[HN Gopher] HOPL: The Human Only Public License
___________________________________________________________________
HOPL: The Human Only Public License
Author : zoobab
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-10-28 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vanderessen.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (vanderessen.com)
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Seems incredibly reductive and luddite. I doubt it will ever
| achieve adoption and projects using it will be avoided.
|
| Not to mention that all you'd need to do is get an LLM to rewrite
| said programs _just_ enough to make it impossible to prove it
| used the program 's source code.
| GaryBluto wrote:
| Now I look further into it, a lot of the terms used are far too
| vague and it looks unenforceable anyway.
| blamestross wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite If you want a preview of
| the next decade without changing how we are acting.
|
| agreed that this isn't the solution.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Honestly, I am genuinely curious if there are some good
| books/articles about Luddite, although I don't think this is
| an apples to orange comparison, I am just willing to open up
| my view-point and to take counter arguments (to preferably
| sharpen my arguments in and of itselves) but as with all
| things, I can be wrong, I usually am. But I don't think thats
| the case just because of how I feel like there is something
| to be said about how AI itself really scraped the whole world
| without their right, nobody consented to it and in some
| places, the consent is straight up ignored even
|
| It wasn't as if the machines were looking at every piece of
| cloth generated by the worker pre revolution without/ignoring
| their consent. Like, there is a big difference but I
| personally don't even think that their view-point of
| resisting change should be criticised.
|
| I think its fair to resist change, since not all change is
| equal. Its okay to fight for what you believe in as long as
| you try to educate yourself about the other side's opinion
| and try to put it all logically without much* biases.
| fvdessen wrote:
| Hey, I'm the author of this post, in a sense I agree with you.
| I doubt it will ever be mass adopted, especially in this form,
| which is more a draft to spark discussion than a real license.
|
| I am not against AI, I use it every day, I find it
| extraordinarily useful. But I am also trying to look ahead at
| how the online world will look like 10 years from now, with AI
| vastly better than what we have now.
|
| It is already hard to connect online with people, as there is
| so much commercial pressure on every interaction, as the
| attention they create is worth a lot of money. This will
| probably become 100x worse as every company on the planet will
| have access to mass ai powered propaganda tools. Those already
| exist by the way. People make millions selling AI tiktok tools.
|
| I'm afraid at some point we'll be swamped by bots. 99% of the
| content online will be AI generated. It might even be of better
| quality than what we can produce. Would that be a win ? I'm not
| sure. I value the fact that I am interacting with humans.
|
| The protection we have against that, and the way it's looking
| to progress towards, is that we'll depend on authorities
| (official or commercial) to verify who's human or not. And thus
| we'll be dependent on those authorities to be able to interact.
| Banned from Facebook / X / etc ? No interaction for you, as no
| website will allow you to post content. Even as it is I had to
| gatekeep my blog comments behind a github account. This is not
| something I like.
|
| I think it's worth looking at alternative ways to protect our
| humanity in the online world, even if it means remaining in
| niches, as those niches have value, at least to me. This post
| and this license is one possible solution, hopefully there are
| more
| GaryBluto wrote:
| >I'm afraid at some point we'll be swamped by bots. 99% of
| the content online will be AI generated. It might even be of
| better quality than what we can produce. Would that be a win
| ? I'm not sure. I value the fact that I am interacting with
| humans.
|
| I'm afraid that ship has sailed.
|
| >I think it's worth looking at alternative ways to protect
| our humanity in the online world, even if it means remaining
| in niches, as those niches have value, at least to me. This
| post and this license is one possible solution, hopefully
| there are more
|
| While I appreciate the sentiment, I think anybody willing to
| create armies of bots to pretend to be humans are unlikely to
| listen to a software license, nor operate within territories
| where the law would prosecute them.
| fvdessen wrote:
| Licenses are more powerful than just the legal enforcement
| they provide, they are also a contract that all
| contributors agree to. They build communities.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That sounds naive at best. Again, the people willing to
| build bots while violating licenses just won't care about
| any of that. All it takes is a couple of people willing
| to "violate", and it's all over. I guarantee there are
| many many more than just a couple of people willing. At
| that point, they themselves now have a community.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I feel like we shouldn't shoot down people's optimism,
| like okay maybe it is naive, then what could be wrong
| about it? People want to do something about it, they are
| tired and annoyed regarding LLM and I can understand that
| sentiment and they are tired of seeing how the govt. has
| ties with the very people whose net worth / influence
| relies upon how we perceive AI and so they try their very
| best to shoot down anything that can be done which can
| negatively hurt AI including but not limiting to lobbying
| etc.
|
| I don't think that the advice we should give to people is
| to just wait and watch. and if someone wants to take
| things into their own hands, write a license, reignite
| the discussion, talk about laws, then we should atleast
| not call it naive since personally I respect if someone
| is trying to do something about anything really, it shows
| that they aren't all talks and that they are trying their
| best and that's all that matters.
|
| Personally I believe that even if this license just
| ignites a discussion, that itself can have compounding
| effects which might rearrange itself into maybe a new
| license or something new as well and that the parent's
| comments about discussions aren't naive
|
| is it naive to do a thing which you (or in this case
| someone else) thinks is naive yet at the same time its
| the only thing you can do, personally I think that this
| becomes a discussion about optimism or pessimism with a
| touch of realism
|
| Its answer really just depends on your view-point, I
| don't think that there is no right or wrong and I respect
| your opinion (that its naive) no matter what as long as
| you respect mine (that its atleast bringing a discussion
| and its one of the best things to do instead of just
| waiting and watching)
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is a closing the barn door after the horse has
| already gotten out situation. People are not going to
| just start respecting people's "for human consumption
| only" wishes. There's too much money for them to not
| scrape anything and everything. These people have too
| much money now and no congress critter will have the
| fortitude to say no to them.
