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a quote from the article: "Thom said it “would be ethically indefensible” if nonpublic research supplied by users helped to improve models that the company then used to race those very same users to publication, without consent, proper disclosure, or credit."

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Would one of this users tell their opponents what he is doing? And if yes, would anyone wonder when the opponent would use this information. Be dumb, win dumb prices.

They didn't know that the product they were using was one of their opponents. That's the entire complaint, that it represents a conflict of interest to engage in direct competition with your customers, who aren't competing with your main business model.

If Google or Microsoft suddenly got in the business of publishing books, and mined established authors' works in progress for material to publish, that would also be a bad look, even though we know that they likely have access to our files.

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