3 ms·

Precedent is pretty clear: competitive uses bad, transformative uses good. Xcancel scrapes and then competes directly with X, whereas LLM labs scrape the intern

Precedent is pretty clear: competitive uses bad, transformative uses good. Xcancel scrapes and then competes directly with X, whereas LLM labs scrape the internet to make an agentic intelligent bot, a transformative use of the scraped content.

bonsai_spool 12d ago
> Precedent is pretty clear: What cases are you citing when you say this?
- immibis2 12d ago
  Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc._v._WTV_Systems,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc....
- brainwad 12d ago
  Bartz v Anthropic. Though the plaintiffs did get something, it was because of the piracy to the original works (competing against the legal market for the books), not the use of them to train the LLM.
  - deleted 12d ago
    [deleted]
  - lesuorac 12d ago
    Bartz is an author though. Is X claiming ownership of the posts people make because pretty much every single social media site doesn't so they have section 230 protection.
    - brainwad 12d ago
      They can just round up some friendly users and sue under their names. Starting with their own corporate accounts?
      - bonsai_spool 12d ago
        These statements would suggest that the precedent is not, in fact, clear
      - lesuorac 12d ago
        That would definitely limit damages to strictly those accounts. I'm not even sure he can use his own account as one of them. The SEC might be pretty friendly to him but I'm not sure that limiting access to a location where material information about Tesla/SpaceX is provided won't become a problem. But I'm not even sure what damages the accounts are suffering as revenue sharing is going away [1]. With Bartz the damage is a loss of sale. With X the damage is $0 per post to the poster. There is a newer Original Content Rewards program [2] but it seems to split revenue from X Premium and presumably people that have X Premium are not using XCancel so the damages would be 0. [1]: https://help.x.com/en/using-x/creator-revenue-sharing https://help.x.com/en/using-x/creator-revenue-sharing [2]: https://help.x.com/en/using-x/original-content-rewards https://help.x.com/en/using-x/original-content-rewards
Planktonne 12d ago
> Xcancel scrapes and then competes directly with X, whereas LLM labs scrape the internet to make an agentic intelligent bot, a transformative use of the scraped content. It seems unreasonable to stop there though; the agentic bots are designed and marketed as able to compete with the initially-scraped sources. I'm not convinced that a competitive use at one remove should be treated as not competitive.
- brainwad 12d ago
  I think that's more true in image generation than in text? At least, all the money is in LLMs that write code, not LLMs that write O'Reilley-style coding books.
  - _flux 12d ago
    I thought LLM-authored books were rampant in Amazon, though?
  - wongarsu 12d ago
    If you have a websites that offers guides, how-tos or tutorials, LLMs directly compete with you. StackOverflow would also have a really good case After all LLMs don't just code, they also answer questions and give step-by-step instructions. In terms of total userbase those features are used a lot more than writing code
nixpulvis 12d ago
I think LLMs providers pretty directly compete with content they scrape like Wikipedia and SO...
- bayindirh 12d ago
  Remember the golden rule of the golden rules: Who has the gold makes the rules.
  - atemerev 12d ago
    If a society operates under a rule like this, it is no better than Russia or any other tyranny where law is for me but not for thee. This is not how it should work in a supposedly free and lawful country.
    - bio_hacker 12d ago
      That’s how works everywhere
      - seanw444 12d ago
        You're downvoted, but it's true. Some places just mask it with fancy processes and manners a bit better.
    - lovich 12d ago
      It’s been working like that in the US for a while. Do you think the bottom 99% of the country would ever win a legal fight with one of the tech billionaires? Even if they were 100% in the right, they could just drag out the legal process with endless motions and appeals until the average Joe lacked the funds to continue the fight.
      - atemerev 12d ago
        Well I have heard that some people managed to sue some corporations and actually win some cases before.
ratelimitsteve 12d ago
How clear is it when I google a recipe and get an AI-generated recipe that's clearly derived from the top three results and then placed above those results? That sounds like it's both transformative (in that the recipe created by the AI may not match any one of the scraped recipes perfectly) and also competitive (in that the AI takes page views away from the pages it got the recipes from)
- bonsai_spool 12d ago
  > How clear is it when I google a recipe and get an AI-generated recipe Recipes can’t be copyrighted Here’s one discussion about this https://www.nycbar.org/reports/secret-ingredients-how-to-protect-recipes/ https://www.nycbar.org/reports/secret-ingredients-how-to-pro...
  - ratelimitsteve 12d ago
    fair, but recipes aren't the only thing where AI summaries at the top of search results are simultaneously transformative and competitive. Any information that is scraped from a website and then summarized by AI in a way that prevents that website from getting views is both transformative and competitive.
kelvinjps10 12d ago
but xcancel is not putting ads or making a commercial product

bonsai_spool 12d ago

> Precedent is pretty clear: What cases are you citing when you say this?

