Re:Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade...
by Eisenstein on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @03:31AM
(#44795281)
Because lawyers are expensive and big tech companies have lots of them. Because it takes a ton of time and effort to sue someone. Because you need to show standing, which means you need to be able to demonstrate you lost something of value by their actions. Because the power imbalance is heavily weighted towards a corporation. Because the way to deal with such things should be legislation and not court decisions. And lots more reasons...
Re:Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade...
by windexh8er on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @07:32AM
(#44796802)
That's exactly why I said conciliation court. None of what you've outlined is required nor is it expensive. But, for each case, the defendant is still required to show up.
I've successfully used conciliation court against large corporations in the past which is why I question it here.
And while this should be able to be handled via legislation it won't be. Beyond that a workaround could force that to happen.
Re:Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade...
by Eisenstein on Tuesday August 05, 2025 @12:06PM
(#44799851)
> conciliation court
Sorry, I had never heard that term before. You would still have to show standing though. How would you try to prove that their violating your TOS cost you money?
Re:Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade...
by BrenBarn on Wednesday August 06, 2025 @02:03AM
(#44808254)
Maybe you could say the increase in traffic increased your hosting costs by a penny or whatever.
Re:Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade...
by windexh8er on Wednesday August 06, 2025 @10:50AM
(#44812804)
Is it not viable to produce a work of art and say that this is free for humans, but not for bots and cannot be used for training and said violation cost X?
Again, I can't copy and distribute a game Microsoft rents to me. But if I do I can be found held accountable for a ridiculous amount of money. If it's my work of art the terms can dictate who doesn't need to pay and who does. If an LLM is consuming my work of art and now distributing it within their user base how is that not the same?
Re:Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade...
by Eisenstein on Wednesday August 06, 2025 @07:47PM
(#44819174)
These are arguments you would tell the judge. And the judge would almost certainly tell you 'this is the wrong venue for that. You are in small claims. I need an itemized list of monetary damages you have suffered before I can make a judgement.'
Big Tech has hidden behind ToS for years. Now, it seems as though it only works for them, but not against. It seems as though this would be easy to orchestrate and prove forcing these companies into a legal nightmare or risk insolvent business stature due to the high load of cases filed against.
Why couldn't something like this be used to flip the table? A conciliation brigading, of sorts.