I know what the Creative Commons is but not this new thing or why it keeps popping up in comments on Lemmy
It’s meaningless bullshit if they think the AI companies give a shit about copyright
Even moreso: When you post online you typically give the website a license to distribute the content in the terms and conditions. That’s all the license they need, it doesn’t matter what you say in the comments.
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If by “a while back” you mean “from the dawn of time immemorial until this day,” then yes
Copy this text 50 times to get a blue ICQ icon!
I’m picturing cave paintings, followed immediately beneath by lines and lines of small text.
Yeah, same shit new sites.
Yeah just adding a link to your comment doesn’t negate the TOS of where you post it.
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You’d have to check with that instance, but IIRC they don’t have any license on your content, meaning your content effectively falls under copyright unless states otherwise.
Because people don’t understand how copyright works.
In most countries any copyrightable work that you produce is automatically covered by copyright. You don’t need to do anything additional to gain that protection.
Most Lemmy instances don’t have any sort of licensing grant in their terms of service. So that means that the original author maintains all ownership of their work.
So technically what these people are doing is granting a license to their comment that allows it to be used for more than would otherwise be allowed by the default copyright protections.
What they are probably trying to accomplish is to revoke the ability for commercial enterprises to use their comments. However that is already the default state so it is pretty irrelevant. Basically any company that cares about copyright and thinks that what they are doing isn’t allowed as fair use already wouldn’t be able to use their comments without the license note. So by adding the license note all they are doing is allowing non-commercial AI to scrape it (which is probably not what was intended). Of course most AI scraping companies don’t care about copyright or think that their use is not protected under copyright. So it is again irrelevant.
Ding ding ding. It’s basically the equivalent of that “I don’t give Facebook permission to use my statuses, pictures, etc for commercial purposes…” chain letter that boomers love to post. It has enough fancy legalese and sounds juuuust plausible enough that it’ll get anyone who doesn’t already understand the law.
It reads like a sovcit claim.
That was my thought as well.
Now that I understand it, I’ll be able to block the bloc of boneheads.
I know that a broken clock is right twice a day but using a broken clock is just dumb. Out of the 1440 minutes in a day, it gets 1438 of them wrong? Broken clocks get binned.
It’s the internet equivalent of a sovereign citizen putting a fake license plate on their car.
The ones they’re trying to “protect themselves” from do not give a shit.
By reading this comment you have entered in to a binding agreement to pay me $1000 per word.
I am not reading your comment, I am simply traveling through it with my eyeballs. Also your comment doesn’t have gold fringe and therefore lacks jurisdiction.
For God’s sake, it’s not even all caps in 45 degree angle…
I have a plastic screen in front of my phone screen so I read the plastic and not the agreement.
Don’t forget the red thumbprint!
I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR INTENT!
Clearly not a trustee to the beneficiary… filibuster
Remember when all those boomers were making Facebook posts about how they don’t consent to Facebook doing the things in their terms and conditions?
I remember that shit. Most of them thought that Facebook “going public” meant that everyone could publish their Minions memes without permission. 🤦🏻♂️
2 bucks says commercial ai is still being trained on those comments.
It would be pretty funny if GPT starts putting licence notices under its answers because that’s what people do in its training data.
Until now I was under the impression that this was the goal of these notices:
If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
Because if an LLM ingests a comment with a copyright notice like that, there’s a chance it will start appending copyright notices to it’s own responses, which could technically, legally, maybe make the AI model CC BY-NC-SA 4.0? A way to “poison” the dataset, so that OpenAI is obliged to distribute it’s model under that license. Obviously there’s no chance of that working, but it draws attention to AI companies breaking copyright law.
(also, I have no clue about copyrights)
Your first mistake was thinking the company training their models care. They’re actively lobbying for the right to say “fuck copyright when it benefits us!”.
Your second mistake is assuming training LLM blindly put everything in. There’s human filters, then there’s automated filters, then there’s the LLM itself that blur things out. I can’t tell about the last one, but the first two will easily strip such easy noise, the same way search engines very quickly became immune to random keyword spam two decades ago.
Note that I didn’t even care to see if it was useful in any way to add these little extra blurb, legally speaking. I doubt it would help, though. Service ToS and other regulatory body have probably more weight than that.
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How exactly do you expect to see the “source” of a language model?
…
Hey does anyone want to buy a t-shirt from me with this guy’s worst comments printed on it?
I want a t-shirt with Dalton from Roadhouse on it that says “Keep it Swayze!”.
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Yeah that’s not the source, that’s still output. You don’t seem to understand how LLMs work and yet have taken a bizarre stance on it anyway.
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You know that’s not the LLM’s ‘source’ right? It’s still output. Do you mean the training data? Is that what you mean by CoPilot should be open source? If CoPilot has learned from something GPL then everything else it outputs, or perhaps specifically its training data - should be GPL?
Are you saying Microsoft CoPilot didn’t respect copyleft licences? How are they not getting totally sued for something obviously illegal? Or is it only when copyright violations harm big companies that people get sued?
