When are you going to add non-tech companies? I'm constantly scanning bios like this for lawyers, especially on what types of law they practice and what types of cases they've done in the past.
We're mainly focused on the tech vertical right now, but are going to expand to a second vertical soon - and law is one we've been considering.
We use public data sources, so Find AI works best in industries where people want to be found. And, lawyers spend a lot of time building websites and profiles - so I think it would work really well with our data model.
> What are some of the other verticals you're considering?
Thinking of VCs and finance next, because lots of the user so far have been customers. Law is high on the list. Healthcare has been something are interested in, too.
> What types of data sources are you using?
It's all scraping and LLMs under the hood. Nothing secret, but there's some surprising sophistication to how it works. We have ~50k companies and ~100k people in the database right now, and are trying to 10x that over the next month.
Thanks for the response. I think Tech/VCs/Finance are all pretty well correlated, you might want to consider branching out of that bubble of the world IMO.
TL;DR our lawyers wrote a clause to protect open source code from being used by generative AI companies for profit. You can find it here: paytotrain.ai
A legal grey area exists as to whether publicly available creations (code or art) can be used to train datasets for generative AI projects without infringing their creators' underlying copyrights. Other types of claims, such as violation of license agreements and DMCA violations, require proof of damages to substantiate.
The legal solution we’ve identified is to add a specific damages amount to the license itself — a licensing fee. The failure to pay such a fee would cause the creator to suffer damages in the amount of the fee. By imbedding a licensing fee into a traditional open-source license, a creator can solve the proof-of-damages issue that could otherwise limit a claim under the DMCA or for breach of contract, and limit the fee to generative AI companies.
That’s why we built the Humans Only Clause. If you don’t want your code used by Copilot in this way, the Humans Only Clause can help strengthen your protections from use for training purposes. It’s a simple addition to your existing open source license to keep it free use and open source for other developers, but to prevent use without attribution by generative AI companies.
You can access the Humans Only Clause and insert it into your GitHub repo by going to PayToTrain.ai — we also built a payments form where you can set your own licensing fee depending on how valuable you believe your repo to be. If we get enough people using this clause, there’s a good chance we can assemble a separate class for a future class action, where each user gets significantly higher damages than what’s available statutorily under existing DMCA lawsuits.
On a philosophical level, we believe that the open source community is based on principles of taking and giving back to the collective. AI-based programming assistants strip away any attribution while drawing from the underlying contributions of the community. We want the open source community to continue to be open source, but we don’t want big companies to profit on our code.
If you’re interested, check it out: paytotrain.ai. We’d love to hear what you think
> AI-based programming assistants strip away any attribution while drawing from the underlying contributions of the community ... we believe that the open source community is based on principles of taking and giving back to the collective
How is this behavior different than 90% of human coders? Most SW devs scream if you ask them to pay for something, whether its apps, code, TV, movies, etc. But they will happily try to build startups on top of a vast mountain of free code. I really don't care if my code gets sucked up by the AI vacuum, humans have been doing that quite well for awhile now.
"Use of the Software by any person to train, teach, prompt, populate, or otherwise further or facilitate any so-called generative artificial intelligence, generative algorithm, generative adversarial network, generative model, or similar or related activity (or to attempt to perform any of the foregoing acts or activity), whether in connection with any so-called machine learning, deep learning, neural network, or similar or related framework, system, or model or otherwise, is strictly prohibited and beyond the limited scope of this license, absent prior payment to licensor of the licensing fee of the amount of ____"
That clause appears to violate Item #6 of the OSI's open source definition:
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
It also seems to violate freedom 0 of the FSF's four essential freedoms that define free software:
> The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
I'm not sure this can be used by open source projects if they want to remain open source projects.
Thank you. I see the Humans Only Clause is much more explicit about what is prohibited than the No-AI 3-Clause License, and furthermore directly states a licensing fee.
That wouldn't license code. That's just license text that happens to be in a string. Not sure why this bugfix site is being used instead of just pastebin with text.
I think it is more likely you are just baldly shilling your website. Which is a shame, because I think the site isn't a bad idea - I like the minimal interface and the thought you've put into hints for many not-quite-right solutions. I've seen quality links you've posted in the past with more interesting, subtle, and relevant bugs - but this isn't one of them.
I have a different Hacker News account for every one of my projects. It happens that the No-AI 3-Clause License became part of the BUGFIX-66 project. I'm sorry that upsets you, but I'm sure you'll get over it. Happy Thanksgiving.
Just a clarification - while there are multiple class action lawsuits against Equifax, Legalist is funding individual consumers to take action in small claims court. It's faster and you're likely to recover more.
Absolutely! The only authorized representatives are company officers or lawyers, and many small claims courts don't allow lawyers. So unless the CEO of Equifax attends every court hearing in the country, or unless the judge allows them to move it out of small claims court, you're likely to recover. (not a lawyer, not legal advice)
Furthermore, can the court compel some kind of class-action suit if it realizes there's a small claims backlog of thousands of plaintiffs against the same defendant for the same issue? This thing could clog all the SC courts in the country if all 100mm people file like this.
From what I've read on some law blogs, this doesn't happen often at all, and were it to happen, it would also mean that there's no reason for Equifax not to also deal with these cases in a class action.
Litigation finance is like a contingency arrangement - if you file the case and the judge dismisses it, there's no risk to you. But if you do file the case and win $1000, we'll recover alongside you.
FYI - when you dodge the question this way, you look as bad as equifax. What is in it for you? Do you take a percentage of the judgement?
I'll probably end up paying a lawyer to advise me on the best way to get back at Equifax. But, I'm not going to do business with you because you're shady and won't disclose your interest in this case.
What is in it for you? Do you take a percentage of the judgement?
Just because you don't know how lawyerin' works is no excuse to be insulting. They take a contingency, like every other friggin' lawyer on the planet. (No financial interest, don't know the founders from Adam, yada, yada)
Con-artists are the only people who want you to think that it's insulting to ask them how they are compensated. I've worked with plenty of lawyers over the years and none of the ethical ones have ever balked at explaining their fee structure.
The class against Equifax is huge and you should absolutely be aware that less than ethical lawyers are going to come out of the woodwork making all sorts of promises so that they can get their slice of what Equifax is going to pay out. The lawyers that I want to work with will either charge me an hourly fee or they will be upfront that my involvement in a class means that I'll be helping to punish Equifax but that I'll be forgoing most damages to do so.
That really doesn't answer my question. If I win $1000, how much do I then owe? I'm cool with not recovering anything but I don't even know if my liability is capped at the judgement against Equifax.
It's funny how many people are upset by my comment. The only thing I can say is that, when I hire a lawyer, the point is to have them clarify the law for me and translate it into plain english. If a lawyer won't even put their own fees into plain english, I don't believe they are working for me so I won't hire them.
