RedDit Sues Dedeplerity and three other companies for allegedly using its content without payment
RedDit is suing the companies serapi, OLLYLABS, awmproxy and confusion for allegedly kicking its data from search results and using it without a license, The New York Times reports. The new lawsuit follows legal action against AI startup Anthropic, which allegedly used Reddit content to train a chaude chaude chaebot.
Starting in 2023, Reddit Companies are seeking access to posts and other content in hopes of monetizing data that can be used for AI training. The company has also signed licenses with companies such as Google and Openai, and has built its own AI answering machine to support information in user positions. Getting close to search results on Reddit content avoids those payments, which is why the company is seeking financial damages and a permanent injunction against companies that sell pre-packaged content.
Some of the companies RedDIT focuses on, like serapi, oxylabs and awmproxy, aren’t exactly household names, but they’ve all made collecting data from search results and selling it an important part of their business. The inclusion of Donsulation in the plea of guilt can be seen further. The AI company needs data to train its models, and is already caught copying and controlling material it has not paid for a license. It also reportedly ignores the robots.txt protocol, a way for websites to communicate that they don’t want to be crawled.
A copy of the lawsuit provided to Engadget, RedDit has already sent a cease and desist order to ask it to stop the unlicensed posts without a license. The company said it did not use reddit’s data, but also continued to show the platform through responses from its chatbot. RedDit says it was able to prove confusion using the hacked Reddit content by creating a “test experiment” that “can only be tampered with over the Internet.” Within a few hours, queries made to DuntepleplePhisity’s answer engine were able to reproduce the content posted.
“The only way confusion is likely to find that red content and use it in the ‘answer engine’ is if and/or its sellers kick Google [search results] In that red and confused content and then quickly enter that information into its response engine,” the lawsuit claims.
When asked to comment, Confusion provided the following statement:
Confusion has not yet found law, but we will continue to vigorously fight for the rights of users to be free and to freely access public information. Our approach remains principled and responsible as we provide truthful answers with intuitive AI, and we will not tolerate threats against openness and public interest.
These new rules are equivalent to RedDit aggressively going to protect its data, including anonymous bots and web crawlers in 2024, and in no way access to the last device of the Internet on its licensed site with a place to get licensed licenses.
