Reddit, for one, is not about to do any such thing. They're clearly trying to cash out on the grounds that they are a giant source for AI companies, and they're fighting their own users who try to remove their content or gate it.

The courts have already ruled that web scraping is legal of the data is publicly facing. This is why price trackers for Amazon exist.

LinkedIn v. HiQ

In case anyone wants to read more about it - it’s very relevant today.

Interesting thing is that it is not legal everywhere in the world in such away. Fair use is a concept prominent in the US and not established in Europe (the datamining directive is a bit more limiting). Also the concept of informational self-determination does not really exist in the US despite the fact that the UN statements on human rights in the digital age clearly point in this direction. This is all 'wild west' to me as a European, but somehow I wonder if there is any guns that work to protect yourself by means of self-justice.

How does this work for data brokers? For example, if a data broker legally collects the data in the US, then sells it elsewhere, where it could not be legally scraped?

I think that generally if the customer hires you for something that is legal in general in their country, like price comparison, that they're fine if you employ means that wouldn't be legal for them, such as automated scraping, as long as it's legal for you.

The concept of informational self-determination ends when you put the information out in public... you self determine what is public and what isn't...

That's obviously not true. Legally, for example, both copyright and trademark protect public information from some kinds of use. In many places, artists also have moral rights: https://www.copyrightlaws.com/moral-rights-in-u-s-copyright-...

More importantly, the laws are representations of human feeling and social negotiation. Copyright law grew out of a complex array of beliefs and interests. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne

It could be that the various "AI" generative models are legal under current law. But it could also be that this is one of those things, like the printing press, that causes people to say, "Hey, that's not right," and change the law to rule out something that was previously legal.

This is off topic but I found this phrase coming from a European hilarious.

"This is all 'wild west' to me as a European, but somehow I wonder if there is any guns that work to protect yourself by means of self-justice."

"Wild West" is a common way to refer to American-style business decisions in Germany.

I vaguely remember a Stern magazine cover from around 2004, depicting a giant cowboy boot with "GM" decorated with red, white and blue coming down on a crowd of people standing in the shape of the Opel logo and titled something like "Der Wild-West-Method."

It was clearly not a compliment.

(Correction: GM had owned Opel for decades at that point, but was getting more aggressive with how it was run)

In Norway, while we use "vill vest" (wild west) as well, we also use "Texas" as a synonym for "crazy". It's not necessarily negative ("that party was completely Texas" could imply it was crazy in a fun way depending on context) but it often is implying chaos and lawlessness.

> The courts have already ruled that web scraping is legal of the data is publicly facing.

And courts never overrule prior decisions...

Scribd data was not public facing, and even they don’t own the copyright to most of the books they have. maybe they created a scraper that got around their paywall?

If that’s all it takes to skirt copyright restrictions Aaron Schwartz should be rolling in his grave right about now.

OpenAIs Sam Altman is on Reddit’s board, no? Don’t think Reddit would be starting anything.

Next up, all content will be only viewable if you are signed in ala twitters change this morning.

> Don’t think Reddit would be starting anything.

The API changes and the ensuing chaos are at least in part because of OpenAI scraping Reddit’s content.

Since Altman is on their board, its moreso other companies that aren't OpenAI that would be effected? OpenAI got what it needed; has their own straw in the milkshake, make it more expensive for anyone else.

Purely conjecture obviously, but him being on both sides of that, not hard to see how all this becomes more favorable to his company making the moat wider for others.

OpenAI is both asking to raise the barrier to entry of LLMs and closing off the data sources that made them successful.

Sam is on record, and has even given lectures, stating the key to business success is monopolization.

It seems rather obvious under his perspective to do everything possible to restrict access to all information that could be used to train an LLM.

I understand Sam’s history with ycombinator gives him leniency around here but we seriously need to wake up to the fact that he’s attempting to monopolize the most powerful tool ever created. He talks a good game but if you pay attention to his actions it’s clear he is openly hostile towards the common good which he supposedly promotes.

I see him in the same regard as I see any oligarch vying for public favor by ‘stealing’ billions, donating a few million, and riding off into the sunset being praised by media for how much of the ill gotten gains he’s given back.

That's what Reddit executives say, but I don't think they're being truthful. Big significant AI players could be easily deterred by a mere terms of service change, or a modest rate-limit.

Instead they imposed an extremely abrupt new demand for money with any API call.