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Likely because it’s blatant misinformation and very spammy. Licences permit additional use, they do not restrict use beyond what copyright already does. I imagine there’d be fewer downvotes if they didn’t incorrectly claim licencing their content was somehow anti-AI. Still spammy and pointless, but at least not misinformation.
Imagine if someone ended every comment with “I DO NOT GRANT PERMISSION TO LAW ENFORCEMENT TO READ THIS COMMENT. ANY USE OF THIS COMMENT BY LAW ENFORCEMENT FOR ANY REASON IS ILLEGAL. THIS COMMENT CANNOT BE USED AS EVIDENCE AGAINST ANY NON-LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONS IN RELATION TO ANY CRIME.”
A bit silly, no?
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Ironic, considering you are undoubtedly not a lawyer and have evidently never even dealt with copyright issues.
CC licences are handy copyleft licences to allow others to use your work with minimal effort. Using them to restrict what others can do is a fundamental misunderstanding of how copyright works. If you want to restrict others’ use of your work copyright already handles that, a licence can only be more permissive than default copyright law. You can sign a contract with another party if you want to further restrict their use of your work, but you’ll generally also have to give them something in return for the contract to be valid (known as “consideration”). If you wish to do so you can include a copyright notice (eg “Copyright © 2024 onlinepersona. All rights reserved.”) but that hasn’t been a requirement for a long time.
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It’s ironic because you demand someone be a lawyer to refute an obviously incorrect claim made by a non-lawyer. If you consider me answering the question you asked directly of me “irony” then I suppose I can see how you might consider that comment ironic.
It’s definitely worth noting that you’ve attempted to shift the topic well away from the absurdity of using an open licence to do the opposite of what licences do and instead onto the topic of who is a lawyer and the definition of irony.
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They.
It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how you automatically have copyright on any written work you produce, and how it’s unclear whether any sort of licensing even applies to training data in the US.
From the copyright office’s website:
Do I have to register with your office to be protected?
No. In general, registration is voluntary. Copyright exists from the moment the work is created. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work. See Circular 1, Copyright Basics, section “Copyright Registration.”
Yes, so you have copyright when you make the work. I have copyright on this comment just for having written it. Pasting a CC notice would give me less control over the use of this comment, not more. Regardless, I doubt anyone is planning on suing a multi-billion dollar business over their comments on social media being used as training data.
Is an internet comment a ‘written work’ though?
Yes. However whether or not it has protections under copyright is not always clear. Likely your comment is too short and simple to be protected. But if it can’t be protected claiming to grant a license to that work doesn’t change it.
Basically by adding this note they are effectively granting a license to the work. There is no situation in which granting a license can restrict how a work (which is effectively maximum protection).
Why wouldn’t it be? It’s just as much a textual medium as a PDF, or a book, for that matter. Hell, any file on a computer can be read as characters. I could type Homer’s Odyssey in a series of comments, or the source code to DOOM, or the color values of every pixel of every frame of a video I took of my friend chasing a duck.
Because certain types of text aren’t actually copyrightable. You can’t copyright a fact, for one.
Copyright does not protect facts, ideas, systems, or methods of operation, although it may protect the way these things are expressed.
For some of those (ideas, systems, or methods of operation) you need a patent. Even with the copyright clause in a comment, it might not be valid. At least concerning US laws.
What about when people paste copypastas, share memes, or reference age old arguments? The very culture of internet comments seems to be opposed to copyright.
Pasting a copypasta is probably actually copyright infringement. Same with memes.
The thing about copyright is that it really only matters if you choose to enforce your protection. Presumably the owners of the copypasta don’t care enough and the owners of the memes think it brings more popularity to the movie than any licensing costs they could possibly gain from selling the stills.
(Some memes may be considered transformative enough to be fair use, but some of them almost certainly are not.)
Video game streaming is a clear example of this. Almost certainly live-streaming or doing full gameplay videos are infringing the game owner’s copyright. The work is often commercial, is often a replacement for the original (at least for some people) and very rarely transformative. But most game publishers think that it is worth it for the advertising. So they don’t enforce their copyright. Many publishers will explicitly grant licenses for streaming their games. A few publishers will enforce their copyright and take down videos, they are likely well within their rights.
Tom Scott has a fairly good overview of basic copyright knowledge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Jwo5qc78QU
I don’t know if I would say the internet is opposed to copyright. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding and a lot of not caring. If the average internet commenter posts a meme it is of such minuscule cost to the owner of that work that it doesn’t make sense to go after them. So it sort of just happens. This makes people think that it is allowed, even if it probably isn’t. Most people would probably also agree that this is morally ok. But I don’t think that means that they are against copyright in general. I think if you asked most people. “Should I be allowed to download a CGP Grey video and reupload it for my own profit” they would say no. Probably similar for “Should I be allowed to sell cracked copies of Celeste for half price”.
