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Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

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Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#341

Post by rpdillon »

totallymike wrote: post #195
observationist wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't hate the media nearly enough. "Credible" my ass. They hired "experts" who used prompt engineering and thousands of repetitions to find highly unusual and specific methods of eliciting text from training data that matched their articles. OpenAI has taken measures to limit such methods and prevent arbitrary wholesale reproduction of copyrighted content since that time. That would have been the end of the situ…

I'm not a fan of NYT either, but this feels like you're stretching for your conclusion: > They hired "experts" who used prompt engineering and thousands of repetitions to find highly unusual and specific methods of eliciting text from training data that matched their articles....would have been the end of the situation if NYT was engaging in good faith. I mean, if I was performing a bunch of investigative work and my…

> then suddenly nobody read my paper anymore

This is the part that Times won't talk about because people stopped reading their paper long before AI, and they haven't been able to point to any credible harm in terms of reduced readership as a result of open AI launching. They just think that people might be using ChatGPT to read the New York Times without paying. But it's not a very good hypothesis because that's not what ChatGPT is good at.

It's like the people filing the lawsuit don't really understand the technology at all.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#342

Post by rpdillon »

sfink wrote: post #151
Workaccount2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT doesn't care about regurgitation. When it was doable, it was spotty enough that no one would rely on it. But now the "trick" doesn't even work anymore (you would paste the start of an article and chatgpt would continue it). What they want is to kill training, and more over, prevent the loss of being the middle-man between events and users.

> What they want is to kill training, and more over, prevent the loss of being the middle-man between events and users. So... they want to continue reporting news, and they don't want their news reports to be presented to users in a place where those users are paying someone else and not them. How horrible of them? If NYT is not reporting news, then NYT news reports will not be available for AIs to ingest. They can p…

The problem is that the publishing industry seems to think their job is to print ink on paper, and they reluctantly admit that this probably also involves putting pixels on a screen.

They're hideously anti-tech and they completely ignore technological advancement when thinking about the scope of their product. Instead of investing millions of dollars in developing their own AI solutions that are the New York Times answer machine, they pay those millions of dollars to lawyers and sue people building the answer machines. It's entirely the wrong strategy, it's regressive, and yes, they are to blame for it.

The biggest bug I've observed in my life is that people think technology is its own sector when really it's a cross-cutting concern that everybody needs to be thinking about.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#343

Post by rpdillon »

totallymike wrote: post #138
Workaccount2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT doesn't care about regurgitation. When it was doable, it was spotty enough that no one would rely on it. But now the "trick" doesn't even work anymore (you would paste the start of an article and chatgpt would continue it). What they want is to kill training, and more over, prevent the loss of being the middle-man between events and users.

> prevent the loss of being the middle-man between events and users I'm confused by this phrase. I may be misreading but it sounds like you're frustrated, or at least cynical about NYT wanting to preserve their business model of writing about things that happen and selling the publication. To me it seems reasonable they'd want to keep doing that, and to protect their content from being stolen. They certainly aren't t…

> preserve their business model of writing about things that happen and selling the publication. To me it seems reasonable they'd want to keep doing that

Be very wary of companies that look to change the landscape to preserve their business model. They are almost always regressive in trying to prevent the emergence of something useful and new because it challenges their revenue stream. The New York Times should be developing their own AI and should not be ignoring the march of technological progress, but instead they are choosing to lawyer up and use the legal system to try to prevent progress. I don't have any sympathy for them; there is no right to a business model.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#344

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #217
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Comparing rope and an LLM comes across as disingenuous. What makes you feel that? Both are tools, both have a wide array of good and bad uses. Maybe it'd be clearer if you explained why you think the two are incomparable except in cases of disingenuousness? Remember that things are only compared when they are different -- you wouldn't often compare a thing to itself. So, differences don't inherently make things inc…

A rope isn’t going to tell you to make sure you don’t leave it out on your bed so your loved ones can’t stop you from carrying out the suicide it helped talk you in to.

You are 100% right, a rope likely isn't going to tell you anything. There's one of those differences I mentioned which makes comparisons useful. We could probably name a few differences!

So, what makes you think comparing the 2 tools is invalid? You just compared them yourself, and I don't think you were being disingenuous.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#345

Post by rpdillon »

SilverElfin wrote: post #158
Workaccount2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYT doesn't care about regurgitation. When it was doable, it was spotty enough that no one would rely on it. But now the "trick" doesn't even work anymore (you would paste the start of an article and chatgpt would continue it). What they want is to kill training, and more over, prevent the loss of being the middle-man between events and users.

It’s more than middle man right? Like if visits to NYT reduce then they get less ads revenue and their ability to do business goes away. On the other hand, if they demand licensing fees then they’ll just be marginalized by other news anyways.

