Meta is grabbing your content for its ‘generative AI’—hopefully this opt-out form works

30.08.2023/04.09

Meta (including Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and presumably Whatsapp) is taking user content for its ‘generative AI’. I don’t remember signing up for this, but then I stopped using these sites regularly. Allegedly you can opt out of this. I opted out of ad preference collection there and it made no difference, but in case it […]

‘Fake it till you make it’ isn’t a legal doctrine

27.08.2023/12.41

Some say, ‘Fake it till you make it,’ as a positive thing. In fact, a very dear friend used to say it, and it did him a lot of good. But then, he’s an honest sort of chap and he never promised something he couldn’t deliver. His take on faking it was to present a […]

You can’t contract yourself out of breaking the law, Google—that’s not how it works

12.07.2023/12.12

Google has updated its privacy policy, giving itself carte blanche to take publicly available data to use for its large language models and “AI”. I don’t think whomever wrote the update has any comprehension of the law. Or that they do, but think they can get away with it. Maybe in their own country they […]

Someone at Google did right

19.06.2023/12.15

Fair’s fair: for once, Google did right, even though it took them ages. My last entry on this topic was in April, when Google refused to remove a pirate site that they provide cloud services for. Two months later, I received word that they had reviewed one of the URLs I had complained about: ‘We’re […]

Where do we draw the line on LLM- or “AI”-generated content?

25.05.2023/01.40

Contrary to my earlier post, I allowed the trackbacks from AI-Summary.com after its owner reached out to me. The fact he reached out does show he read the post, and there was some human agency involved. That very courteous email even offered to remove this blog from further mining. When you know a human’s there, […]

Did Google use your website to train its language-learning model?

24.04.2023/06.05

It’s going to be very interesting to see the legalities of Google using the contents of 15·1 million websites for its C4 dataset, used to train large language models. Ton Zĳlstra put me on to a Washington Post article that revealed which sites were used. He had discovered that his own website (zylstra.org) had provided […]

Of course Google’s fine with running cloud services for known pirates

06.04.2023/05.21

The content’s ours, but that URL isn’t—and thanks to Google they’re still online A Chinese gambling site has cloned entire chunks of Lucire’s website. It’s not the first time this has happened with a bad actor behind the Bamboo Curtain; some years ago I had to ask a friend from Wuhan to intervene to […]

Pirates must love GoDaddy

04.03.2023/10.53

If you are a pirate, then GoDaddy seems to be the place to host. Last November, we spotted three stolen articles on the sephari.co.nz domain, which appears to be hosted by GoDaddy. I filed two DMCA notices, to no avail. They were in the standard format, one that GoDaddy requests and has acted on in […]

When reverse image search services allege you’ve stolen work

23.12.2022/12.31

I think these are going to get more frequent. We received another copyright claim, accusing us of publishing a photograph without authorization. They wanted around €500, part of that for the licence, and part of that for running it since 2009. This one, from a German company, was easier to deal with than an American […]

Google’s advertising business is a negligence lawsuit waiting to be actioned

09.12.2022/02.55

Apparently the New Zealand government says Big Tech will pay a ‘fair price’ for local news content under new legislation. Forget the newcomers like Stuff and The New Zealand Herald. The Fairfax Press, as the former was, was still running ‘The internet is scary’ stories at the turn of the century. What will Big Tech […]