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Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

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Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#271

Post by musicale »

wwweston wrote: post #270
musicale wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the concept that PP may be trying to get across is scarcity : "goods are scarce because there are not enough resources to produce all the goods that people want to consume".(quoted at [1]) Physical books are intrinsically scarce because they require physical resources to make and distribute copies. Libraries are often limited by physical shelf space. Ebooks are not intrinsically scarce because there are enoug…

> the concept that PP may be trying to get across is scarcity: It's pretty mysterious that you think you need to introduce this to the conversation at this point given how prominently scarcity dynamics figure into the comment you're replying to. > Physical books are intrinsically scarce Once their production was industrialized with printing press tech, copies of books weren't scarce, they were actually revolutionaril…

Actually I was replying to both of you (sadly not an obvious structural way to do that on HN), but perhaps I should have made it clearer that the "finite" concept PP was trying to get across actually seems to be scarcity - land is scarce, paper books less so - and intangible goods such as ebooks are not scarce at all (DRM attempts notwithstanding.)

Authorship may be scarce - costly and resource intensive (LLMs notwithstanding) as you describe, while copying and distribution of intangible goods like ideas or digital media is essentially free and unlimited, as I suspect PP was trying to say.

As you correctly note, the constitutional copyright bargain permits a limited time monopoly in return for (hopefully) advancing "the progress of science and the useful arts."

Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#272

Post by anaclumos »

Some interesting studies on this I've done: https://cho.sh/r/F9F706

Project AIs.txt is a mental model of a machine learning permission system. Intuitively, question this: what if we could make a human-readable file that declines machine learning (a.k.a. Copilot use)? It's like robots.txt, but for Copilot.

User-agent: OpenAI Disallow: /some-proprietary-codebase/

User-agent: Facebook Disallow: /no-way-mark/

User-agent: Copilot Disallow: /expensive-code/

Sitemap: /public/sitemap.xml Sourcemap: /src/source.js.map License: MIT

# SOME LONG LEGAL STATEMENTS HERE

Key Issues Would it be legally binding? For now, no. It would be a polite way to mark my preference to opt-out of such data mining. It's closer to the Ask BigTechs Not to Track option rather than a legal license. Technically, Apple's App Tracking Transparency does not ban all tracking activity; it never can.

254AFC.png

Why not LICENSE or COPYING.txt? Both are mainly written in human language and cannot provide granular scraping permissions depending on the collector. Also, GitHub Copilot ignores LICENSE or COPYING.txt, claiming we consented to Copilot using our codes for machine learning by signing up and pushing code to GitHub, We may expand the LICENSE system to include the terms for machine learning use, but that would even more edge case and chaotic licensing systems.

Does machine learning purposes of copyrighted works require a license? This question is still under debate. Opt-out should be the default if it requires a license, making such a license system meaningless. If it doesn't require a license, then which company would respect the license system, given that it is not legally binding?

Is robots.txt legally binding? No. Even if you scrape the web prohibited under robots.txt, it is not against the law. See HIQ LABS, INC., Plaintiff-Appellee, v. LINKEDIN CORPORATION, Defendant-Appellant.. robots.txt cannot make fair use illegal.

Any industry trends? W3 has been working on robots.txt for machine learning, aligning with EU Copyright Directives.

The goal of this Community Group is to facilitate TDM in Europe and elsewhere by specifying a simple and practical machine-readable solution capable of expressing the reservation of TDM rights. w3c/tdm-reservation-protocol: Repository of the Text and Data Mining Reservation Protocol Community Group

Can we even draw the line? No. One could reasonably argue that AI is doing the same as humans, much better and more efficiently. However, that claim goes against the fundamentals of intellectual property. If any IP is legally protected, machine-generated code must also have the same level of awareness system to respect it and prevent any plagiarism. Otherwise, they must bear legal duties.

Maybe it can benefit AI companies too ... by excluding all hacky codes and only opting for best-practice codes. If implemented correctly, it can work as an effective data sanitation system.

Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#273

Post by rhn_mk1 »

gavinhoward wrote: post #151
rhn_mk1 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you when you talk about places where companies can bully people just by threatening to sue them, and where the defender must have lots of money even if they are clearly in the right. But AI does not change anything there. The problem of being sued into oblivion despite being right exists there even without it. In places where defending does not cost money, this works out in favor of the individuals.

