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OpenAI’s Sam Altman Revealed As One of Reddit’s Biggest Shareholders
(www.hollywoodreporter.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
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This is a good point. Of course in the past you could just overhear someone say something and use that info for free. Like turn it into a song lyric or whatever. Even acting directly on the info could make you money if you overheard a stock tip.
Now comments online are directly attributable to a particular person. These LLM programs are like someone listening and watching whatever you're doing. Then claiming those are their ideas.
Overhearing something by accident is one thing. Actively recording someone's conversation with the intent to profit from it is another. Although I think that most of the info they'll get is nonsense, so whatever. But it's still not really their creation. It's the commenters'.
But that's the thing, either the information is in the public domain - in which case it is freely available and cannot be sold to anyone else - or the information is private. It can't be both. They can't say "you posted it on our platform, so it's public and we don't have to pay you" while simultaneously selling it to someone else.
If they're selling it, then the author has a fair claim to it. Terms and conditions won't hold water if no consideration has been given, and "free access to a website" does not meet that bar - especially when the access is granted regardless of whether you make the post.
You can take something from the public domain and sell it. There's plenty of public domain books sold. It just means that everyone can access it and use it equally. You can record everything you overhear at the store and use it for writing a story or whatever.
Although what you say sounds true. These comments are written and signed, easily attributed to the owner. Every document like that in the past has been the property of the writer. Same thing with images. I don't know how Reddit can claim any comments are legally theirs without "consideration" as you say.