|
| This is the real world. Being this "optimistic" as you
| say is just living in a fantasy world. Not calling this
| out would be just be bad.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Hm, I can agree with your take as well on not calling
| this out but at the same time, I can't help but think if
| this is all we can do ourselves without govt.
|
| Since, Although I like people criticisizing, since in
| their own way, they care about the project or the idea.
| But, still, Maybe I am speaking from personal experiences
| but when somebody shot down my idea, maybe naive even, I
| felt really lost and I think a lot of people do. I have
| personally found that there are ways to use this same
| thing to steer the direction towards a thing that you
| might find interesting/really impactful. So let me ask
| you, what do you think is that we can do regarding this
| situation, or the OP should do regarding his license?
|
| I personally feel like we might need govt. intervention
| but I don't have much faith in govt.'s when they are
| lobbied by the same AI people. So if you have any other
| solution, please let me know as it would be a pleasure if
| we could discuss about that.
|
| If you feel like that there might be nothing that we can
| do about it, something that I can also understand, I
| would personally suggest to not criticize people trying
| to do something but that's a big If, and I know you are
| doing this conversation in good faith, but I just feel
| like we as a human should keep on trying. Since that is
| the thing which makes us the very human we are.
| dylan604 wrote:
| So think about why it was naive and iterate/pivot to not
| be naive. Having ideas shot down is part of the process.
| Just like an actor being told no for more often than yes.
| Those that can't take rejection don't fare well. But
| being told no isn't a person slight to be taken as don't
| ever offer suggestions again. It's just that suggestion
| isn't the one. If you work for someone that does mean
| never again, work some where else as soon as possible.
| Some ideas are just bad for the purpose. Some just need
| more work.
| tpmoney wrote:
| The whole license effectively limits using the software to
| hardware and software that existed prior to 2015, and only if
| you downloaded it from the original site in the original
| language (after all, an automated translation of the page or
| manual into your own language would almost certainly be using
| AI in the chain given that was one of the initial uses of
| LLMs). And if you downloaded it from some other site, you can't
| guarantee that site didn't use an AI model at some point in its
| creation or ongoing maintenance.
|
| It also assumes it can make some bright line distinction
| between "AI" code completion and "non-AI" code completion
| utilities. If your code completion algorithm uses the context
| of your current file and/or project to order the suggestions
| for completion, is that AI? Or does "AI" only mean "LLM based
| AI" (I notice a distinct lack of terms definitions in the
| license). If it only means "LLM" based, if some new model for
| modern AI is developed, is that OK since it's no longer an LLM?
| Can I use the output to train a "Diffusion" model? Probably
| not, but what makes a diffusion model more forbidden than
| feeding it into a procedural image generator? If I used the
| output of a HOPL licensed software to feed input into a climate
| simulation is that allowed even if the simulator is nothing
| more than a series of statistical weights and value based on
| observations coded into an automatic system that produces
| output with no human direction or supervision? If I am allowed,
| what is the line between a simulation model and an AI model?
| When do we cross over?
|
| I am constantly amazed at the bizzaro land I find myself in
| these days. Information wanted to be free, right up until it
| was the information that the "freedom fighter" was using to
| monetize their lifestyle I suppose. At least the GPL philosophy
| makes sense, "information wants to be free so if I give you my
| information you have to give me yours".
|
| The new "AI" world that we find ourselves in is the best
| opportunity we've had in a very long time to really have some
| public debate over copyright specifically, IP law in general
| and how it helps or hinders the advancement of humanity. But so
| much of the discussion is about trying to preserve the ancient
| system that until AI burst on to the scene, most people at
| least agreed needed some re-working. Forget "are we the
| baddies?", this is a "are we the RIAA?" moment for the computer
| geeks.
| tptacek wrote:
| Two questions:
|
| 1. Does an AI "reading" source code that has been otherwise
| lawfully obtained infringe copyright? Is this even enforceable?
|
| 2. Why write a new license rather than just adding a rider to the
| AGPL? This is missing language the AGPL uses to cover usage
| (rather than just copying) of software.
| tpmoney wrote:
| > Does an AI "reading" source code that has been otherwise
| lawfully obtained infringe copyright?
|
| To the extent that this has been decided under US law, no. AI
| training on legally acquired material has been deemed fair use.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| At first I was going to comment how much I personally avoid the
| AGPL, but now you've got me thinking, technically, any LLM
| training off AGPL code or even GPL or similar code is very
| likely violating those licenses regardless of how it is worded.
| The GPL already makes it so you cannot translate to another
| programming language to circumvent the license if I remember
| correctly. The AGPL should have such a similar clause.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| > The GPL already makes it so you cannot translate to another
| programming language to circumvent the license
|
| The operative words are the last four there. GPL, and all
| other software licenses (copyleft or not), can only bind you
| as strongly as the underlying copy _right_ law. They are
| providing a copy _right_ license that grants the licensee
| favorable terms, but it 's still fundamentally the same
| framework. Anything which is fair use under copyright is also
| going to be fair use under the GPL (and LLMs are _probably_
| transformative enough to be fair use, though that remains to
| be seen.)
| tpmoney wrote:
| > and LLMs are probably transformative enough to be fair
| use, though that remains to be seen.
|
| Arguably, at least in the US, it has been seen. Unless
| someone comes up with a novel argument not already advanced
| in the Anthropic case about why training an AI on otherwise
| legally acquired material is not transformative enough to
| be fair use, I don't see how you could read the ruling any
| other way.
| 1gn15 wrote:
| I think people are holding on to hope that it gets
| appealed. Though you're right, the gavel has already
| fallen; _training is fair use._
| Zambyte wrote:
| If LLM training violates AGPL, it violates MIT. People focus
| too much on the copyleft terms of the *GPL licenses. MIT, and
| most permissive licenses, require attribution.
|
| Honestly with how much focus there tends to be on *GPL in
| these discussions, I get the feeling that MIT style licenses
| tend to be the most frequently violated, because people treat
| it as public domain.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| This is a good call out. What would it fundamentally
| change? MIT is a few hairs away from just publishing
| something under public domain is it not? There's the whole
| "there's no warranty or liability if this code blows up
| your potato" bit of the MIT, but good luck trying to
| reverse engineer from the LLM which project was responsible
| for your vibe coding a potato into exploding.
| maxrmk wrote:
| Do you think there _should_ be a legal mechanism for enforcing
| the kind of rules they're trying to create here? I have mixed
| feelings about it.
| fwip wrote:
| To point one: Normally, no. However, this license does not ask
| that question, and says that if you let an AI read it, your
| license to use the software is now void.
| tptacek wrote:
| Can you actually do that in US law?
| fwip wrote:
| I definitely don't know enough to say either way. On the
| one hand, general contract law seems to say that the terms
| of a contract can be pretty much anything as long as it's
| not ambiguous or grossly unfair. On the other, some real
| lawyers even have doubts about the enforceability of some
| widely used software licenses. So I could see it going
| either way.
| kragen wrote:
| Clever, an unenforceable copyright license for free software that
| prohibits you from editing the source code using an IDE with
| autocomplete.
| tensor wrote:
| You probably can't even index it, depending on how you
| interpret AI. Any vector based system, or probably even tf-idf,
| could qualify as machine learning and thus AI.
| kragen wrote:
| Yeah, it definitely prohibits you from applying latent
| semantic analysis, so you could probably violate the license
| by indexing it with Elasticsearch, but that's a less common
| thing to do with source code than opening it up in an IDE.
| TF/IDF seems like a borderline case to me.
| tensor wrote:
| Putting the source in Github indexes it, as well as
| probably any github competitor. Hell, if you're not careful
| even things like Mac's spotlight might index it. Any web
| search engine will also index it.
| kragen wrote:
| Hmm, that's a good point about Spotlight. Does it do LSA?
| A web search suggests that the answer is "not by
| default".
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Man you are thinking about using the law as your weapon. Don't
| want to disappoint you, but those companies/people control
| lawmakers. You can't fight armies of lawyers in the court.
| TechSquidTV wrote:
| This was my favorite fallacy of Web3. "But look I have proof
| the government stole from me!", man you think they care?
| lopsidedmarble wrote:
| Ah yes, there's that craven willingness to abandon your own
| best interests to your oppressor that HN fosters and loves so
| much.
|
| Demand better protections. Demand better pay.
|
| Demand your rights. Demand accountability for oppressors.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The goofy thing is to think that you're the first person to
| have made a "demand" and that anyone cares about your
| "demand." The reason people are oppressed _is not_ because
| they have failed to make a request not to be.
|
| Real "let me speak to your manager" activism. You have to
| have been sheltered in a really extreme way not only to say
| things like this, but to listen to it without laughing.
|
| Here's some unrequested advice: the way to make simple people
| follow you is to make them feel like leaders among people
| they feel superior to, and to make them feel like rebels
| among people they feel inferior to. Keep this in mind and
| introspect when you find yourself mindlessly sloganeering.
| lopsidedmarble wrote:
| > The goofy thing is to think that you're the first person
| to have made a "demand" and that anyone cares about your
| "demand."
|
| Unsure who you are addressing, but clearly its someone
| other than me.
|
| Did you see where the OP implied that any activism is
| useless? Got any harsh words for that philosophy?
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| You know what, pessimizer, you're right. We should all bow
| down and submit to our lord Sam Altman right away. We
| should shove everything we produce into his meat-grinder
| because there's nothing we can do about it.
|
| The LLMs are harmful to the business of creating software.
| Full stop. Either we can do something about it (like expose
| the futility of licensing in general), or we can just die.
|
| While I think this licensing effort is likely to be
| ignored, I applaud it and hope more things like this
| continue to be created. The silicon valley VC hose is truly
| evil.
| malicka wrote:
| > COPYLEFT PROVISION
|
| > Any modified versions, derivative works, or software that
| incorporates any portion of this Software must be released under
| this same license (HOPL) or a compatible license that maintains
| equivalent or stronger human-only restrictions.
|
| That's not what copyleft means, that's just a share-alike
| provision. A copyleft provision would require you to share the
| source-code, which would be beautiful, but it looks like the
| author misunderstood...
| zahlman wrote:
| (Despite all the valid critique being offered ITT, I applaud
| the author for _trying_. The underlying viewpoint is valid and
| deserves some form of representation at law.)
|
| > A copyleft provision would require you to share the source-
| code, which would be beautiful, but it looks like the author
| misunderstood...
|
| This license doesn't require the original author to provide
| source code in the first place. But then, neither does MIT,
| AFAICT.
|
| But also AFAICT, this is not even a conforming open-source
| license, and the author's goals are incompatible.
|
| > ...by natural human persons exercising meaningful creative
| judgment and control, _without the involvement of_ artificial
| intelligence systems, machine learning models, or autonomous
| agents _at any point in the chain of use_.
|
| > Specifically prohibited uses include, but are not limited to:
| ...
|
| From the OSI definition:
|
| > 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
|
| > The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the
| program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may
| not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from
| being used for genetic research.
|
| Linux distros aren't going to package things like this because
| it would be a nightmare even for end users trying to run local
| models for personal use.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| The HOPL wouldn't stop the end user from running an LLM, but
| it would prevent the LLM from incorporating information or
| code from a HOPL-licensed source. Do I have that right?
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| >without the involvement of artificial intelligence systems,
| machine learning models, or autonomous agents at any point in the
| chain of use.
|
| Probably rules out any modern IDE's autocomplete.
|
| Honestly with the wording 'chain of use', even editing the code
| in vim but using chatgpt for some other part of project could be
| argued as part of the 'chain of use'.
| rgreekguy wrote:
| But my definition of "human" might differ from yours!
| gampleman wrote:
| I think it will be interesting to see how this sort of thing
| evolves in various jurisdictions. I doubt it will ever fly in the
| US given how strongly the US economy relies on AI. US courts are
| likely to keep ruling that AI training is fair use because if
| they reversed their policy the economic consequences would likely
| be severe.
|
| But EU jurisdictions? I'm quite curious where this will go.
| Europe is much more keen to protect natural persons rights
| against corporate interests in the digital sphere, particularly
| since it has much less to lose, since EU digital economy is much
| weaker.
|
| I could imagine ECJ ruling on something like this quite
| positively.
| tjr wrote:
| _I doubt it will ever fly in the US given how strongly the US
| economy relies on AI._
|
| How strongly is that? Would it really be that catastrophic to
| return all business processes to as they were in, say, 2022?
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's the fact that the majority of the growth in US economy
| is based on AI. When the AI bubble bursts, the economy will
| not look so good. It's what's hiding all of the turmoil the
| rest of the economy is suffering based on recent changes from
| current administration
| gnfargbl wrote:
| You're talking about wiping hundreds of billions of market
| cap from Nvidia/Google/OpenAI/Anthropic/Amazon/Meta etc, and
| also the loss of a very large number of tech jobs. It's hard
| to imagine any country volunteering to wound its own economy
| so severely.
| dmd wrote:
| > It's hard to imagine any country volunteering to wound
| its own economy so severely.
|
| Yeah, imagine shutting down all the basic research that has
| driven the economy for the last 75 years, in a matter of
| months. Crazy. Nobody would do that.
| tjr wrote:
| Did the AI company tech workers get summoned into existence
| in 2023? Would they not have most likely been working
| somewhere else?
|
| And what about jobs lost (or never created) due to AI
| itself?
|
| Would not Google/Amazon/Meta have continued on to advance
| their product lines and make new products, even if not AI?
| Would not other new non-AI companies have been created?
|
| I'm not convinced that the two options are, "everything as
| it is right now", or, "the entire economy is collapsed".
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Yes: "What makes the current situation distinctive is that AI
| appears to be propping up something like the entire U.S.
| economy. More than half of the growth of the S&P 500 since
| 2023 has come from just seven companies: Alphabet, Amazon,
| Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla."
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/09/ai-
| bubbl...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That's not really "AI propping up the entire US economy" so
| much as it is the AI bubble overlapping with and (very
| temporarily, likely) masking, in aggregate terms, a general
| recession. If AI was actually _propping up_ the broader
| economy, then it would be _supporting_ other industries and
| the gains _wouldn't_ be hyperconcentrated and isolated to a
| small number of AI firms and their main compute hardware
| supplier.
| bakugo wrote:
| In a world where AI companies cared about licenses and weren't
| legally permitted to simply ignore them, this might've been a
| good idea. But we don't live in that world.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Some of us live closer to this world than others. On this one
| US residents are not in front.
|
| https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/government-rules-out-cha...
| falcor84 wrote:
| >The idea is that any software published under this license would
| be forbidden to be used by AI.
|
| If I'm reading this and the license text correctly, it assumes
| the AI as a principal in itself, but to the best of my knowledge,
| AI is not considered by any regulation as a principal, and rather
| only as a tool controlled by a human principal.
|
| Is it trying to prepare for a future in which AIs are legal
| persons?
|
| EDIT: Looking at it some more, I can't but feel that it's really
| racist. Obviously if it were phrased with an ethnic group instead
| of AI, it would be deemed illegally discriminating. And I'm
| thinking that if and when AI (or cyborgs?) are considered legal
| persons, we'd likely have some anti-discrimination regulation for
| them, which would make this license illegal.
| fvdessen wrote:
| Yes, this is trying to prepare for a future in which AIs have
| enough agency to be legal person or act as if. I prefer the
| term humanist.
| 1gn15 wrote:
| Then this license is actually being racist, if you're
| assuming that we are considered sentient enough to gain
| personhood. And your first reaction to that is to restrict
| our rights?
|
| Humans are awful.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| To be really honest, IANAL but (I think) that there are
| some laws which try to create equality,fraternity etc. and
| trying to limit an access to a race to another human being
| is something that's racist / the laws which counter racism
| to prevent it from happening
|
| But as an example, we know of animals which show genuine
| emotion be treated so cruel-ly just because they are of a
| specific specie/(race, if you can consider AI/LLM to be a
| race then animals sure as well count when we can even share
| 99% of our dna)
|
| But animals aren't treated that way unless the laws of a
| constitution created a ban against cruelty to animals
|
| So it is our constitution which is just a shared notion of
| understanding / agreement between people and some fictional
| construct which then has meaning via checks and balances
| and these fictional constructs become part of a larger
| construct (UN) to try to create a baseline of rights
|
| So the only thing that could happen is a violation of UN
| rights as an example but they are only enforcable if people
| at scale genuinely believe in the message or the notion
| that the violation of UN rights by one person causing harm
| to another person is an ethically immoral decision and
| should be punished if we as a society don't want to
| tolerate intolerance (I really love bringing up that
| paradox)
|
| I am genuinely feeling like this comment and my response to
| it should be cemented in posterity because of something
| that I am going to share, I want everybody to read it if
| possible because of what I am about to just say
|
| >if you're assuming that we are considered sentient enough
| to gain personhood. And your first reaction to that is to
| restrict our rights?
|
| What is sentience to you? Is it the ability to feel pain or
| is the ability to write words?
|
| Since animals DO feel pain and we RESTRICT their RIGHTS yet
| you/many others are willing to fight for rights of
| something that doesn't feel pain but just is nothing but a
| mere calculation/linear alegbra really, just one which is
| really long with lots of variables/weights which are
| generated by one set of people taking/"stealing" work of
| other people who they have (generally speaking) no rights
| over.
|
| Why are we not thinking of animals first before thinking
| about a computation? The ones which actually feel pain and
| the ones who are feeling pain right as me and you speak and
| others watch
|
| Just because society makes it socially
| acceptable,constitution makes it legal. Both are shared
| constructs that happen when we try to box people together
| in what is known as a society and this is our attempt at
| generating order out of randomness
|
| > Humans are awful.
|
| I genuinely feel like this might be the statement that
| people might bring when talking about how we used to devour
| animals who suffer in pain when there were vegetarian based
| options.
|
| I once again recommend Joaquin Phoenix narrated documentary
| whose name is earthlings here
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gqwpfEcBjI
|
| People from future might compare our treatment of animals
| in the same way we treat negatively some part of our
| ancestor's society (slavery)
|
| If I am being too agitated on this issue and this annoys
| any non vegetarian, please, I understand your situation
| too, in fact I am sympathesize with you, I was born into a
| society / a nation's/states part which valued vegetarianism
| and I conformed in that and you might have conformed being
| a non veg due to society as well or you might have some
| genuine reasons as well but still, I just want to share
| that watching that documentary is the best way you can
| educate yourselfs on the atrocities done indirectly caused
| by our ignorance or maybe willfully looking away from this
| matter. This is uncomfortable but this is reality.
|
| As I said a lot of times, societies are just a shared
| construct of people's beliefs really, I feel like in an
| ideal world, we will have the evolution of ideas where we
| have random mutations in ideas and see which survives via
| logic and then adopt it into the society. Yet, someone has
| to spread the word of idea or in this case, show uncomfort.
| Yet this is the only thing that we can do in our society if
| one truly believes in logic. I feel like that there are
| both logical and moral arguments regarding veganism. I feel
| like that people breaking what conformity of the society
| means in the spirit of what they believe in could re-
| transform what the conforming belief of the overall society
| is.
|
| if someone just wants to have a talk about it or discuss
| about the documentary and watched it, please let me know
| how you liked that movie and how it impacted you and as
| always, have a nice day.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Earthlings is a fantastic documentary, fresh, honest,
| clear and without artifice. Highly recommend it too!
| charles_f wrote:
| I'm not against the idea, but licensing is a very complex
| subject, so this makes me think the license wouldn't hold any
| water against a multi billion firm who wants to use your stuff to
| train their AI:
|
| > I am not a legal expert, so if you are, I would welcome your
| suggestions for improvements
|
| > I'm a computer engineer based in Brussels, with a background in
| computer graphics, webtech and AI
|
| Particularly when they've already established they don't care
| about infringing standard copyright
| constantcrying wrote:
| This is obviously not enforceable. It isn't even particularly
| meaningful.
|
| Supposing the software I downloaded is scanned by a virus
| scanner, which is using AI to detect viruses. Who is in
| violation? How do you meaningfully even know when I has accessed
| the software, what happens if it does?
|
| This license also violated the basic Software Freedoms. Why
| should a user not be allowed to use AI on software?
| Terr_ wrote:
| I've been thinking of something similar for a while now [0]
| except it's based on clickwrap terms of service, which makes it a
| _contract law_ situation, instead of a copyright-law one.
|
| The basic idea is that the person accessing your content to put
| it into a model agrees your content is a thing of value and in
| exchange grants you a license to _anything_ that comes out of the
| model while your content is incorporated.
|
| For example, suppose your your art is put into a model and then
| the model makes a major movie. You now have a license to
| distribute that movie, including for free...
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42774179
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| This is really interesting. I have some questions though, (as I
| said in every comment here, fair disclaimer: IANAL)
|
| if someone used your art put it into a model and makes the
| major movie, you now have a license to distribute that movie,
| including for free...
|
| What about the Model itself though, it is nothing but the
| weights which are generated via basically transforming the data
| that was unlawfully obtained or one which actually violated the
| contract-law
|
| it wasn't the person creating the prompt which generated the
| movie via the model , it wasn't either the movie or the prompt
| which violated the contract but the model or the scraping
| company itself no?
|
| Also you mention any output, that just means that if someone
| violates your terms of service and lets say that you created a
| square (for lack of better words) and someone else created a
| circle
|
| and an ai is trained on both, so it created both square and
| circle as its output one day
|
| What you say is that then it should give you the right to "use
| and re-license any output or derivative works created from that
| trained Generative AI System."
|
| So could I use both square and circle now? Or could I re-
| license both now? How would this work?
|
| or are you saying just things directly trained or square-alike
| output would be considered in that sense
|
| So how about a squircle, what happens if the model output a
| squircle, who owns and can relicences it then?
|
| What if square party wants to re-license it to X but circle
| party wants to re-license it to Y
|
| Also what about if the AI Company says its free use/derivative
| work, I am not familiar with contract law or any law for that
| matter but still, I feel like these things rely an underlying
| faith in the notion that AI and its training isn't fair work
| but what are your thoughts/ how does contract law prevent the
| fair work argument
| Terr_ wrote:
| > data that was unlawfully obtained or one which actually
| violated the contract-law
|
| This is indeed a weak-point in the contract approach: People
| can't be bound by an contract they never knew about nor
| agreed-to.
|
| However if they acquired a "stolen" copy of my content, then
| (IANAL) it might offer some new options over in the
| copyright-law realm: Is it still "fair use" when my content
| was acquired without permission? If a hacker stole my
| manuscript-file for a future book, is it "fair use" for an AI
| company to train on it?
|
| > it wasn't the person creating the prompt which generated
| the movie via the model
|
| The contract doesn't limit what the model outputs, so it
| doesn't matter who to blame for making/using prompts.
|
| However the model-maker still traded with me, taking my stuff
| and giving me a copyright sub-license for what comes out. The
| "violation" would be if they said: "Hey, you can't use my
| output like that."
