Breaking the Llama Community License

Posted by mkl 5 days ago

Breaking the Llama Community License(notes.victor.earth)

142 points | 78 commentspage 2

punnerud 2 days ago|

The same Berne Convention apply to Meta/Llama, as they use to scrape the web. You can use derivative work or summaries without reference. And copyright only applies to work done by human?

So when they say you have to reference Llama, it does not actually apply in most countries?

bionhoward 2 days ago||

And the OpenAI Terms of use, and the Anthropic terms, and the Microsoft Services Agreement, and the Gemini API Additional terms, and the perplexity terms, and the mistral terms, but hey “nobody reads them” right?

whartung 2 days ago|

If the AIs cared, they would enforce their own licenses.

“Can you give me the curl command to post a file?”

“Well, are you individually domiciled in the European Union?”

dheera 2 days ago||

It's not a crime to lie to an AI.

jkaplowitz 2 days ago||

True as such, at least in most examples including the one we’re discussing (exceptions in specific situations can exist). This example might however be breach of contract, or might invalidate your ability to rely upon a license that would otherwise protect you from civil or criminal claims of copyright infringement.

pizzafeelsright 2 days ago||

I do not read licenses. Rarely do i click "I agree" as someone else already has and I'm using the "product"

I am curious what my exposure is yet not wealthy enough to find out.

paxys 3 days ago||

"Probably" how? What % of users of Llama are building and shipping a commerical product with it? Or redistributing it at all in any way?

halyconWays 2 days ago||

Oh no, not the sanctity of the license for weights trained by literally scraping all material and the works of countless artists and hobbyists.

o11c 2 days ago||

Does a thief have the right to demand nobody re-steals what was stolen in the first place?

If we accept the existence of intellectual property in the first place, all AI is blatant and unmitigated theft.

If we do not accept it, Llama has no right to enforce such terms.

lxgr 2 days ago||

That's a pretty reductionist view. Even maximally pro-IP laws usually have significant carve-outs for derivative works or other scenarios; see for example the US's extensive "fair use" doctrine.

cratermoon 2 days ago|||

You're begging the question: it's not established the LLM models are derivative or fair use under those laws.

Also, the de facto state of fair use in the US is not what I would call "extensive".

andybak 2 days ago|||

Do I have to repeat "copyright violation isn't theft" on every post for eternity?

delichon 2 days ago||

If I make copies of Project Hail Mary and sell them at half price, do you think it's obvious that should be legal? I think Andy Weir would have a decent moral as well as legal case for theft.

lxgr 2 days ago|||

Many things aren't theft, but are still neither moral nor legal.

halyconWays 2 days ago||

They drove Aaron Swartz to suicide using the power of the State because he downloaded public domain documents. Meanwhile these AI training companies scrape the entirety of copyrighted human content and then have the audacity to claim people are stealing from them.

dfadsadsf 2 days ago||

What they do not do (and Aaron did) is using corporate paid subscription, agreeing to ToS and then sucking data for training or distribution. Scraping web while obeying robots.txt is much more in grey zone.

achierius 2 days ago|||

"What they do not do" -> but they've happily torrented files that other people have published through that route. At least thus far, the justice system has not seen fit to differentiate: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/11/meta_dmca_copyright_r...

cbzbc 2 days ago|||

Downloading all of libgen on purpose is a lot more than 'scraping web while obeying robots.txt'.

boramalper 2 days ago||

Also see: Open Source AI Definition Erodes the Meaning of “Open Source”

https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2024/oct/31/open-source-ai-de...

> The TLDR here, IMO is simply stated: the OSAID fails to require reproducibility by the public of the scientific process of building these systems, because the OSAID fails to place sufficient requirements on the licensing and public disclosure of training sets for so-called “Open Source” systems. The OSI refused to add this requirement because of a fundamental flaw in their process; they decided that “there was no point in publishing a definition that no existing AI system could currently meet”. This fundamental compromise undermined the community process, and amplified the role of stakeholders who would financially benefit from OSI's retroactive declaration that their systems are “open source”. The OSI should have refrained from publishing a definition yet, and instead labeled this document as ”recommendations” for now.

Dwedit 2 days ago||

Are LORAs also bound by the same restrictions as sending complete finetuned models?