I’m trying to get to a reason on this, but my point reach to a limit.
I’ve the feels that scraping the internet for public accessible data, like for example open and public music on Spotify wouldn’t be a crime, but the distribution would be. At the same token, this is seem as a crime, while Google does the same and nothing happens, even worse, if this get regulated, Google would have a huge advantage on anyone else.
So, my deeper question is: “Is copyright dead?”
As far as I understand, Google scrapes data, processes it and uses it for commercial cases. It’s a company, not a private person scraping and using for personal cases. A very important distinction.
Since it’s a company, it should not use our data, right? right? It’s my data, it can’t use my post for training, right? It’s not fair use… right?
Legally, check your local laws or just be sure to cover your ass with tor or a VPN with an anonymous core.
Ethically, just obey Wheaton’s Law: “Don’t be a dick.”
With web scraping, I can think of two ways Wheaton’s law applies:
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Scrapers should blend into existing background web traffic. They should be slow enough to not overwhelm their servers. This requires babysitting any new scraper until one is sure it is tuned to be safe for the scraped site.
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Any scraped content shouldn’t be re-hosted in a way that harms the original content creators. Sharing is lovely. Harming artists sucks. Finding the right balance between preservation and respect can take some thought, but it’s usually actually a pretty wide road.
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It’s illegal but all AI companies do it more than you’ll ever do. You have my permission.
I still buy on Bandcamp because they deserve it.
It’s illegal
Sauce? Also, where?
There’s no obvious answer to your question without more information (for example, where are you?) but I’m not aware of scraping being illegal anywhere, with some exceptions. For example, in the US (where I am), as long as you’re not doing “illegal hacking” to scrape your data, you’re probably fine.
There are TOSs that websites like to impose as well. If you have to agree to one to access any data, you should follow it. Breaking the TOS isn’t really “illegal” in a criminal sense (in the US), but you may expose yourself to anything from being blocked from the site to a lawsuit. Bypassing blocks might also be illegal, though you’d have to speak to a lawyer to know more about that.
That’s the point, my focus is on the “Europe” as a general place, since they need to sync the “law” to some degree, there is different levels, but the base line are the same.
Most public data, like all the music in Spotify don’t require a cookie. So I could in theory scrape all the Spotify music to “listem later”. This wouldn’t be “illigal”, but if that’s the case Annas Archive should be “fine”… (I know that they are distributing, and this is the fight)
But, if they scrapped the music, and I scrape we would have the same “dataset”, so if I download the Annas “dataset”, would it be different from mine? So if I prefer to download the Anna’s dataset instead of scrape myself, would this be illigal? They aren’t selling (on the contrary of Google).
There is way to many questions in my head :(
This wouldn’t be “illigal”, but if that’s the case Annas Archive should be “fine”… (I know that they are distributing, and this is the fight)
I don’t know much about European law, but redistribution changes things a lot here in the US. At least here, it then gets into copyright law, and you’d be reproducing copyrighted works without authorization (the Internet Archive attempted to get around this with books by getting legitimate copies of the books, digitizing them, then “lending” the digital copies of those books).
So if I prefer to download the Anna’s dataset instead of scrape myself, would this be illigal?
No idea in Europe. In the US, it might be, depending on what the contents of the work are. I believe Anna’s Archive would count as piracy in this case, though scraping directly from Spotify might not be because they are redistributing the music with authorization from the copyright holder. It gets pretty confusing, honestly.
Regardless, if you aren’t doing things at large scale, even if you are breaking a law by downloading pirated content, it’s unlikely anyone will care. People usually only really start caring if you start redistributing stuff, so as long as you aren’t hosting what you’re scraping, you’re unlikely to run into any trouble.
I can’t care less about copyright and ‘crimes’ of copying.
So you don’t care about GPL and Open Source then?
I guess you never created an original of anything? Maybe I read that wrong…
I’ve written more than one piece of software, and plenty of wordpress themes. I always release them without a license, for anyone to use however they want. copyright is capitalist nonsense and only exists to gatekeep creative freedom and stifle innovation.
you should release it as public domain; unfortunately others can’t “legally” use anything just because they have access to it (no license).
yeah, it’s absolutely stupid capitalist theater
I don’t care about laws or legality, and neither should you.
I think everyone should care about lawas and legality. It’s a bad advice to tell anyone to not care.
I hate capitalism and the way it devalues people, reducing them to consumers. The fact remains we live in it, and have to eat. If you release everything to AI crawlers, what do you eat, assuming you don’t lay tiles for a living, which would make you “rich” but very busy…
With the slow-death of copyright, what else is left? And if not dead, how can we reclaim it? I’ve so many questions, and I can’t focus on a single thing :(
Copyright is not dying, that is what Ai companies and those who do not care want you to believe. So you stop caring too. Copyright is an important law around the world. Just because there are loopholes and current difficulties and not being clear, does not mean its dead or dying. It just means (as always) needs some new adjustments and clarification to adapt to new technology.
I’ve the impression that copyright isn’t for the “small guy”, but for the “big tech”
It’s also for the small guy, so the big guy does not steal your ideas and use it without compensation.
Th logs on my blog say otherwise
The logs on my git repository says otherwise too
What exactly do you mean?
I did, obtaining a monopoly on it would go counter my beliefs. Anyway originality is overrated and very hard to measure. Especially now.
Not only copyright is dead but so is licensing of things in general. This means there’ll be less original work from both commercial and non-commercial projects. Commercially there won’t be ways to profit so why bother. On the libre licensing front why would you contribute code to GPL licensed projects or release art under Creative Commons if it’s going to be license washed anyway?
no, in almost all cases internet piracy is not a crime. it is a civil issue. now if you were scraping information that wasn’t public, that could be a crime depending on the circumstances.
Google would have some kind of licence in place I suspect. But what about people with photographic memory?
