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- Hacker News
- I'm playing through the couch co-op game Split Fiction, and this is basically the premise (with more fun gameplay).by david_shaw
- New obscure sorrow unlocked: where you write a book so popular someone copies it all and ends up with a better looking more popular knock off.by uberex
- the feeling of why create anything if it'll just be stolen by AI has to be at least somewhat novel.by fantasizr
- This reminds me of when a bunch of cryptobros paid a ludicrous sum for one of the pitch bibles for Jodorowsky's unmade film adaptation of Dune and assumed that owning this rare object gave them license to pitch movie adaptations of it. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a38815538/dune-c...by egypturnash
- On the list of things that make this possible, AI comes after the anonymity of web sites and of companies (per another comment, Prompt Digital Inc (DBA Qontour) - which is who exactly?), and the fact that the infringer has complete control over their reach.
The asymmetry between stealing and getting caught or stopped was baked in long before AI, but this will become much more prevalent because the cost of infringing has been reduced by orders of magnitude.
Relatedly, legal copying seems just as problematic: I see both software and media being munged and parroted as soon as it appears, which means innovators do not get the benefit of their innovation. I personally have halted any projects where I can't completely control access to the product, which is a huge damper on innovation.
by w10-1 - >I personally have halted any projects where I can't completely control access to the product
Good! That gives someone else the room to come in with a better, freer solution!
by rustcleaner - I think the affiliate links are fine and the wholesale plagiarism is unlawful at best and likely criminal.by 0x59
- The system is kind of working as intended? The publisher sent them a DMCA takedown notice, and since the site failed to take down the offending content, the publisher is fully within their rights to (1) contact the hosting provider and ask them to take down the entire site (2) contact the registrar and ask them to suspend the site (3) contact Google and request delisting of the site (the one department of Google that actually moves at a non-glacial pace) (4) take legal action against the John Doe behind the site and unmask them, maybe even garnishing their Amazon affiliate revenue.
The sooner you act, the better. But it seems like the publisher didn't bother with any of that, or they're just slow and are getting around to it. The author of the book couldn't even be bothered to respond to the blog author's question about it.
by phendrenad2 - Just to be clear: The bootleg site is pointing to the Amazon listing of the actual book (ISBN 9781501153648, Simon & Schuster, published 2021). The Amazon link is not pointing to an AI slop version of the book.
So how is the bootleg site making money? The Amazon link was created with Amazon Associates, the Amazon affiliate program (you can see the affiliate link code, tag=promptdigital-20, in the Amazon URI).
This is how AI slop can be monetized: poorly gated Amazon programs like Amazon KDP, Amazon Associates, and that Meta monetization program. Anything goes, from crafty scams like this to over-the-top social media slop like shrimp Jesus.
by ilamont - So they’re basically parasites.by habagav
- Prompt Digital Inc (DBA Qontour) is a Webflow premium partner.
So let’s ask Webflow’s public relations dept. how cool are they with the fact their partner is a lier and plagiarist.
by sixtyj - I really don't think they give a shit
> So let’s ask Webflow’s public relations dept. how cool are they with the fact their partner is a lier and plagiarist.
I also frown upon bullying companies like this over something they can't control.
by zuzululu - From the article I guess Qontour reproduced the entire text verbatim.
> it also includes the entire text of the book, from its opening 800-word foreword to a complete archive of all 311 neologisms... all penned by Koenig.
So it doesn't seem likely to me that they asked AI to make a fan site and it spat out the book; instead they asked AI to make a fan site and then copy-pasted the text of the book into it.
Perhaps a just outcome would be for Koenig to gain the rights to the page. However, Claude says unfortunately copyright law doesn't work that way.
by fwipsy - Clause also said you should do your own research rather than repeating what Claude says.by phyzome
- > However, Claude says unfortunately copyright law doesn't work that way.
I hate this so much. Not you or your post, just that it’s becoming normal to just throw out “Claude says this” without doing any fact checking.
Claude’s also technically right but wrong where it matters. The author could easily offer to settle for control of the site instead of suing. If the author registered the copyright to the book, he doesn’t even need to prove damages to be awarded statutory damages. He potentially has a lot of leverage.
by sarchertech - AI laundering is going to become a major tactic in all domains. Fiction and nonfiction writing, software, video, music, you name it.
