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>Hi all - you may have noticed this piece (https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/mumsnet-openai-sues-copyright-infringement-cz5hzvf8s) in the Times today and I wanted to explain why we're doing this.

>Earlier this year, we became aware that OpenAI was scraping Mumsnet - presumably to train their large language model (LLM). Such scraping without permission is an explicit breach of our terms of use, which clearly state that no part of the site may be distributed, scraped or copied for any purpose without our express approval. So we approached Open AI and suggested they might like to licence our content. In truth there are some very good reasons why the LLMs should ingest our conversational data to train their models. The six billion plus words on Mumsnet is a unique record of twenty-four years of female conversation about everything from global politics to fashion to relationships with in-laws. By contrast the majority of the content on the web was written by and for men. AI models have misogyny baked in and we’d love to help counter the gender bias likely to be present in many of them and raise women’s voices. Their response was that they were more interested in datasets that are not easily accessible online.

>Much of the content on the open web is likewise being lifted. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI pronounced only two weeks ago that machine-learning companies are perfectly within their rights to scrape content published online because the moment it’s published it becomes ‘freeware’.

>You might ask why the theft of online content for model-training poses a problem - hasn’t Google been crawling all over websites and ingesting their data for search purposes since the dawn of the internet? True, but there is a clear value exchange in allowing Google to access that data, namely the resulting search traffic that comes from being indexed by Google. The LLMs are building models like ChatGPT to provide the answers to any and all prospective questions that will mean we’ll no longer need to go elsewhere for solutions. And they’re building those models with scraped content from the websites they are poised to replace.

>At Mumsnet we’re in a stronger position than most because much of our traffic comes to us direct and though it’s a piece of cake for an LLM to spit out a Mumsnet-style answer to a parenting question I doubt they’ll ever be as funny about parking wars or as honest about relationships and they’ll certainly never provide the emotional support that sees around a thousand women a year helped to leave abusive partners by other Mumsnet users. But if these trillion-dollar giants are simply allowed to pillage content from online publishers - and get away with it - they will destroy many of them.

>Not surprisingly, a number of large, global publishers are currently suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement and here at Mumsnet though we’re neither large (in revenue terms) nor global, we’ve decided we have no choice but to initiate a legal complaint too.

>That’s not to say that A.I. is all bad of course. It plainly has the potential to advance human progress and improve our lives in multiple ways. But if the LLMs are allowed to simply steal content from publishers and communities like Mumsnet they risk destroying them. Everything that’s unique and brilliant about sites like ours will be lost, and a handful of Silicon Valley giants will be left with even more control over the world’s content and commerce.

>We know that taking on a multinational giant like OpenAI, with its $3bn of revenues, is not an easy task in the face of the huge resources they’ll throw at us but this is too important an issue to simply roll over. Not just for Mumsnet but for every website you’ve ever landed on for news, advice or simply to ask if you’re being unreasonable.
Hearty chuckle.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/site_stuff/5122770-why-were-taking-legal-action-against-open-ai-and-other-scrapers

>starlink lad is a horsefucker
In other news
>The ridiculous Lord Cashman – once a two-bit player in EastEnders – claimed this week that trans people are fleeing abroad seeking asylum because they’re terrified for their safety after the Supreme Court ruling that said a trans woman isn’t a woman. Really? Can he name these people? I very much doubt it because it’s believed no one has ever fled Britain to successfully claim asylum in another country. Which is probably why Cashman hasn’t been able to provide a jot of evidence to support his ludicrous claim.
>This is just hysterical rhetoric from a bloke who’s upset the Supreme Court didn’t do what he and his cronies at Stonewall wanted it to do. Because Cashman, who apart from his lacklustre stint in EastEnders, is also one of the founders of Stonewall, that insidious pressure group which now is as powerful as any union and has infiltrated every major institution in Britain – and brainwashed it. Except of course the Supreme Court which is probably why he’s throwing his toys out of the pram.
>Stonewall is also the reason countless NHS Trusts have been grovelling to the trans lobby this week, hinting they’ll defy the court ruling and falling over themselves to reiterate their unstinting support for the transgender and non-binary community.
>Pity these trusts haven’t been as vociferous in their support of the biological women in their care who have been degraded, embarrassed, even frightened at having had to share wards, toilets and other private spaces with men who called themselves women. Many were even more frightened by the tsunami of vitriol that came their way if they dared complain.
>These women had every right to be treated with dignity and care on single sex awards but were denied it because of hospitals’ slavish devotion to the trans lobby. They weren’t bigots or transphobes but that’s how our supposed health service made them feel.
>The truth is people like Cashman don’t care about the fear of biological women. They haven’t for one second considered the fear and the humiliation they’ve experienced thanks to them having to share their private spaces with trans women?
>And all these frightened, vulnerable people Cashman and his cronies are talking about, it’s a pity their voices have been drowned out by the aggressive trans mobs that hit London’s streets last week inciting the murder of people who disagreed with their ideology.
>And they’re due to do it all again this weekend

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