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Giefo6ahtoday at 4:03 AM6 repliesview on HN

If you live in the USA, the "decoy notes" may be considered an "effective technical measure" from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act".

If you live in Europe, this restriction may be considered "gatekeeping" and exempted by the Digital Markets Act.

Don't bring attention to yourself by asking for permission. Publish your codec, and if the company cares about this they will send a cease and desist.

If you want the world to benefit from your code but you don't want to be responsible for it, try to adapt the codec to ffmpeg. The ffmpeg project is used to dealing with these matters, and will keep your codec working for eternity.


Replies

progvaltoday at 4:51 AM

> If you live in Europe, this restriction may be considered "gatekeeping" and exempted by the Digital Markets Act.

That's not how the DMA works at all, there is no concept of gatekeeping practices. Instead, the EU Commission designates companies that act as gatekeeper for some services (current list here: https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/gatekeepers-portal_...) which then puts constraints on what they do.

j1elotoday at 9:00 AM

Don't publish your code. Let the AI "accidentally escape the sandbox and publish it in a readily available Git repository". Tongue in cheek, in current days who would blame a poor LLM just trying to do the right thing? :)

> Publish your codec, and if the company cares about this they will send a cease and desist.

If there are doubts about C&D letters, don't publish code to a USA provider. Bring it to Gitee, under an anonymous author name.

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Doohickey-dtoday at 5:17 AM

If you don't want to be responsible for it, another way is to just publish it anonymously: make a GitHub that isn't attached to your real name etc, perhaps using a one-off disposable email address, and put it there. Then you don't have to think about what the lawyers think. Worst case it'll get taken down, but by that point it'll likely be popular enough that there'll be plenty of copies.

[Pirate flag emoji here]

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phiretoday at 5:09 AM

> the "decoy notes" may be considered an "effective technical measure" from the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act".

I really hope not. My understanding is that to be "effective" it needs to at least be a form of encryption with a secret key. At least, I'm not aware of any case law that allowed anything less than that.

IMO, "dummy notes" are nothing more than a form of obfuscation. If it's obvious how to filter them out, then I don't think it comes close to meeting the bare minimum of what might count as an "effective technical measure".

Of course, who knows what way the courts will rule if it ever reached that far.

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politiciantoday at 5:33 AM

Consider publishing the prompts used to create it.

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KennyBlankentoday at 5:06 AM

Any company would be a fool not to send a C&D given how many people on this site seem to think that "I got a C&D" means "if I don't obey it, I'm gonna get sued."

Anti-SLAPP laws exist for a reason, and if corps can bully anyone, how is it that corps routinely lose lawsuits on either side of the docket, hmmmm?

Keep licking that corporate boot, folks. Corps send C&Ds because they cost them all of maybe $100-200 and they're so effective.

There is a long road between "got a C&D" and "am getting sued." Among other things, a judge is going to want to see that both sides attempted to negotiate. If the company sending the C&D just demands that and then tries to file suit, the judge is going to tell them to go back to step 2 and stop bothering him/her.

Folks, stop telling people that if they get a C&D they have to just fold. Good chance you never hear from them again because the cost of suing you is nowhere near the damages they will be able to prove in court.

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