That’s why DMCA exists. For the most part, the Internet is full of copyright infringement that is simply never acted upon. DMCA shit makes it so the posters and the host aren’t liable for infringement, so long as they comply with official take downs within X period of time (with a chance to appeal).
As long as you aren’t committing copyright infringement by using a meme you don’t have the rights to, and otherwise meeting the standards of having a “modicum of creativity,” I don’t see why you wouldn’t have copyright on it. That being said, there are few goals more futile than that of trying to remove something off the internet for copyright infringement.
Check if you actually saw multiple people or if it was always just a single user called internetpersona. They are the only one I saw doing that but are quite active here, so you might get a wrong impression. Imo this is completely useless.
I’ve seen 3 separate people. Including that guy you mentioned. Reminds me of the Facebook copy pasta lul.
I dislike it but merely because it normalizes having to sign content with an anti commercialization license to refuse to have your data harvested. Contributing to AI should be opt-in.
I agree it should be opt in but most platforms take ownership of your words as soon as they are submitted allowing the platform to decide if they want to sell the data for ai.
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WARNING: Any institution or person using this site or any of it’s associated sites for study, projects, or personal agenda - You do not have my permission to use any of my profile or pictures in any form or forum, both current or future. You do not have my permission to copy, save, or print my pictures for your own personal use, including, but not limited to, saving them on your computer, posting them on any other website, or this one and passing them off as your own. If you have or do, it will be considered a violation of my privacy and will be subject to all legal remedies.
My simple understanding of the idea is it forces AI companies to have to avoid taking those comments. If they did, they would need to provide attribution to the sources etc.
Time will tell if it works
It won’t. It’s just like the boomers over on Facebook.
If they even notice it, they will say that the website TOS is the relevant license.
Eirher way, they will just go ahead and use it. None of us have the resources or perseverance to prove anything and take them to court in a meaningful way.
What is the website ToS for different Lemmy instances, and does it really permit commercial use in AI?
As far as I can tell, they don’t prohibit it. Couldn’t find any mention of it in Lemmy.world TOS
Yes but the default state is that you have copyright over your posts/comments, and by sending them to your Lemmy server you are giving them some license to at least distribute the content to others (most services specify what license you are giving them in the ToS, which is where they would say that you are licensing them to sell you shit to AI companies). In theory by specifying the CC-SA-NC license or whatever that should be the license unless your Lemmy instance has some ToS terms that specifically say you’re granting additional privileges to someone by posting.
Whether AI companies actually care (they don’t) is a different story, but if eventually they actually have to follow copyright laws like everyone else then it could matter.
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It says nothing, so you have copyright on it.
Adding a restrictive license to it only means as much as you’re willing and able to police it yourself and take others to court and argue that they can not assume the same freedom of use of your comments that they can with the rest of the site.
As an individual, for comments of two sentences each, this is not an option.
The CC requires copyright holders to contact companies that violate the license and give them 30 days to remediate.
I highly doubt:
- people who put the CC-BY-NC license in their comment will troll AI bots to see if their specific comments are being used
- those same people can prove to the company that their comment was used
- the company will actually take them at their word and remove their comments from their training data
- even if all of the above are true, can afford an attorney let alone sustain that attorney through the case
- even if all of the above are true, prevail in a court of law
I think people adding the license is fine. It’s your comment. Do whatever. I don’t think it’s as harmful as sovereign citizens using their own license plate for “traveling”.
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It doesn’t work.
By default you have complete ownership of all works you create. What that license link is doing is granting an additional license to the comment. (In this case likely the only available license.)
This means that people can choose to use the terms in this license rather than their “default” rights to the work (such as fair use which is which most AI companies are claiming). It can’t take away any of their default privileges.
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I should add that there is one approach that could be taken here. Take this with a huge grain of salt because I am not a lawyer.
When you are posting on Lemmy you are likely granting an implicit license to Lemmy server operators to distribute your work. Basically because you understand that posting a public comment on Lemmy will make it available on your and other Lemmy servers it is assumed that it is ok to do that.
In other words you can’t write a story, post it on Lemmy, then sue every Lemmy instance that federated the comment and made it publicly available. That would be ridiculous.
There is a possible legal argument that twists this implicit grant to include AI training. Maybe you could have a disclaimer that this wasn’t the case. I don’t know how you would need to word this and if it would actually change anything. But I would talk to a lawyer.
ITT, a lot of ai bootlickers
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Because it’s stupid and pointless, and I will assume that anyone who adds it to their comments is as well.
To clarify, I’m not anti-open source license. I’m also not anti-tin foil hats. Please feel free to wear them if you want. I completely support your right to do so, but it’s also my right to judge you and laugh behind your back.
Because you are effectively spreading misinformation.
Your behaviour leads people to believe that in order for their comments not to be used for commercial AI training they need to have a signature. But that isn’t true, at most the signature is allowing more uses of your comment, not restricting anything.
People already struggle to understand copyright. Adding more confusion is doing everyone reading your license a disservice.
