Judge rules copyright law governs public data scraping, not X’s terms.
@Hirom@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
9
edit-2
6M

What about users’ copyright? Would Bright Data have to obtain permission from every user to scrap data while following copyright law?

I guess this wasn’t a question raised during this lawsuit.

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
creator
link
fedilink
36M

Users already relinquished their copyright rights when they signed the ToS.

@Hirom@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
3
edit-2
6M

The same ToS which the judge says X cannot enforce because it conflicts with copyright law.

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
creator
link
fedilink
26M

The copyright law says that Musk cannot claim copyright while also claiming not to be accountable. That has nothing to do with users waiving their copyright, which has been the standard practice for all forum software since practically forever. It’s why prior to GDPR, their was nothing to motivate websites from deleting your posts and even that isn’t about copyright, it’s about privacy.

@jarfil@beehaw.org
link
fedilink
3
edit-2
6M

Copyright can only be waived in the US by dedicating the work to the Public Domain. In most other countries, it can only be assigned or licensed to someone.

The “standard practice in all forum software since practically forever”, has been to include a very broad use license on the work, without switching the copyright holder, in order to protect the forum owner from liability.

The GDPR is about a very broad take on “privacy”, where the rights of “access, modification, and removal” get extended to any “personal information”, no matter whether it’s “personally identifiable” or not.

Kind of a two birds with one stone situation.

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
creator
link
fedilink
16M

MVP!

TehPers
link
fedilink
English
66M

Do they give up the copyright, or license it to the website? They still created the content, and I don’t have a Twitter account, but after briefly reading the ToS, it says they license it to Twitter (which is pretty standard from the other services I use that I’ve read the ToS for).

@sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al
creator
link
fedilink
26M

Yep, you’re right. I oversimplified it.

TehPers
link
fedilink
English
96M

This is a guess since I’m not a lawyer, but since users license their content to Twitter when posting it, Bright Data might have to prove fair use. I don’t think that question has been answered yet in relation to AI model training, but search engines have been doing this for decades for what it’s worth, so I don’t know.

This seems to have been addressed by the judge:

By attempting to exclude Bright Data from accessing public X posts owned by X users, X also nearly “obliterated” the “fair use” provision of the Copyright Act, “flouting” Congress’ intent in passing the law, Alsup wrote.

Create a post

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community’s icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

  • 1 user online
  • 64 users / day
  • 174 users / week
  • 621 users / month
  • 2.31K users / 6 months
  • 1 subscriber
  • 3.28K Posts
  • 67K Comments
  • Modlog