Elon Musk’s X can’t invent its own copyright law, judge says
Elon Musk’s X can’t invent its own copyright law, judge says
Judge rules copyright law governs public data scraping, not X’s terms.
The judge found that X Corp's argument exposed a tension between the platform's desire to control user data while also enjoying the safe harbor of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which allows X to avoid liability for third-party content. If X owned the data, it could perhaps argue it has exclusive rights to control the data, but then it wouldn't have safe harbor.
"X Corp. wants it both ways: to keep its safe harbors yet exercise a copyright owner’s right to exclude, wresting fees from those who wish to extract and copy X users’ content," Alsup wrote.
Seems like a sound judgement. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If Elon Musk wants to own the data, he must also be liable for it.
Judge Alsup isn’t wrong. Yet Disney routinely writes its own copyright laws and has Congress pass them. Musk is just trying to cut out the middle step.
disney isn't inventing laws; congress is passing laws, which is how it's supposed to work.
Do you mind elaborating?
"Elon Musk's X can't invent"
"Elon Musk can't invent"
How anyone could support Elon a few years ago baffles me. How anyone can support him today worries me
elon musk can't invent - prove me wrong
The website formally known as twitter runs face first in to the results of chasing another tech hype train built on sound technology being applied way too broadly, and operating in unsustainable and dubiously legal ways.
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.
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.
Users already relinquished their copyright rights when they signed the ToS.
Now do Reddit 😈