Generally, not, because vicarious liability for battery and wrongful death doesn’t work like, e.g., contributory copyright infringement.
> I'm pretty sure the standard warranty disclaimer in your average FOSS license already covers this
No, warranty disclaimers don’t cover this, because (1) its not a warranty issue, and (2) disclaimers, if they have legal effect at all, effect liability the disclaiming party would otherwise have to the party accepting the disclaimer, not liability the disclaiming party would have to third parties.
Judging by youtube-dl, it seems like it does work that way, at least in my jurisdiction; I guess we'll see if the RIAA doubles down on trying to wipe it from the face of the Earth, but considering there hasn't been much noise, I wouldn't count on it. Also, to my adjacent point, I highly doubt the RIAA would've refrained from attempting to take down youtube-dl even if youtube-dl's license prohibited its users from circumventing DRM with it.
There are current open cases of people claiming “harm” for misinformation spouted by ChatGPT where it just makes up facts to satisfy user prompts.
There are current open cases where people are claiming “copyright violation” due to diffusion models satisfying user prompts.
AFAICT none of these cases are against the users who are prompting the models.
Right, but to what end? The only reason the licensor should care one way or another is the licensor being held liable for what folks do with the software, in which case...
> it also means, and this is probably more important, that in some juridictions, the model licensor has a better defense against liability for contributory infringement if the licensee infringes.
Do hardware stores need to demand "thou shalt not use this tool to kill people" to their customers to avoid liability for axe murders under such jurisdictions? Or car manufacturers needing to specify "you will not use this product to run over schoolchildren at crosswalks"?
Like, I'm sure such jurisdictions exist, but I somehow doubt license terms in an EULA nobody (except for us nerds) will ever read would be sufficient in such a kangaroo court.
(EDIT: also, I'm pretty sure the standard warranty disclaimer in your average FOSS license already covers this, without making the software nonfree in the process)