"AI" changes things by making it even harder for individuals to defend against. Right now, we have FOSS organizations that will help you in lawsuits against companies that don't follow licenses. With "AI" in the picture, companies can launder your code with "plausible" deniability. [1] [1]: https://matthewbutterick.com/chron/will-ai-obliterate-the-ru...

On the other hand, you can take some (closed?) code a company wrote, feed it into AI, and launder it for your purpose. While this is not a symmetric exchange, it does reduce the power of copyright for everyone.

Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#274

Post by julielit »

It is fair to give more information about the information exposed on a website, especially when it comes to partnering with AI systems. There is an international effort which includes such information. It is done under the auspices of the W3C. See https://www.w3.org/community/tdmrep/. It has been developed to implement the Text & Data Mining + AI "opt-out" that is legal in Europe. It does not use robots.txt because this one is about indexing a website and should stay focus on it. The information about website managers is contained in the /.well-known directory, in a JSON-LD file, which is much more well structured than robots.txt. Why not adhere to an international effort rather than creating N fragmented initiatives?

Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#276

Post by account42 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #208
csallen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. The very nature of information is that it yearns to be free. Information cannot be "owned." The point of copyright should be to grant temporary monopolies to encourage creation, not to confer ownership. Thomas Jefferson put it beautifully: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclus…

> very nature of information is that it yearns to be free. Information cannot be "owned." The nature of information is to dissolve into entropy.

Information and entropy are more or less the same thing. Ask Shannon.

Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#277

Post by account42 »

fsckboy wrote: post #147
csallen wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. The very nature of information is that it yearns to be free. Information cannot be "owned." The point of copyright should be to grant temporary monopolies to encourage creation, not to confer ownership. Thomas Jefferson put it beautifully: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclus…

but copyright is not for information or ideas, information and ideas cannot be copyrighted; it's for creative expression

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Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#278

Post by justinclift »

8note wrote: post #253
renlo wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that land is owned because it's a finite resource, and that without property ownership people would be in conflict with one another. "Creative expression" is not finite, in fact every human possesses it, it's also intangible, it's ideas, thoughts, ... , which I personally do not believe should be owned.

People are still in conflict with each other for property ownership, so it's not solved The ownership, with heavy taxes on that ownership, pushes towards making sure people benefit from the land.

> people benefit from the land

"which people in particular are benefitting the most" seems to be the perennial question.

Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#279

Post by account42 »

samwillis wrote: post #87
safety1st wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We" now want stricter copyright law when it comes to AI, but at the same time shorter copyright duration... This gross generalization of other people's views on important issues is really offensive. My view is that the Copyright Act of 1976 had it about right when they established the duration of copyright. My view is that members of Congress were handsomely rewarded by a specific corporation to carve out special…

My phrasing was absolutely not meant to be read as myself speaking for all, apologies, I certainly don't want to offend. It has felt on HN and elsewhere that the prevailing attitude to copyright has been these two, somewhat contradictory, things. That's what I was trying to highlight with my phrasing of "we", which was also not meant to include myself but be a nod to the way a vocal group try to steer and dominate th…

Trying to find consistency in the prevalent (or more commonly predominantly expressed) attitudes and opinions of groups is a common fallacy. You can have a group with a large number of members holding opinion A and nother large number of members holding opionion ¬A without any member being in both groups.

Of course in reallity things are usually more complex and wer are talking about two different opinions A and B that aren't even inherently incompatibly but just some motivations for A would lead to ¬B and vice versa.

But un this particular case I think the flaw is in your assumption that the majority wants stricter copyright law for AI rather than wants the same copyright law that humans are beholden to to also apply to AI, wether that law is the current may-as-well-be-perpetual-monopoly or 0 copyright or anything in between.

Re: Tell HN: We should start to add “ai.txt” as we do for “robots.txt”

#280

Post by account42 »

robocat wrote: post #235
Taywee wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The copyright system is what has enabled so few companies (and one giant corporation in particular) to become the owners, controllers, and beneficiaries of the vast majority of American fiction and culture. From visual media companies, record companies, and publishers, you can probably distill ownership of more than 90% of the culture that the average American lives in to fewer than 20 companies. Copyright has been t…

That IP is sold overseas, so the USA has pushed very very hard to have copyright extended on other countries, presumably because it is a huge financial benefit to the USA (and indirectly to its citizens). Copyright extension is a non-negotiable item in a number of international agreements.

This is really a big problem with copyright - most people don't even get to vote for or against it because whatever "democratic" laws there are are only formalizing trade agreements that would be too costly to violate that doing so is not even up for discussion.
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