What is the Anti Commercial-Al license and why do people keep adding it to their comments?

submitted by Pacrat173

I know what the Creative Commons is but not this new thing or why it keeps popping up in comments on Lemmy

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139 Comments

csm10495

2 bucks says commercial ai is still being trained on those comments.

sushibowl

It would be pretty funny if GPT starts putting licence notices under its answers because that's what people do in its training data.

HSR@lemmy.dbzer0.com🏴‍☠️ , edited

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)

cley_faye

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.

ShepherdPie

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.

kevincox

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.

PM_Your_Nudes_Please

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.

iegod

It reads like a sovcit claim.

harrys_balzac

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.

ShepherdPie

Definitely along the same vein, except it doesn't drag a bunch of innocent people into it like SovCitizens do when they drive without a license or insurance or refuse to pay back loans/credit cards.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

It’s basically the equivalent of that “I don’t give Facebook permission to use my

Don't you guys get tired of repeating yourself?

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

tux7350

Ohhh come on now, you've got too see the irony here. Don't you get tired of repeatedly adding that license? No, of course not. You just like the attention, it's okay lol I won't tell anyone your secret ;)

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Don’t you get tired of repeatedly adding that license?

I'd prefer if Lemmy had a signature field as part of the account, so I could put it there once and forget about it, yes.

But otherwise it's a long press copy, and a long press paste, and I'm done. It's not rocket science.

No, of course not. You just like the attention, it’s okay lol I won’t tell anyone your secret ;)

No human being on this planet would want to be constantly harassed by, and having to defend themselves from, astroturfers/bots who are trying to prevent other people from jumping on the bandwagon of protecting their content by licensing it explicitly.

It's a pain in the ass speaking with people like you, especially the when they think that they're '*Winning!*' with their assumed snappy replies.

I'll be explicit, *again. Leave me the f alone about my using of a license! If you don't like seeing the license as part of my comments, FEEL FREE TO BLOCK ME. The repetitiveness is becoming harassment.*

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

sushibowl

protecting their content by licensing it explicitly.

You can do whatever you want, of course. But any license you put on your content here protects it *less* than not putting any license at all. That's after all what licenses are for, granting people use of your content.

So you're not so much protecting your comments, but graciously allowing them to be used for training for non-commercial purposes, where most people are greedily keeping them to themselves. I suppose that's admirable.

tux7350

Deleted by moderator

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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).

I have no problem with non-commercial scraping. It's commercial scraping that doesn't compensate me for my content that I have a problem with.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Melvin_Ferd

Deleted by moderator

Cosmic Cleric

Pull your content off the web

The proper way for you not to see my content would be to just block me.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Melvin_Ferd

I don't care about seeing your content. I'm sure its good. I just believed that the internet was a tool to end data scarcity and instead we've moved much further back and now with all this stuff we're just putting nails in that coffin. I still hold out for a world were data is shared and people collaborate to produce new content.

isles

As long as you can profit from new data, data scarcity will never end.

kevincox

Ok. So you should probably frame your license like that. Instead of saying "Anti Commercial-AI license" say "Pro Non-commercial-AI license".

Cosmic Cleric

So you should probably frame your license like that. Instead of saying “Anti Commercial-AI license” say “Pro Non-commercial-AI license”.

I don't think you need to get hung up on a sentence describing what my purpose was for including the license in my comment.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Danterious

@onlinepersona@programming.dev and @CosmicCleric@lemmy.world should be able to give their perspectives.

onlinepersona

@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.

Anti Commercial-AI license

JackGreenEarth

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?

The Octonaut

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?

RizzRustbolt

I want a t-shirt with Dalton from Roadhouse on it that says "Keep it Swayze!".

onlinepersona , edited

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?

The Octonaut

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.

onlinepersona

Previous work has already shown that image generators can be forced to generate examples from their training data—including copyrighted works—and an early OpenAI LLM produced contact information belonging to a researcher

You don't seem to be able to read the articles, yet have responded with junk anyway.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Danterious

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.

my_hat_stinks

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?

onlinepersona

As a lawyer, what's your opinion on the CC BY-NC-SA v4 license?

