Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Damage isn't enough, you also need liability.

If I make a better search engine than Google and take away their ads business, I have damaged them, but I am not liable.

The argument here is that Facebook does not actually own LLaMA, because they don't own the training data, they didn't have humans curate the training data in a creative way, and the actual training process is purely mechanical. If LLaMA is not copyrightable then you cannot be liable for copying it.




I think liability is easier to prove because they breached license to use the source code against license. Thats clearly their action.

But financial damage on programs distributed for free is...nothing. So even if you sue, what are you going to get out of them?

I wonder if you can sue for some form of specific performance and cause them to remove your and all other equally licensed code from their training


> But financial damage on programs distributed for free is…nothing.

Not necessarily.

For instance, if the program is distributed free for a limited set of purposes under a license, but available for a negotiated license (with payment) for other purposes, then the reasonable market value of a license without the restriction would be actual damages.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: