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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Yeah just adding a link to your comment doesn’t negate the TOS of where you post it.
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.
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.
You didn’t use my corporate name. Therefore, your contract is non-grata null and void according to the Articles of Confederation section 22B.4.22.
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?
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)
Yeah it harkens back to seeing people make those posts on Facebook about how they don’t consent to having their data collected and urging others to do the same before some imaginary upcoming deadline.
@onlinepersona@programming.dev and @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world should be able to give their perspectives.
@Pacrat173@lemmy.ml the license is actually a Creative Commons license for Non-Commercial uses. Creative Commons is a copyleft license that’s “free to use with some restrictions”. Mostly used in art, literature, audio, and film, for my part I’m using it to license my comments. Anybody can cite with attribution, but commercial use is forbidden by the license.
The why: I just don’t like non-opensource commercial ventures. Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, Apple, and so on are harmful in many ways.
Enforcement and legality: Microsoft’s Github CoPilot (a large language model / “AI”) was trained on copyrighted text source code. A few licenses clearly state that derivatives should also be opensource, which CoPilot is not. So there is a big lawsuit against it. Many artists, non-programmer authors, musicians, and others are also unhappy that AI was trained on their copyrighted works and have sued for damages.
Until these cases make it out of court, it will not be clear if adding a license to comments could even jeopardize commercial AI vendors.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?
I said so in my comment
So there is a big lawsuit against it
Seriously what is up with people and the downvotes on this. It is just a link guys.
A lot of this hate feels a bit manufactured because I can’t honestly think of a good reason why so many would be so against this.
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?
As a lawyer, what’s your opinion on the CC BY-NC-SA v4 license?
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.
Ironic, considering you are undoubtedly not a lawyer and have evidently never even dealt with copyright issues.
How is it ironic? I never said I was a lawyer, nor did I ever say I was giving legal advice, nor have I ever spoken with authority on the subject.
You however… can’t see the irony of your own statement.
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.
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”.
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.
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).
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 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.
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”.
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.
A personal request, based on this subject.
I would very much like to not be astroturfed/brigaded every 18 to 24 hours because I’m licensing my comments.
Usually the first comment is someone asking me why I’m using a license, then the second comment replying to the first comment is someone else chastising my intelligence and my usage of the license and saying I don’t know what I’m doing, and then explaining the completely wrong terms why I’m licensing it, and then the first person from the first comment replies with the third comment saying how dumb or silly or funny I am for doing that, rinse / repeat.
(A funny aside, the pattern I described above, the third comment was identical text, with days separating the two occurrences, and then later on someone went back and changed the third comment on the second most recent occurrence to be worded slightly different, after the fact.)
Another one is I get someone who goes on very very long diatribes asserting law and legalities (even though when I ask them if they are a lawyer they never answer, or they say no), using many paragraphed comments to tell me in every way why I’m wrong, but then finishing their diatribe off with how they really don’t care about the subject, but are just giving a friendly explanation to me why I’m getting downvoted, when I didn’t ask, and when voting wasn’t even being discussed.
And finally, the 10-15ish downvotes on every comment I’m making. (The one that really made me laugh was the one where I reply with one word, “Thanks”.)
Just leave me the f alone. If you don’t like seeing my comments with a license link, feel free to block me.
It’s really becoming harassment at this point.
Thank you for reading.
Yeah all of this hate just feels unnecessary. I’m sorry that @onlinepersona@programming.dev and you are going through this.
Just for the heads up I support you guys.
Its gotten even more aggressive today, both in this community, and in other communities that I’m posting in. Its following me around.
Well I think you could do a few things.
A) Talk to your admin about harassment and ask them to look into this when they can.
B) Start posting in communities that have a higher intolerance to this kind of behaviour (I’m thinking Beehaw communities)
C) Make a post on !anticorporate@lemmy.giftedmc.com and see if you can get even more people doing it.
I’m actually thinking of adding these to my posts as well now just to see more people’s reactions. Do you know of a way to automatically add it to the end of your posts?
Edit: grammar and spelling.
I’m actually thinking of adding these to my posts as well now just to see more people’s reactions. Do you know of a way to automatically add it to the end of your posts?
Lemmy.World doesn’t have a signature field at the account level, so I copy/paste the signature in.
This is the unformatted text that I’m copying/pasting …
[~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode.en)As far as other communities goes, they’re following me around, and using seven-day old accounts to harrass.
At the end of the day, I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. Its just a pain in the ass to open my inbox and see crap in there, is all. Wish the admins would step up.
Oh wait I forgot lemmy.world isn’t federated with beehaw.org anymore so you can’t use those communities. Because usually most of the kinds of comments you would be getting would be removed by now.
Well you can get a second account to join beehaw communities or again just reporting and all that stuff.
But honestly I really think you should make a post on !anticorporate@lemmy.giftedmc.com getting more people to do it because this is the kind of thing that would be interesting to them.
FYI I’ve found that if you download a text expander it allows you to make shortcuts for these kinds of texts making it much easier to add automatically.
ITT, a lot of ai bootlickers