Anti Commercial-AI license

my_hat_stinks , edited

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 (c) 2024 onlinepersona. All rights reserved.") but that hasn't been a requirement for a long time.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Likely because it’s blatant misinformation and very spammy.

Its not, and feel free to block people who 'spam', vs. trying to format the whole Internet to look just like how you want it to look.

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?

Because a paragraph of ALL CAPS text, vs a single link with a very short sentence description, is not silly. /s

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

At this point I'm pretty sure its AI model creating astroturfers desperating trying to get people to *not* license their content (comments).

If its instead just anti-social people being tools for corporations, then I weep for the species.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

RizzRustbolt

They.

Cosmic Cleric

Yep, sorry. Still training my 20th century mindset for the 21st century. Teaching old dogs new tricks and all that, but I'm trying.

I hate using 'they' though, because it always signals "more than one" to me, plural, when I'm talking about a specific singular person.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

RizzRustbolt

"They" has always been an indirect pronoun.

april , edited

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.

zelifcam , edited

Didn’t this happen with Facebook a while back? Non tech savvy folks started adding meaningless disclaimers to their comments/posts? I’m having a hard time remembering the specifics.

OldManBOMBIN

If by "a while back" you mean "from the dawn of time immemorial until this day," then yes

plistig

Copy this text 50 times to get a blue ICQ icon!

SanguinePar

I'm picturing cave paintings, followed immediately beneath by lines and lines of small text.

phdepressed

Yeah, same shit new sites.

Thavron

Yeah just adding a link to your comment doesn't negate the TOS of where you post it.

~~ Hey you can't use my ramblings!!! ~~

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Yeah just adding a link to your comment doesn’t negate the TOS of where you post it.

Is that in Lemmy World’s terms though?

Edit: Wow, you went back later and added that link to the YouTube video. So weird how people get trigged by this. /shakeshead

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

Is that in Lemmy World’s terms?

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

glimse

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.

db2

By reading this comment you have entered in to a binding agreement to pay me $1000 per word.

macarthur_park

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.

Tja

For God's sake, it's not even all caps in 45 degree angle...

poke

I have a plastic screen in front of my phone screen so I read the plastic and not the agreement.

Feathercrown

Rhynoplaz

Don't forget the red thumbprint!

PrincessTardigrade

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR INTENT!

whotookkarl

Clearly not a trustee to the beneficiary... filibuster

ShepherdPie

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.

Polarsailor

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?

Rhynoplaz

I remember that shit. Most of them thought that Facebook "going public" meant that everyone could publish their Minions memes without permission. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Armok: God of Blood

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.

🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️ , edited

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.”

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#:~:text=In%20general%2C%20registration%20is%20voluntary,infringement%20of%20a%20U.S.%20work.

Armok: God of Blood

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.

JackGreenEarth

Is an internet comment a 'written work' though?

kevincox

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).

Armok: God of Blood

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.

🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️ , edited

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.

JackGreenEarth

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.

kevincox , edited

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".

🇰 🔵 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️ , edited

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).

Armok: God of Blood

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

For what its worth, I do understand copyright, and how it works. Part of my including the link is for futures sake, as I know that right now as we type Congress is getting lobbied for new laws on who owns the content that AI models are being trained from, and who has to pay who for the privledge of using that data to do so.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

kevincox

I don't understand what you are trying to say.

Congress is getting lobbied for new laws on who owns the content that AI models are being trained from

Training AI from something definitely can't change who owns that thing. This is ridiculous and I'm pretty sure isn't being considered.

If I let AI watch Frozen does that change who owns it? No Disney still does.

who has to pay who for the privledge of using that data

IIUC most of the laws talk about if AI training is "fair use". If it is fair use copyright protections don't apply. But granting a license to your work won't change that.

The only thing I could see potentially being done would be changing the default copyright protections to allowed a revocable default grant for AI training. But it isn't even clear if granting a new license would implicitly revoke that default grant. It also seems unlikely that this is the way the law would work.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Training AI from something definitely can’t change who owns that thing.

Its about getting permission to use that thing to train the AI with in the first place.

Or have you not been listening to the news lately?

This is ridiculous and *I’m pretty sure isn’t being considered*.

[Citation required.]

