Reddit founder wants to charge Big Tech for scraped data used to train AIs | Hacker News Reader

Reddit founder wants to charge Big Tech for scraped data used to train AIs

marketwatch.com

17 pointsthesecretceo12 comments

Would Reddit also be open to paying the people who created all that content?

Why would they be obligated to when users opt-in to giving up rights? The ToS that appears when creating an account dictates Reddit's ownership of every comment posted.

I don't think LLM companies need permission to scrape Reddit. It's ironic because Reddit is basically saying "you can't profit off user content for free, that's what we're doing!"

Is it the case that companies are allowed to scrape data for profit under US law? I was aware of the LinkedIn ruling setting a precedent for scraping public facing data, however, I wasn't sure if it applied within any scopes.

(not a lawyer, not legal advice) The Supreme Court determined that the CFAA doesn't apply in a particular way to scraping public data. You're still probably in hot water if you violate copyright or other laws, and you're still probably in hot water (as in the LinkedIn case) if you also scrape non-public data.

Except that’s not what’s going on because they pay millions or more in busting fees and staff ?

they don't have to (although Twitter for example hinted at such an arrangement) because all those people came voluntarily and signed a tos, and reddit didn't just steal that data from them.

Just an FYI, here is a relevant chunk from Hacker News' terms of use[1]:

> User Content Transmitted Through the Site: With respect to the content or other materials you upload through the Site or share with other users or recipients (collectively, “User Content”), you represent and warrant that you own all right, title and interest in and to such User Content, including, without limitation, all copyrights and rights of publicity contained therein. By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.

Another relevant bit:

> Except as expressly authorized by Y Combinator, you agree not to modify, copy, frame, scrape, rent, lease, loan, sell, distribute or create derivative works based on the Site or the Site Content, in whole or in part, except that the foregoing does not apply to your own User Content (as defined below) that you legally upload to the Site. In connection with your use of the Site you will not engage in or use any data mining, robots, scraping or similar data gathering or extraction methods.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/legal/#tou

This is already being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35617763

Not only reddit, we need a new social contract for all the people contributing their data to the AI models. Google's advertising contract is rotten and broken long ago. If they are not going to do that , then we need legislation preventing them from scraping content when it s disallowed

Why? It's content made freely accessible, and its use is either being carried out under fair use provisions, or it isn't (in which case, existing copyright law applies).

I guess the one question I'd have here is whether or not these LLM's are being created by scraping content in a manner that ignores robots.txt files. While not strictly illegal, this is relatively hostile behavior, and there may be a case that it amounts to unauthorized access.

Are they going to pay for the traffic from Google also?

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