immibis2 12d ago
Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc._v._WTV_Systems,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Bros._Entertainment_Inc....
brainwad 12d ago
Bartz v Anthropic. Though the plaintiffs did get something, it was because of the piracy to the original works (competing against the legal market for the books), not the use of them to train the LLM.
- deleted 12d ago
  [deleted]
- lesuorac 12d ago
  Bartz is an author though. Is X claiming ownership of the posts people make because pretty much every single social media site doesn't so they have section 230 protection.
  - brainwad 12d ago
    They can just round up some friendly users and sue under their names. Starting with their own corporate accounts?
    - bonsai_spool 12d ago
      These statements would suggest that the precedent is not, in fact, clear
    - lesuorac 12d ago
      That would definitely limit damages to strictly those accounts. I'm not even sure he can use his own account as one of them. The SEC might be pretty friendly to him but I'm not sure that limiting access to a location where material information about Tesla/SpaceX is provided won't become a problem. But I'm not even sure what damages the accounts are suffering as revenue sharing is going away [1]. With Bartz the damage is a loss of sale. With X the damage is $0 per post to the poster. There is a newer Original Content Rewards program [2] but it seems to split revenue from X Premium and presumably people that have X Premium are not using XCancel so the damages would be 0. [1]: https://help.x.com/en/using-x/creator-revenue-sharing https://help.x.com/en/using-x/creator-revenue-sharing [2]: https://help.x.com/en/using-x/original-content-rewards https://help.x.com/en/using-x/original-content-rewards

Planktonne 12d ago

> Xcancel scrapes and then competes directly with X, whereas LLM labs scrape the internet to make an agentic intelligent bot, a transformative use of the scraped content. It seems unreasonable to stop there though; the agentic bots are designed and marketed as able to compete with the initially-scraped sources. I'm not convinced that a competitive use at one remove should be treated as not competitive.

brainwad 12d ago
I think that's more true in image generation than in text? At least, all the money is in LLMs that write code, not LLMs that write O'Reilley-style coding books.
- _flux 12d ago
  I thought LLM-authored books were rampant in Amazon, though?
- wongarsu 12d ago
  If you have a websites that offers guides, how-tos or tutorials, LLMs directly compete with you. StackOverflow would also have a really good case After all LLMs don't just code, they also answer questions and give step-by-step instructions. In terms of total userbase those features are used a lot more than writing code

nixpulvis 12d ago

I think LLMs providers pretty directly compete with content they scrape like Wikipedia and SO...

bayindirh 12d ago
Remember the golden rule of the golden rules: Who has the gold makes the rules.
- atemerev 12d ago
  If a society operates under a rule like this, it is no better than Russia or any other tyranny where law is for me but not for thee. This is not how it should work in a supposedly free and lawful country.
  - bio_hacker 12d ago
    That’s how works everywhere
    - seanw444 12d ago
      You're downvoted, but it's true. Some places just mask it with fancy processes and manners a bit better.
  - lovich 12d ago
    It’s been working like that in the US for a while. Do you think the bottom 99% of the country would ever win a legal fight with one of the tech billionaires? Even if they were 100% in the right, they could just drag out the legal process with endless motions and appeals until the average Joe lacked the funds to continue the fight.
    - atemerev 12d ago
      Well I have heard that some people managed to sue some corporations and actually win some cases before.

ratelimitsteve 12d ago

How clear is it when I google a recipe and get an AI-generated recipe that's clearly derived from the top three results and then placed above those results? That sounds like it's both transformative (in that the recipe created by the AI may not match any one of the scraped recipes perfectly) and also competitive (in that the AI takes page views away from the pages it got the recipes from)

bonsai_spool 12d ago
> How clear is it when I google a recipe and get an AI-generated recipe Recipes can’t be copyrighted Here’s one discussion about this https://www.nycbar.org/reports/secret-ingredients-how-to-protect-recipes/ https://www.nycbar.org/reports/secret-ingredients-how-to-pro...
- ratelimitsteve 12d ago
  fair, but recipes aren't the only thing where AI summaries at the top of search results are simultaneously transformative and competitive. Any information that is scraped from a website and then summarized by AI in a way that prevents that website from getting views is both transformative and competitive.

kelvinjps10 12d ago

but xcancel is not putting ads or making a commercial product