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

x3i

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.

Riven

I've seen 3 separate people. Including that guy you mentioned. Reminds me of the Facebook copy pasta lul.

xmunk

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.

Burninator05

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

Lemmy.World does not (at least I didn't see that in the TOS).

And besides, because of federation, its better if I explicitly state my claim to my content inside of the content itself.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

Please let your House Representative know that.

Congress may (and probably will, one way or another) change that in the nearish future. But until then, you protect your content in the legal ways that you can.

I too would prefer not having to add the license/link to each of my comments. If Lemmy.World added a 'signature' field to an account, I could just put it there once and be done with it.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

kevincox

You don't need to license each of your comments. By default you retain all ownership. So you applying a license is strictly allowing more use. Basically if AI training was not allowed due to copyright than they can't use any comment by default. If AI training is fair-use (which seems to be most companies' claim) then it is irrelevant how you have licensed the comment.

In no situation does granting an additional license to a work restrict the ways in which works can be used under other licenses.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

You don’t need to license each of your comments. By default you retain all ownership. So you applying a license is strictly *allowing more use*.

Or *different* use. I like to be explicit with how my content is to be used.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

kevincox

No, it is more. You aren't restricting anything, it is just a superset of uses. If you want to explicitly license your comments for wider use that is fine, but don't misrepresent it as "Anti Commercial-AI". Just frame it as licensed for non-commercial use.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

No, it is more. You aren’t restricting anything, it is just a superset of uses. If you want to explicitly license your comments for wider use that is fine,

There are restrictions included in that license, you're incorrect in that.

But my point, which you are ignoring, is that when someone includes a license it doesn't have to be for more restrictive nature, or for more open one, but just different from the default if the content was not explicitly notated with a licensed.

but don’t misrepresent it as “Anti Commercial-AI”. Just frame it as licensed for non-commercial use.

I'm not misrepresenting anything, you're the one getting overly hung up on that short layman's sentence which describes my purpose for including the license in the comment.

The actual representation of the license it's included to the right of that sentence.

*I'm pretty sure we're not going to agree on this, you really weirdly seem hung up on this, and I'm not agreeing with your opinion on the matter, so let's move on from this point.*

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

breadsmasher

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

Deestan , edited

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.

explore_broaden

What is the website ToS for different Lemmy instances, and does it really permit commercial use in AI?

Deestan

As far as I can tell, they don't prohibit it. Couldn't find any mention of it in Lemmy.world TOS

explore_broaden

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

If they even notice it, they will say that the website TOS is the relevant license.

Does Lemmy World's TOS state that I do not own the content that I upload to their site?

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Deestan , edited

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.

Cosmic Cleric

As an individual, for comments of two sentences each, this is not an option.

My content is usually more than a sentence or two.

Also, it puts a stake in the ground for any future enforcement done by others than myself if laws change.

Its a low-hanging-fruit way of protecting my content. If it works, great, and if it doesn't, then I'll vote for someone else for Congress the next time.

I've wasted more time replying on this single conversation/post than I have copy/pasting the link in *all* of my comments so far.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Deestan

Appreciate your thoughts and responses!

Though we disagree on the effectiveness, I am all in favour of what you are pushing towards.

CosmicTurtle0

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".

Cosmic Cleric , edited

I'm retired, and have money, so you never know. 😇

Plus also, it's also about future legislation, and putting a stake in the ground now. As it is, corporations are fighting each other over their content being used freely to program other corporations AI models, so I'm expecting a lot of lobbying money flying around in Washington just about now.

And finally, just because enforcement might be difficult, doesn't mean a license can't still be used.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

ExcursionInversion

It won't. It's just like the boomers over on Facebook.

kevincox , edited

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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

That's my understanding as well.

And yes, I can't force them to be legal and to honor the license, but I can do my part, and hope those who are coding over on their side are open source minded, and are willing to honor the license.

Generally speaking, just because someone else may break the law doesn't mean I can't use the law to try to protect myself.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

foggy

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.

kevincox

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

I don't see how what you've described is matching the situation of attaching a license to your own content/comment. Seems like a non-sequitur to me.

Take this with a huge grain of salt because I am not a lawyer.

