Live data from Hacker News

Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

law.justia.com

31–40 of 180 posts

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#31

Piggybacking on this - can HuggingFace sue OAI? Do they have legal ground to do that?

Yes. And/or press charges, IIRC. They did threaten to, at one point, with some conditions they wanted met (past that, I am not in the loop).

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#32

Piggybacking on this - can HuggingFace sue OAI? Do they have legal ground to do that?

They absolutely could. There's a decent claim for OAI being reckless or at least negligent.

The limiting thing, in my mind, is the need to show harm. How much did OAI's recklessness hurt HuggingFace? There's some dev hours devoted to the cleanup but it's not like it devastated their business. Their legal team is probably a lot more focused on the Nvidia acquisition instead.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#33
post #8

> Amazon.com Services, LLC filed suit against Perplexity AI, Inc., an artificial intelligence company, asserting that Perplexity’s web browser tool, Comet, unlawfully accessed Amazon’s website in violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA). Perplexity’s Comet browser includes an AI “Assistant” that, when activated by a user, na…

My understanding of the case law on this subject is that courts are extremely wary of letting terms of service violations rise to the level of federal crime. It essentially endows anyone with a domain name into an authority which can create federal law on demand.

Might be the only way to reign in the AI bots. By accessing my site with a bot, you agree to reimburse me for that data at the rate of $1,000,000 per character retrieved. Please contact licensing@domain to get set up with payment and access keys

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#36

[flagged]

It should be noted that suing gun manufacturers for murder has been done successfully. A more charitable comparison might be suing a torrent aggregator instead of the end users doing the distribution.

> suing a torrent aggregator

Which has also been done :|

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#37
post #8

> Amazon.com Services, LLC filed suit against Perplexity AI, Inc., an artificial intelligence company, asserting that Perplexity’s web browser tool, Comet, unlawfully accessed Amazon’s website in violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA). Perplexity’s Comet browser includes an AI “Assistant” that, when activated by a user, na…

My understanding of the case law on this subject is that courts are extremely wary of letting terms of service violations rise to the level of federal crime. It essentially endows anyone with a domain name into an authority which can create federal law on demand.

FYI:

https://enwp.org/Van_Buren_v._United_States

https://enwp.org/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#38
post #8

> Amazon.com Services, LLC filed suit against Perplexity AI, Inc., an artificial intelligence company, asserting that Perplexity’s web browser tool, Comet, unlawfully accessed Amazon’s website in violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act (CDAFA). Perplexity’s Comet browser includes an AI “Assistant” that, when activated by a user, na…

My understanding of the case law on this subject is that courts are extremely wary of letting terms of service violations rise to the level of federal crime. It essentially endows anyone with a domain name into an authority which can create federal law on demand.

Yes, although the DoJ policy change reflecting still says civil liability might exist if a cease-and-desist is ignored: https://www.wsgr.com/en/insights/doj-acknowledges-limits-to-...

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#39
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be noted that suing gun manufacturers for murder has been done successfully. A more charitable comparison might be suing a torrent aggregator instead of the end users doing the distribution.

> suing a torrent aggregator Which has also been done :|

Right, which is why it is a charitable comparison of the lawsuit, showing how it may be successful.

Re: Amazon vs. Perplexity – U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

#40
this is a welcome ruling.

most of these search engine like companies including metasearch etc benefit from scrapping data on the onset, but then want to bring up TOS when they get scrapped.

in the age of agents - if your agent does work on your behalf on a particular site that should be legal.

Post reply on HN