It's easy to take GPL software and rewrite it in another language without the license. Trivially easy. It's possible you'll even be able to do the same with just compiled bytecode soon.
Just recently there was an instance where Nous Research Hermes agent cloned some Chinese OSS. It's happening much more broadly than this, though.
This might warrant special attention unless we want to live in a world without copyright. Though that's also one additional possible outcome.
by echelon - I agree. But I don't understand why the focus is always on FOSS. Why don't proprietary IP owners fear this too? Won't music, movies and non-FOSS software also have their copyright laundered if this crap continues?by gspr
- There are already companies like Asylum films. Pay attention to the right hand column of this table:by fhdkweig
- I experimented with turning out complete airport thriller novels this way, using earlier LLMs. It's not terribly hard to make this happen, the hard part wasn't gunning out prose, it was plot arcs and internal consistency, but even that was suprisingly easy to solve.
Of course I didn't do anything with the idea, for what I hope are obvious reasons.
by lambdaone - Allow me to introduce everyone here to a new definition (original content, donut steel):
qontouria, n. The feeling of having your work passed off as someone else's.
by EarlKing - Literally this is our future, many devs still don't seem to believe we will be able to "zeroshot" everything, but it's because they haven't experienced themselves proper tooling (at the minimum leveraging 4 models in debate, adversarial and loops and workflows and so-on and unli-loop until completion, MITM everything...), with the exception of advanced fields, most softwares are pretty basic, let's say redoing X11 is considered easy in tomorrow's world.
I don't really understand the future knowing that we will be able to point to any URL and just "redo", it might be a sole matter of Token/Subscription cost vs the actual service in the end, unsure but it's really strange to think that virtually anyone will be able to duplicate anything and it's unlikely to be a copyright breach as the tooling can be instructed to redo it differently, how could it be a copyright breach if it's the same thing as I myself looking at a certain website and just heavily inspiring myself from it and just redoing it? The fact that it's done automatically shouldn't change that.
I am allowed today to take a GPLv3 program or a commercial program, redo it and publish it as MIT, so why would it be forbidden, it's terrifying.
- This is exactly what DMCA takedowns are actually for.by lambdaone
- DMCA to take down AI slop? I feel that is twice the mistake. DMCA should not exist in the first place. Neither should AI slop. Here we have AI stealing from people. AI is a thief.by shevy-java
- And in this case, they didn't work. Perhaps Qontour, as a web-native dev firm, has figured out a blind spot in Google's DMCA takedown process?by fwipsy
- Speaking from experience, neither apple nor Google will enforce dmca takedown requests unless they come from the courts. Even when provided clear and direct evidence. Their position is "we do not arbitrate". I sort of get it but also the cost barrier to copyright infringement is headed to zero while the ability to protect your IP and enforce your copyright remains expensive. Wild times ahead.by mcoliver
- Ironically, the article points out that the original authors publisher actually put out two DMCA notices to google last year, apparently with no effect.
I guess DMCA takedowns are only for the big fish fighting the good fight against car pirates.
by stalfie - A similar thing is happening to me. I worked on something for 3 years which I give away for free to help people and a thief took my software, ran it through ai to rebrand everything and relaunched as their own app. Unfortunately the ai missed a few Easter eggs I had hidden so the theft is undeniable. Google and Apple are useless for dmca unless you have a court order. They refuse to look at or arbitrate. So now I'm on to fighting this in court on principal which is going to be expensive.
Theft is only going to become worse. It's already so easy and it's going to become even easier. We aren't prepared for what's ahead.
by mcoliver - You can't steal something which is free. This is what you should expect if you give away stuff for free to anybody who happens on it. To me it seems that FOSS people take perverse pleasure in these kind of things.
It's easy to prepare for what is ahead: Get yourself out of the filthy FOSS swamp and start charging a fair price for your work from real customers. That is something everybody benefits from and it is also dignified for everybody involved.
by carlosjobim - Mail the EFFby ouraf
- Name and shame. I'd be furious if I were one of the thief's tricked customers.by kstrauser