Might not be best to try and give legal advice off of a hypothetical, if you are not a lawyer. Especially in a conversation that is already contested/heated.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

half_built_pyramids

ITT, a lot of ai bootlickers

Cosmic Cleric , edited
Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Danterious

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.

onlinepersona

Thanks for the support 💗

I'm not very affected by it, honestly. It makes me chuckle that people get so offended about a link in a comment. Sometimes I respond, but quite often I block and move on.

Anti Commercial-AI license

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Sometimes I respond, but quite often I block and move on.

You look through my history in the last fiveish days, you'll see an excessive amount of people attacking me for using the license/link. You can only block so much before admins really need to and should step in and 'tend to their garden', especially if its being done by astroturfers and it borderlines on harassment.

Plus blocking here doesn't keep them from seeing what you post and replying to it, only you seeing their replies. So I don't consider it as actual blocking.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Its gotten even more aggressive today, both in this community, and in other communities that I'm posting in. Its following me around.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Danterious , edited

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Danterious

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.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Danterious

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.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Just for the heads up I support you guys.

Thank you, its appreciated.

Yeah all of this hate just feels unnecessary. I’m sorry that @onlinepersona@programming.dev and you are going through this.

Its so, irrational, for a single link in a comment.

I'm still of the thinking that its astroturfers trying to prevent licenses from being used (which if true, would REALLY like Lemmy.World admins to start handling the astroturfers). Either that, or its the non-'touch grass' anti-social crowd, which seem to rule here on Lemmy.

Never expected this level of a Spanish Inquisition. /queueMontyPython

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Cosmic Cleric , edited

On a tangent subject, why does everyone push back so forcefully, why do they care so incredibly, why do they enforce group think on you, just for including a link for an open source license in your comments?

I truly don't get the level of fevor, especially when they could just block the user if they don't want to see the license link.

But even more so, why does it trigger people so, why just having that link brings out the worse in people?

Are people trying to format the Internet so they see it exactly how they personally want to see it?

I truly don't understand why we're wasting so much time discussing this.

*Is it really just the AI modeling companies that are forcefully trying to keep this from becoming a thing, by astroturfing, because then they really would have to start honoring the license if everyone did it, and if they get caught not doing so fearing the political/marketing and legal ramifications of such?*

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Rhynoplaz

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

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*.

Look at your response to me, its rude, in a 'killing the messenger' sort of way. Why not just let it go by without attacking someone to their (virtual) face (not 'behind') for doing it?

Why does it trigger you so? Its just a link.

I thought Lemmy was supposed to be better than Reddit.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

Rhynoplaz

Sorry, I was actually trying to be as polite as possible, and despite what you might think, I don't care. At all. Not enough to downvote your comments, nor enough to comment about it in another unrelated conversation.

You asked a question and I thought you honestly wanted an answer as to why you got so much hate for it.

I like to use emojis. Some people don't respect that, and they have every right to think less of me because of it. It doesn't mean that I'm anything that they think I am, and I can choose whether or not I care about what they think. I can stop using emojis to appease them, or I can 🤷🏻‍♂️🖕🏻😂.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Sorry, I was actually trying to be as polite as possible

Going to call b.s. on that.

and despite what you might think, I don’t care.

And yet, you went out of your way to reply in a rude and antagonistic way.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

kevincox

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.

Cosmic Cleric , edited

Because you are effectively spreading misinformation.

Are you a lawyer?

People already struggle to understand copyright. Adding more confusion is doing everyone reading your license a disservice.

Including a link to a Creative Commons license in a comment footer will not do that.

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~

my_hat_stinks

Adding a CC link and falsely claiming it's an anti-AI licence is misinformation and undoubtedly does add confusion.

kevincox

Are you a lawyer?

I am not. Are you?

Including a link to a Creative Commons license in a comment footer will not do that.

It is when you give it a different name which doesn't reflect the actual behaviour of the license.

Cosmic Cleric

It is when you give it a different name

That's not a different name. It's a sentence that's a layman's description of my intention for including it.

Initially I was just using the actual Creative Commons license name, but it was confusing people just seeing letters and numbers.

which doesn’t reflect the actual behaviour of the license.

[Citation required.]

~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~