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Comment by avsteele | Hacker News Reader

I don't find the article very reputable, as they make statements like this:

   Even when data are publicly available their use can breach what we call textual integrity. This is a fundamental principle in legal discussions of privacy. It requires that individuals’ information is not revealed outside of the context in which it was originally produced.

First, if you click the associated link link there isn't any indication this is a widely accepted view ('fundamental principle'). I'd never call myself an expert but I've never heard of this.

Second, the way I read this is that they are trying to analogize scarping the web to feed it into ChatGPT to someone following you movements in public recording it all.

Even if you believe in their legal theory of privacy is right, wouldn't Google would be far larger offender than ChatGPT?

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> Second, the way I read this is that they are trying to analogize scarping the web to feed it into ChatGPT to someone following you movements in public recording it all.

This gets thrown out a lot. It deflects the blame from the responsible parties. You can’t scrape what isn’t available.

ChatGPT (and the various image algos) are showing signs of having seen far more than most think would be hanging out in the wind.

Feeding these with web scrapings may be reckless, but leaving things like medical records, financial histories, and other private information sitting out on the public web, on purpose or not, is far more so.

There is a lot of blame to go around, and more importantly a lot of work to do.

In the United States you don't have the right to privacy for things outside of your private property, for example, your garbage:

Held:

1. The Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the warrantless search and seizure of garbage left for collection outside the curtilage of a home. Pp. 39-44. (a) Since respondents voluntarily left their trash for collection in an area particularly suited for public inspection, their claimed expectation of privacy in the inculpatory items they discarded was not objectively reasonable. It is common knowledge that plastic garbage bags left along a public street are readily accessible to animals, children, scavengers, snoops, and other members of the public. Moreover, respondents placed their refuse at the curb for the express purpose of conveying it to a third party, the trash collector, who might himself have sorted through it or permitted others, such as the police, to do so. The police cannot reasonably be expected to avert their eyes from evidence of criminal activity that could have been observed by any member of the public. Pp. 39-43.

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/486/35.html

I'm sure that this is also a breach of whatever "textual integrity" is but I don't care enough about the subject to find out exactly how that doctrine would apply.

How will this work with the EU's "right to forget?" Retrain the multimilli9n dollar model each time someone sends a request?

It will work by just blocking the EU if it is too much of a pita.

Yeah, this seems like an issue if one wants to do business in the EU. There’s another thread below where this discussion is taking place!

There appears to be such a thing as “contextual integrity”, though it is more a creature of law review articles than anything else. A “fundamental principle in legal discussions of privacy” it may or may not be but that is a pretty empty statement even if true. The legal profession and academia care about fundamental principles only when they are evinced in real legislation or case law. A conceptual framework to discuss how privacy laws tend to operate is not some kind of legal rule you can breach.

The author is a business information systems professor. He probably shouldn’t be citing this stuff at all.

Even if we grant that this decision was correct (perhaps) and that it is analogous enough that it applies to this situation (I'm very skeptical), there are still restrictions on what you can do with any information you'd acquire this way.

If $FAMOUS_AUTHOR throws out a manuscript copy of their new book, you may be legally allowed to pick it out of their garbage, read it, and even show it to your friends, but you certainly cannot publish it as your own work (you can't even publish it under $FAMOUS_AUTHOR's name).

I think we just found out why the writer is a clickbait journalist and not a lawyer. ;)

That principle seems like it would outlaw the entire industry of political news.

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