they scrape information on the internet from? Is that decided based on where the public content is hosted, where it was created, or based on the individuals created it or are portrayed in it? If companies have to follow that then in all likelihood every big tech company would have to follow every law in the world, virtually all of them scrape data from the public internet.

tgv 1y ago
Bad luck. They don't have to scrape, you know.
_el1s7 1y ago
It depends on what information is being scraped and what is it used for. Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. The intention is important. And respecting people's privacy and copyrights.
- JohnFen 1y ago
  I disagree that those two cases are really all that ethically different, personally. They're both harmful practices. A pox on both their houses.
- inetknght 1y ago
  > Scraping people's personal photos and biometric information for shady agencies, is not the same as scraping e-commerce prices, social media posts, or blog websites. Hard disagree. They both violate people's privacy and copyrights.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    I don't believe privacy rights can be violated when the information is available publicly. Copyrights are a separate issue and one that LLM companies almost certainly violated.
piltdownman 1y ago
Well yes, that should be self-evident. A company must follow laws of any locality under which it engages with or utilises resources from as a component of its business. They're previously tried this domestically in every way possible under the purview of things like the MPA and the DMCA. The United States International Trade Commission went so far as to consider electronic transmissions to the U.S. as "articles" so that it could prevent the importation of digital files of counterfeit goods. In the meantime, AI companies are forgetting when the shoe was on the other foot regarding Russian MP3 websites accessible from the US - with the US trade negotiators warning Russia that allowing AllOfMP3 to continue to operate would jeopardize Russia's entry into the World Trade Organization, and the US copyright lobby subsequently filing a $1.7 trillion lawsuit against them. "AllofMP3 understands that several U.S. record label companies filed a lawsuit against Media Services in New York. This suit is unjustified as AllofMP3 does not operate in New York. Certainly the labels are free to file any suit they wish, despite knowing full well that AllofMP3 operates legally in Russia. In the meantime, AllofMP3 plans to continue to operate legally and comply with all Russian laws."." On May 20, 2008, the RIAA dropped all copyright infringement charges against AllOfMP3.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3
- _heimdall 1y ago
  > engages with or utilises resources This phrase does a lot of heavy lifting. I have a small business for consulting and occasionally need to use hardware made in a foreign country to search online content created and hosted in another country. I wouldn't expect buying that foreign hardware or searching foreign content would put me under the jurisdiction of laws from the various foreign countries involved.
  - piltdownman 1y ago
    But it always has - if a given user improperly gains access to an American computer system, they violate federal law, specifically the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) of 1986. By making these activities federal crimes, the CFAA creates a legal foundation for pursuing alleged infringers, regardless of their location. In deciding whether a U.S. statute may be applied extraterritorially, courts look to two potential foundations for jurisdiction: first, the jurisdictional basis, “territoriality, nationality, passive personality, universality, or the protective principle”; and second, legislative intent. CFAA Passes both these tests. This is clarified in U.S. Const. art. I, § 8s. 10, 3; art. VI, cl. 2. Cf. United States v. Baston, 818 F.3d 651, 666-67 (11th Cir. 2016) (“Congress’s power to enact extraterritorial laws is not limited to the Offenses Clause”). i.e. the Chinese Military Personnel Charged with Computer Fraud, Economic Espionage and Wire Fraud for Hacking into Credit Reporting Agency Equifax, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-military-personnel-charged-computer-fraud-economic-espionage-and-wire-fraud-hacking https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-military-personnel-ch... If you want a phrase that does a lot of heavy lifting, the specific computers in scope are defined under section 18 U.S.C. § 1030(e)(2) - "...including a computer located outside the United States that is used in a manner that affects interstate or foreign commerce or communication of the United States." Similarly, in United States v. Neil Scott Kramer (2011) it was determined that ALL cell-phones represent computers in scope - "...the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit found that a cell phone can be considered a computer if "the phone perform[s] arithmetic, logical, and storage functions." My favourite, however, is the precedent set by Pulte Homes, Inc. v. Laborers' International Union (2011) - urging legitimate communications via official digital channels constitutes a DDOS and breach of the CFAA if the official channel cannot handle the subsequent spike in volume! This travesty arose after Pulte fired an employee represented by the union and LIUNA urged members to call and send email to the company to express their dissatisfaction. As a result of the increased traffic, the company's email system crashed. The Sixth Circuit ruled that the LIUNA's instruction to call and email "intentionally caused damage".
toofy 1y ago
> So is your argument that a company must follow laws of any locality they scrape information on the internet from? i mean… yes? it’s entirely normal for a company to be bound to the laws of jurisdiction it wants to open a store or restaurant in or whatever. why on earth would this be any different?
- chatmasta 1y ago
  What if they’re scraping from a US exit IP hitting a local Cloudflare cache node proxying to an origin in the UK? Their scraper only interacts with the US node, and in fact Cloudflare by design doesn’t tell the scraper where the origin node is. So are they subject to UK law in this case? No internet traffic left the US, aside from when the target site sent its data to a US server for publishing.
  - toofy 1y ago
    that’s a lot of “what if” wild hypotheticals. clearview knows for absolute certain they’ve been operating in the eu.
    - anonym29 1y ago
      >that’s a lot of “what if” wild hypotheticals. What? No it's not at all - that exact flow happens tens of millions of times per day every single day. Cloudflare handles a plurality of all global internet traffic and makes extensive use of a geographically distributed CDN.
hitarpetar 1y ago
> So is your argument that a company must follow laws in principal, yes
- _heimdall 1y ago
  You removed the important context