CEO Steve Huffman says tech giants should not be able to trawl Reddit’s huge store of data for free. But that information came from users, not the company
That “corpus of data” is the content posted by millions of Reddit users over the decades. It is a fascinating and valuable record of what they were thinking and obsessing about. Not the tiniest fraction of it was created by Huffman, his fellow executives or shareholders. It can only be seen as belonging to them because of whatever skewed “consent” agreement its credulous users felt obliged to click on before they could use the service.
Ouch
It is rather interesting to note that this Corpus of data may not be as valuable if it cannot be used without always being legally in several grey areas (perhaps even red areas in some jurisdictions).
Currently, an increasingly large pool of artist/writters/singers and other people (even corporations such as studios and large right holders) are exercising their rights to not have their creations and derived works be used or slurped into AI models without their express consent.
Corporations making use of those AI models may find themselves in expensive legal limbo now and the foreseeable future.
Considering no redditor imagined nor consented to have their post and comment history be comprehensively abused (as in “improper treatment or usage; application to a wrong or bad purpose; an unjust, corrupt or wrongful practice or custom”).
We may enter a period where lawlessness pervades AI models (just like any gold rush, for example the current crypto craze). Eventually, the legal framework will catch up and will probably make any dubious Corpus of data untouchable.
How long this takes is anyone’s guess. I surmise several large profile lawsuits would suffice.
This is so IP law 101… Unauthorized use for commercial purposes. I hope rightholders fight until the end
I agree that this is a grey area, but it could really go either way. Anyway, giant corporations have been abusing individuals who can’t afford lawsuits for decades. Even with precedent on your side, that probably wouldn’t change.