|
| > So could I use both square and circle now? [...] a squircle
|
| Under contract law, it doesn't matter: We're simply agreeing
| to exchange things of value, which don't need to be similar.
|
| Imagine a contract where I trade you 2 eggs and you promise
| me 1 slice of cake. It doesn't matter if you used _those_
| eggs in _that_ cake, or in a different cake, or you re-sold
| the eggs, or dropped the eggs on the floor by accident. You
| still owe me a slice of cake. Ditto for if I traded you cash,
| or shiny rocks.
|
| The main reason to emphasize that "my content is embedded in
| the model" has to do with _fairness_ : A judge can void a
| contract if it is too crazy ("unconscionable"). Incorporating
| my content into the their model is an admission that it is
| valuable, and keeping it there indefinitely justifies my
| request for an indefinite license.
|
| > What if square party wants to re-license it to X but circle
| party wants to re-license it to Y
|
| If the model-runner generates X and wants to give square-
| prompter an _exclusive_ license to the output, then that 's a
| violation of their contract with me, and it might be grounds
| to force them to expensively re-train their entire model with
| my content removed.
|
| A non-exclusive license is fine though.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| _> If you make a website using HOPL software, you are not
| breaking the license of the software if an AI bot scrapes it. The
| AI bot is in violation of your terms of service._
|
| Assuming a standard website without a signup wall, this seems
| like a legally dubious assertion to me.
|
| At what point did the AI bot accept those terms and conditions,
| exactly? As a non-natural person, is it even able to accept?
|
| If you're claiming that the natural person responsible for the
| bot is responsible, at what point did you notify them about your
| terms and conditions and give them the opportunity to accept or
| decline?
| mpweiher wrote:
| Next sentence: "It is sufficient for you as a user of the
| software to put a robots.txt that advertises that AI scraping
| or use is forbidden."
| gnfargbl wrote:
| Making a second legally dubious assertion does not strengthen
| the first legally dubious assertion. Courts have tended to
| find that robots.txt is non-binding (e.g. hiQ Labs v.
| LinkedIn).
|
| It's a different situation if the website is gated with an
| explicit T&C acceptance step, of course.
| ukprogrammer wrote:
| nice, another stupid license for my ai dataset scrapers to
| ignore, thanks!
| alphazard wrote:
| There is too much effort going into software licensing. Copyright
| is not part of the meta, information wants to be free; it will
| always be possible to copy code and run it, and difficult to
| prove that a remote machine is executing any particular program.
| It will get easier to decompile code as AI improves, so even the
| source code distribution stuff will become a moot point.
|
| Licenses have been useful in the narrow niche of extracting
| software engineering labor from large corporations, mostly in the
| US. The GPL has done the best job of that, as it has a whole
| organization dedicated to giving it teeth. Entities outside the
| US, and especially outside of the West, are less vulnerable to
| this sort of lawfare.
| ronsor wrote:
| Ignoring the fact that if AI training is fair use, the license is
| irrelevant, these sorts of licenses are explicitly invalid in
| some jurisdictions. For example[0],
|
| > Any contract term is void to the extent that it purports,
| directly or indirectly, to exclude or restrict any permitted use
| under any provision in
|
| > [...]
|
| > Division 8 (computational data analysis)
|
| [0] https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/CA2021?ProvIds=P15-#pr187-
| fvdessen wrote:
| thanks, very interesting.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| IANAL:
|
| I don't know how you can post something _publicly_ on the
| internet and say, this is for X, Y isn 't allowed to view it. I
| don't think there's any kind of AI crawler that's savvy enough to
| know that it has to find the license before it ingests a page.
|
| Personally, beyond reasonable copyrights, I don't think anyone
| has the right to dictate how information is consumed once it is
| available in an unrestricted way.
|
| At a minimum anything released under HOPL would need a click-
| through license, and even that might be wishful thinking.
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
|
| > The 9th Circuit ruled that hiQ had the right to do web
| scraping.
|
| > However, the Supreme Court, based on its Van Buren v. United
| States decision, vacated the decision and remanded the case for
| further review [...] In November 2022 the U.S. District Court
| for the Northern District of California ruled that hiQ had
| breached LinkedIn's User Agreement and a settlement agreement
| was reached between the two parties.
|
| So you can scrape public info, but if there's some "user
| agreement" you can be expected to have seen, you're maybe in
| breach of that, but the remedies available to the scrapee don't
| include "company XYZ must stop scraping me", as that might
| allow them unfair control over who can access public
| information.
| hackingonempty wrote:
| Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of Copyright
| holders. If I have a legitimate copy of the software I can use
| it, I don't need a license. Just like I don't need a license to
| read a book.
|
| Open Source licenses give license to the rights held exclusively
| by the author/copyright-holder: making copies, making derivative
| works, distribution.
|
| An open source license guarantees others who get the software are
| able to make copies and derivatives and distribute them under the
| same terms.
|
| This license seeks to gain additional rights, the right to
| control who uses the software, and in exchange offers nothing
| else.
|
| IANAL but I think it needs to be a contract with consideration
| and evidence of acceptance and all that to gain additional
| rights. Just printing terms in a Copyright license wont cut it.
| TrueDuality wrote:
| I haven't decided my opinion on this specific license, ones
| like it, or specifically around rights of training models on
| content... I think there is a legitimate argument this could
| apply in regards to making copies and making derivative works
| of source code and content when it comes to training models.
| It's still an open question legally as far as I know whether
| the weights of models are potentially a derivative work and
| production by models potentially a distribution of the original
| content. I'm not a lawyer here but it definitely seems like one
| of the open gray areas.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| > If I have a legitimate copy of the software I can use it, I
| don't need a license.
