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> But now I'm really reluctant to give more stuff to the free web. Because the fact that it gets scraped and added to a pile of training data to later be moneti
by II2II 2mo ago
> But now I'm really reluctant to give more stuff to the free web. Because the fact that it gets scraped and added to a pile of training data to later be monetized really rubs me the wrong way.
The thing is, people were scraping and monetizing other people's websites long before the current LLM fad. The difference is the magnitude of the problem.
> And I can see why maintainers of sites like this, or other free but incredibly useful resources might start to get irate at that.
Those who object to the scraping fall into several camps, but the biggest complaint I am hearing is that it increases both maintenance costs and time. In other words: it sucks when people are using your work in a manner that you find offensive, but it goes beyond that by doing actual harm.
- joshmarinacci 2mo agoA change in quantity can become a change in quality.
- rjtavares 2mo agoI think the toxicology proverb applies here perfectly: The dose makes the poison.
- dotancohen 2mo agoI believe that it was Stalin who phrased it most eloquently: Quantity has a quality all its own.
- danlitt 2mo agoNot Stalin: https://klangable.com/blog/quantity-has-a-quality-all-its-own/ https://klangable.com/blog/quantity-has-a-quality-all-its-ow...
- dotancohen 2mo agoThank you!
- antisthenes 2mo ago> The thing is, people were scraping and monetizing other people's websites long before the current LLM fad. The difference is the magnitude of the problem. People doing it with a couple of machines and residential proxies versus Anthropic doing it with 2 data centers worth of machines. Scale matters.
- TeMPOraL 2mo ago> The thing is, people were scraping and monetizing other people's websites long before the current LLM fad. The difference is the magnitude of the problem. > In other words: it sucks when people are using your work in a manner that you find offensive That to me still reeks of Dog in the Manger mentality. If you publish something for the world to use, you should neither care nor even track, much less discriminate by (or suddenly seek compensation for) who is using it.
- Cthulhu_ 2mo agoAgreed, this is what you agreed to (implicitly or explicitly) when uploading stuff to the internet. In fact, open source embraces this (hence the 'open'). But people are free to not publish things or post things online with a more restrictive license. Not that a license stops things from being indexed.
- TeMPOraL 2mo ago> But people are free to not publish things or post things online with a more restrictive license. Not that a license stops things from being indexed. Right. In fact, people are also free to publish things with licenses that condition access on compensating the author/publisher, and they have both social and legal backing to enforce it. This is called "proprietary", and it's not a wrong choice - in fact outside of software, it's the default choice. The problem is when people publish "free" and "open" as a marketing tactic, where in fact they really want to control and charge for access (whether dollars or karma or credit). That is just plain dishonesty.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- II2II 2mo ago> Agreed, this is what you agreed to (implicitly or explicitly) when uploading stuff to the internet. A more pragmatic approach is to acknowledge that concerning one's self with how something is used once it has been released is an emotional drain. It is a bit much to suggest that someone agreed to something, even if that agreement is implicit, just because they released it. > But people are free to not publish things or post things online with a more restrictive license. Licences are meaningless unless you have the ability to enforce them (e.g. to sue). That's why so many companies are willing to ignore the terms of open source licenses. It's also why the attempts of enforcement that we do hear about are usually backed by a third party, rather than being done by the software developer themselves. Simply put, the individual developer (or even small project) trying to make a contribution to the community would be better served by not publishing (instead of using a restrictive license) if they are concerned about how their work is used. I don't even know if there is a good way to resolve the problem. Consider something like a DMCA Takedown notice. It removes the administrative and legal overhead to copyright infringement, yet it is also easy to abuse. For example: businesses have weaponized it by using it against individuals. Perhaps my cynicism is taking over here, but I suspect any easily accessible mechanism for enforcement would be similarly abused.