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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”

#281

Post by bohlenlabs »

vinaypai wrote: post #179
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…

> The very nature of information is that it yearns to be free. Information wants you to stop anthropomorphizing it.

Oh wow, I like this one!

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

#282

Post by bohlenlabs »

dotancohen wrote: post #236
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You bought a Western Digital drive too, eh?

Why doesn’t this platform offer a “like” button for answers?

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

#283

Post by JohnFen »

prepend wrote: post #197
JohnFen wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. But there should be some mechanism where people who don't want their works to contribute to AI training to be able to prevent that without having to resort to removing their works from the web.

I think people who don’t want their content contributing to AI shouldn’t have it on the public web. There are many ways to restrict access. Use one of them. But if you respond to an anonymous http request with content then it shouldn’t matter if it’s a robot looking at it or a human (or a man or a woman or whatever). I think this both for simplicity and that I foresee a future where human consciousness is simulated a…

> I think people who don’t want their content contributing to AI shouldn’t have it on the public web.

Practically speaking, that's the only effective solution. I just think that it's a shame that's necessary. It would be better for everyone if there wasn't a disincentive to making works publicly available.

> I don’t want to have rules that biological humans can view and digital humans can’t.

This is a point we disagree on.

And "digital humans"? I would argue that such a thing can't exist, if you mean "human" in any way other than rough analogy.

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

#284

Post by rglover »

remram wrote: post #249
rglover wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been (slowly) writing a new type of OSS license around this exact concept so it's easier to (legally) stop LLMs hoovering up IP [1] (under "derivative works not permitted"). [1] https://github.com/cheatcode/joystick/blob/development/LICEN...

They've been ingesting "all rights reserved" content because they think copyright doesn't apply. Licenses won't help.

We'll see. I think courts will end up interpreting it in the same way that they do music sampling other music. In effect that's all it is: a remix of existing information.

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

#286

Post by jasonm23 »

account42 wrote: post #277
fsckboy wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

I wonder how many people think this is a string... and don't know about these magic numbers.

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

#287

Post by jasonm23 »

renlo wrote: post #204
majormajor wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should land be owned? None of us created the planet... But we have selected an economic system that depends on ownership to drive exchange in a market, so... that's why.

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.

This idea is not without detractors.

"Property is theft" is not a new idea, makes a lot of sense. Unless you have a lot of it, and then those [censored] can [censored] right off.

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

#288

Post by jasonm23 »

safety1st wrote: post #134
soperj wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they nailed it with the original 1790 act. 14 years + 14 more is plenty.

I would settle for 14 + 14 too :)

You probably wouldn't if you were the owner of the Marvel franchise or other such cash cows.

Copyright that doesn't expire would make "a whole lot of cents".

(I agree with you but, the ownership is the corrupting factor.)

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

#289

Post by dotancohen »

bohlenlabs wrote: post #282
dotancohen wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You bought a Western Digital drive too, eh?

Why doesn’t this platform offer a “like” button for answers?

Welcome, newcomer. As flattered as I am by your want to "like", my comment was not informative and even borderline trolling (by changing the subject). On HN, such comments are better to downvote. Please don't start upvoting comments that stray from the issue under discussion, funny as they might be.

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

#290

Post by shanebellone »

spc476 wrote: post #192
shanebellone wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Robots.txt has failed as a system, if it hadn't we wouldn't have captchas or Cloudflare." I like the idea of "ai.txt" but those who eat resources rarely listen to ToS. Frankly, I serve 503s to all identifiable bots, unless they are on my explicit allow list.

It might be a better idea to serve up a 418 ("I'm a tea pot") with a line line text file saying "I'm not an HTTP server". That solved a problem I had with bots making HTTP requests to my gopher server [1]. Serving up a 503 informs the bot that there's a server issue and it may try again later. A 418 informs the bot that it made an erroneous request and such an odd error code might get someone to look into it and stop…

This is very interesting. I've bookmarked the link. Thanks for sharing. I believe minimal is best and this might fit nicely within my larger system. Do you approach other problems with a similar mindset?
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