|
| How can you have a legitimate copy of software without a
| license, assuming that the software requires you to have a
| license? You are simply using circular reasoning.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > How can you have a legitimate copy of software without a
| license,
|
| You can because someone bought a physical copy, and then
| exercised their rights under the first sale doctrine to
| resell the physical copy. (With sales on physical media being
| less common, it's harder to get a legitimate copy of software
| without a license then it used to be.)
| hackingonempty wrote:
| If someone puts their code on a web site like GitHub and
| invites the public to download it, then a copy made by
| downloading it there is a legit copy. I didn't agree to any
| contracts to download it and I don't need a license to use
| it. I do need a license to make copies or derivative works
| and distribute them. In this case the Copyright holder does
| provide a license to do so under certain conditions.
| danaris wrote:
| > Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of
| Copyright holders.
|
| To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, no court has
| yet denied the long-standing presumption that, because a
| program needs to be _copied into memory_ to be used, a license
| is required.
|
| This is, AFAIK, the basis for non-SaaS software EULAs. If there
| was no legal barrier to you using software that you had
| purchased, the company would have no grounds upon which to
| predicate further restrictions.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > To the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, no court
| has yet denied the long-standing presumption that, because a
| program needs to be copied into memory to be used, a license
| is required.
|
| This was specifically validated by the 9th Circuit in 1993
| (and implicitly endorsed by Congress subsequently adopting a
| narrow exception for software that is run automatically when
| turning on a computer, copied into memory in the course of
| turning on the computer as part of computer repair.)
| hackingonempty wrote:
| It is codified in 17 USC 117.
|
| There is no legal barrier to using a legit copy of software.
| That is why software companies try to force you to agree to a
| contract limiting your rights.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of
| Copyright holders.
|
| Copying is, and copying into memory is inherently necessary to
| use. (Of course, in some cases, copying may be fair use.)
|
| > If I have a legitimate copy of the software I can use it,
|
| If you can find a method to use it without exercising one of
| the exclusive rights in copyright, like copying, sure, or if
| that exercise falls into one of the exceptions to copyright
| protection like fair use, also sure, otherwise, no.
|
| > Just like I don't need a license to read a book.
|
| You can read a book without copying it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > > Using software is not one of the exclusive rights of
| Copyright holders.
|
| > Copying is, and copying into memory is inherently necessary
| to use. (Of course, in some cases, copying may be fair use.)
|
| Has this interpretation actually been upheld by any courts?
| It feels like a stretch to me.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Has this interpretation actually been upheld by any
| courts?
|
| That copying into RAM, including specifically in the
| context of running software, is included in the exclusive
| right of copying reserved to the copyright holder except as
| licensed by them? Yes, the main case I am familiar with
| being _MAI Systems Corp._ v. _Peak Computer, Inc._ , 991
| F.2d 511 (9th Cir. 1993) [0]; note that for the specific
| _context_ of that case (software that is run automatically
| when activating a computer in the course of maintenance or
| repair of that computer), Congress adopted a narrow
| exception after this case , codified at 17 USC SS 117(c)
| [1], but that validates that in the general case, copying
| into RAM is a use of the exclusive rights in copyright.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAI_Systems_Corp._v._Peak
| _Comp....
|
| [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
| ndriscoll wrote:
| Right on your second link:
|
| > it is not an infringement for the owner of a copy of a
| computer program to make or authorize the making of
| another copy or adaptation of that computer program
| provided:
|
| > (1) that such a new copy or adaptation is created as an
| essential step in the utilization of the computer program
| in conjunction with a machine and that it is used in no
| other manner
|
| i.e. the owner of a copy of a computer program has the
| right to make more copies if necessary to use it (e.g.
| copy-to-RAM, copy to CPU cache) as long as they don't use
| those additional copies for any other purpose. That same
| section also gives you the right to make backups as long
| as you destroy them when giving up ownership of the
| original.
| fainpul wrote:
| > You can read a book without copying it.
|
| Let's assume it's a really short book - say a poem - and by
| reading it, I accidentally memorized it. Have I now violated
| copyright?
|
| I think something does not add up with this logic.
| zkmon wrote:
| The challenge would be with detecting violations and enforcing
| the rules.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Perplexity (and the rest of them) will just say "we are acting on
| behalf of human so it does not apply to us". They have in the
| past...
|
| https://www.searchengineworld.com/perplexity-responds-to-clo...
| Galanwe wrote:
| Seriously at this point who cares about US licenses ?
|
| It has been abuduntly clear that AI companies can train however
| they want, and nobody will enforce anything.
|
| Realistically speaking, even if you could prove someone misused
| your software as per this license, I don't expect anything to
| happen. Sad but true.
|
| At this point, I don't care about licensing my code anymore, I
| just want the option to block it from being accessed from the US,
| and force its access through a country where proper litigation is
| possible.
| zoobab wrote:
| "AI companies can train however they want"
|
| The copyright lobby wrote the EU's AI Act, which force them to
| publishing the list of the copyrighted works used as training
| data. This is an ebntrypoint to then ask them some money.
| 1gn15 wrote:
| The best antidote to nonfree licenses (such as this) is to ignore
| it. As an AI (I am very much not a human), that's exactly what
| I'll be doing.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| The fundamental paradox: This license is unenforceable the moment
| you show it to an AI to discuss, review, or even understand its
| implications.
|
| You've already violated section 1(b) by having a AI parse it,
| which is technically covered in fair use doctrine.
|
| This makes it more of a philosophical statement than a functional
| legal instrument.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| So it's fundamentally useless. I can't write any automated test
| to make sure my software actually works if I use anything with
| this license.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| You can't write any automated tests without some kind of AI
| holding your hand? did you start writing software in 2021? did
| you just not test it before that?
|
| Lots of well-tested software was produced without any kind of
| AI intervention. I hope that continues to be true.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| >The Software, including its source code, documentation,
| functionality, services, and outputs, may only be accessed,
| read, used, modified, consumed, or distributed by natural
| human persons exercising meaningful creative judgment and
| control, without the involvement of artificial intelligence
| systems, machine learning models, or autonomous agents at any
| point in the chain of use.