Notably absent from their complaint is any suggestion that they've been harmed by a reduction in readership as a result of OpenAI's emergence.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#346

Post by rpdillon »

otterley wrote: post #261
rpdillon wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My observation is that section does not articulate any harm. It _claims_ harm, but doesn't actually explain what the harm is. Reduced profits? Lower readership? All they say is "OpenAI violated our copyrights, and we deserve money." > 167. As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ infringing conduct alleged herein, The Times has sustained and will continue to sustain substantial, immediate, and irreparable inju…

> As a direct and proximate result of Defendants’ infringing conduct alleged herein, The Times has sustained and will continue to sustain substantial, immediate, and irreparable injury for which there is no adequate remedy at law. Unless Defendants’ infringing conduct is enjoined by this Court, Defendants have demonstrated an intent to continue to infringe the copyrighted works. The Times therefore is entitled to per…

Very much appreciate the clarification and nuance here. I understand that legally they don't have to provide any of this detail, but I'm also somewhat astonished that there doesn't appear to be any evidence that they've been harmed in any way other than them claiming that they are.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#347

Post by pmontra »

godelski wrote: post #294
nl wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal does End-to-end encryption, so they (Signal) can never read it. The whole point of ChatGPT conversations is so they can be read by the model on the server. Conversations are kept around because they can be picked up and continued at any point (I use this feature frequently). Additionally you can use conversations in their scheduled notification feature, where the conversation is replayed and updates are sent t…

You could definitely do this E2EE. Models should run in ephemeral containers where data is only processed in RAM. For active conversation a unique and temporary key-pair is generated. Saved chats are encrypted client side and stored encrypted server side. To resume a conversation[0], decrypt client side, establish connection to container, generate new temporary key-pair, and so on. There's more details and nuances bu…

> Models should run in ephemeral containers where data is only processed in RAM

Maybe, but letting aside that they are two different kind of products, how can you trust them to really do so? And in any way, in the case of ChatGPT where should I store my client side private key, as I use those bots only in my web browser? Maybe in my password manager and I copy paste it every time I start a new conversation.

My take is that if they went this way we would not be talking about them now, we would be talking about one of their competitors that didn't put hurdles between their product and their customers.

In other words, survivor bias.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#348

Post by rpdillon »

terminalshort wrote: post #244
Noaidi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To show harm they need the proof, this is the point of the lawsuit. They have sufficient evidence that OpenAI was scraping the web and the NY Times. When Altman says "They claim they might find examples of you using ChatGPT to try to get around their paywall." he is blatantly misrepresenting the case. https://smithhopen.com/2025/07/17/nyt-v-openai-microsoft-ai-... "The lawsuit focuses on using copyrighted material fo…

> The lawsuit focuses on using copyrighted material for AI training Well that's going to go pretty poorly for them considering it has already been ruled fair use twice: https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/two-california-distr... On the other hand, distributing copies of NYT content is actually a breach of copyright, but only if the NYT can prove it was actually happening.

It's really interesting living through this revolution because it's pretty obvious to me that the outcome here needs to be that training is fair use, pirating materials you train on is not going to end up being okay, and the user of the AI tool will be responsible for whether or not the resulting work is infringing. AI tools that are predominantly designed for infringing use cases will of course be ruled against.

I feel like this is all so blindingly obvious and yet I feel like it's going to take us decades to get there. I guess the wheels of justice turn slowly.

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#349

Post by Forgeties79 »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #344
Forgeties79 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A rope isn’t going to tell you to make sure you don’t leave it out on your bed so your loved ones can’t stop you from carrying out the suicide it helped talk you in to.

You are 100% right, a rope likely isn't going to tell you anything . There's one of those differences I mentioned which makes comparisons useful. We could probably name a few differences! So, what makes you think comparing the 2 tools is invalid? You just compared them yourself, and I don't think you were being disingenuous.

Just because I used italics to emphasize something one time doesn’t mean you get to talk to me like that. I am not a child and you’re being unnecessarily patronizing.

I let it slide in the previous comment and gave you the benefit of the doubt despite what I saw but this comment clearly illustrates how disrespectful you’re being.

Have a good rest of your day man

Re: Fighting the New York Times' invasion of user privacy

#350

Post by mapontosevenths »

mapontosevenths wrote: post #329
etchalon wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They alleged it in point 4? "Defendants have refused to recognize this protection. Powered by LLMs containing copies of Times content, Defendants’ GenAI tools can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style, as demonstrated by scores of examples. See Exhibit J. These tools also wrongly attribute false information to The Times."

You're right. No idea how I missed that. Thanks! Still, that's a bug not a feature. OpenAI will just respond that its already been fixed and pay them damages of $2.50 or something to cover the few times it happened under very specific conditions.

Just to double check that it was fixed, I asked ChatGPT what was on the front page of the New York times today and I get a summary with paraphrased titles. It doesn't reproduce anything exactly (not even the headlines).

Interestingly, the summary is made by taking screenshots of a (probably illegal) PDF it found someplace on the internet. It then cites that sketchy PDF as the source rather than linking back to the original NY Times articles.

If I were the NYT I would still be plenty pissed off.

ChatGPT's reference: https://d2dr22b2lm4tvw.cloudfront.net/ny_nyt/2025-11-13/fron... via https://frontpages.freedomforum.org/

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