Hacker News Reader

Comment by mingus88 | Hacker News Reader

So…if Reddit doesn’t own the content, it belongs to the user who posted it, then doesn’t this only harm Serpai’s case further?

I have posted to Reddit and I do not authorize any AI company to use my posts as training data.

View on HN

Reddit isn’t trying to protect user content here. They’re suing to make sure they’re the only ones who can monetize it.

Not sure how you’d reach the conclusion that it would harm SerpApi’s case. They’re the ones being sued.

Is SerpApi asking each user for permission to use their posts if they are saying that the rights of the posts belong to the user?

Copyright protects copying. Scraping content does not violate copyright if the content is not republished. Otherwise Google and all search engines would be illegal.

Then you are free to sue whoever you think is violating your copyright. That's one of Serpapi's defenses: the owner of the copyright needs to sue, not a non-exclusive licensee of the copyright (Reddit).

This is a great legal defense, but if they are trying to make themselves seen as though they are fighting for the rights of the users and aren't doing the literal same thing that Reddit is doing, that is disingenious.

I wonder if any lawyers could weigh in here. Does this admission that they know the data is the user's make a class-action against SerpApi or whatever a slam-dunk? They're practically publishing their own admission of guilt!

It doesn’t hurt SerpApi’s defense against Reddit’s lawsuit, because SerpApi does not need to prove they have your permission. They only need to prove that Reddit does not have the legal authority to prevent SerpApi from scraping your content. Which they almost certainly don’t.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com