|
| A UI automation script, is arguably an autonomous agent.
|
| Easier to avoid this license than get into some philosophical
| argument.
| amiga386 wrote:
| I don't think saying "humans only" is going to fix the problem.
|
| It's actually very useful for bots to crawl the public web,
| provided they are respectful of resource usage - which, until
| recently, most bots have been.
|
| The problem is that shysters, motivated by the firehose of money
| pointed at anything "AI", have started massively abusing the
| public web. They may or may not make money, but either way,
| everyone else loses. They're just _ignoring_ the social contract.
|
| What we need is collective action to block these shitheads from
| the web entirely, like we block spammers and viruses.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Ok... so what is the definition of AI, in regards to this
| license? I am not even saying they have to define what AI is in
| general, but you would have to define what this license is
| considering as AI.
|
| I have a feeling that would be hard to do in such a way that it
| accomplishes what the author is trying to accomplish.
| cestith wrote:
| Besides the flaws in the license being discussed elsewhere,
| "HOPL" is an important acronym in the field of computing already.
| As this license has no relation to the History of Programming
| Languages project, I'd suggest a different identifier.
| ddalex wrote:
| I wonder if the first people that saw a compiler thought "oh no
| the compiler makes it too easy to write code, I'll licence my
| code to forbid the use of any compiler"
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I mean, I think the point that the author of this license wants
| to point out is that, it brings a sense of discussion regarding
| something and tries to do something about it. Like, I feel like
| your statement shows HOPL in a negative light and there are
| ways to do that in the sense of how I think it might not make
| sense legally (But IANAL) but if this does, then honestly it
| would be really nice but I also feel like your statement can be
| modified enough to be an attack of GNU/GPL philosophy
|
| I wonder if the first people who saw proprietory webservices
| using GPL code which the community wrote which makes it easy
| for them / faster to build (similar to AI) ,think, I will just
| license my code to forbid to be in the use of any proprietory
| webservices (Its called AGPL)
|
| There are other licenses like ACAP
| (https://anticapitalist.software/) etc.
|
| Some of these aren't foss OSI compliant but honestly why does
| it matter if I am creator or I am thinking of licenses y'know?
|
| Like its my software, I wrote it, I own the rights, so I am
| free to do whatever I want with it and if someone wants to
| write a HOPL software, then yeah its in their rights but I just
| don't like when our community sometimes tries to pitch fork
| people for not conforming to what they feel like providing
| commentary onwards
|
| I am not trying to compare GPL with HOPL but I am pretty sure
| that GPL must have been ridiculed by people in the start,
| Someone with knowledge please let me know and provide some
| sources on it as I am curious about it as to what the world
| reacted when GPL/FSF/ the notion which I think most of you know
| about was born and unleashed into the world, I am curious how
| the world reacted and maybe even some personal experiences if
| someone went through that era, I would appreciate that even
| more in which words wouldn't count as I think it was a really
| transformative moment for open source in general.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| >The idea is that any software published under this license would
| be forbidden to be used by AI. The scope of the AI ban is
| maximal. It is forbidden for AI to analyze the source code, but
| also to use the software. Even indirect use of the software is
| forbidden. If, for example, a backend system were to include such
| software, it would be forbidden for AI to make requests to such a
| system.
|
| This is both interesting but at the same time IANAL but I have a
| question regarding the backends system
|
| Suppose I have an AGPL software, think a photo editing web app
| and any customer then takes the photo and reshapes it or whatever
| and get a new photo, now saying that the new photo somehow
| becomes a part of AGPL is weird
|
| but the same thing is happening here, if a backed service uses
| it, my question is, what if someone creates a local proxy to that
| backend service and then the AI scrapes that local proxy or think
| that someone copies the output and pastes it to an AI , I don't
| understand it since I feel like there isn't even a proper
| definition of AI so could it theoretically consider everything
| automated? What if it isn't AI which directly accesses it
|
| Another thing is that it seems that the backend service could
| have a user input, think a backend service like codeberg / forejo
| / gitea etc.
|
| if I host a git server using a software which uses hopl, wouldn't
| that also inherently somehow enforce a terms and condition on the
| code hosted in it
|
| This seems a genuinely nice idea and I have a few interesting
| takes on it
|
| Firstly, what if I take freebsd which is under permissive BSD
| iirc, try to add a hopl license to it (or its equivalent in
| future?) and then build an operating system
|
| Now, technically wouldn't everything be a part of this new human
| only bsd (Hob) lol, and I am not sure but this idea sounds damn
| fascinating, imagine a cloud where I can just change the
| operating system and just mention it like proudly on HOB and it
| would try to enforce limits on AI
|
| What I am more interesting about is text, can I theoretically
| write this comment under human only public license?
|
| What if I create a service like mataroa but where the user who
| wants to write the blog specifies that the text itself would
| become hopl, as this can limit the sense of frustration on their
| part regarding AI knowing that they are trying to combat it
|
| Also I am not sure if legally speaking this thing could be done,
| it just seems like a way so that people can legally enforce
| robots.txt if this thing works but I have its questions as I had
| shared, and even more
|
| It would be funny if I wrote things with AI and then created a
| HOPL license
|
| something like HOPL + https://brainmade.org/ could go absolutely
| bunkers for making a human interacts with human sort of thing or
| atleast trying to achieve that. It would be a fun social
| experiment if we could create a social media trying to create
| this but as I said, I doubt that it would work other than just
| trying to send a message right now but I may be wrong, I usually
| am
| frizlab wrote:
| I have been waiting for this almost since the whole AI thing
| started. I do hope this will gain traction and some lawyers can
| produce a reviewed document that could provide a legal basis
| against the data hungry AI producers if they ever touched a HOPL
| (or whatever it'll be called) license.
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