Use an appropriate license compatible with Fair Use. LAION's creation of the dataset required one or more Copyright Exceptions with strict terms. Picking a license that respects the terms of these exceptions would reduce legal risk significantly, and show good faith.
ETHICS
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User Generated Content Exclusion from AI Training Datasets
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Exclude social media and UGC websites. Popular websites that host user generated content or personal profiles could have been excluded from the dataset. Platforms don't have full rights to their users private information, and avoiding that kind of content reduces legal risk.
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LAION criticized for partnering with questionable data hosting site
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Don't partner with dubious websites to host files! LAION shouldn't have requested TheEye, a questionable "archival" website, to host their data in order for them to link to it! Maybe instead get approval from platforms like HF so they share legal responsibility for hosting.
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Respecting Manual Opt-Out Requests After Fact
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Provide opt-out after the fact. To operate in good faith, manual opt-out requests should also be respected after the fact too. Because the dataset format allows users to bypass and override opt-out client side, not honoring request makes LAION look complicit in infringement.
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Dataset sourcing and ethical image attribution in AI
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Have the dataset to include sources. Each image was referenced by a specific page, and this original root URL should be included as a field. By "hot linking" files directly that could be on CDNs, it bypasses usual access mechanisms & prevents reliably checking opt-out status.
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Database Storage for LAION-5B: Removing Illegal Content Safely
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Use a database storage method not version control. Storing the LAION-5B dataset on revision control means nothing can be removed (e.g. private data or illegal content) without leaving a trace or nuking history. Using a database storage + wrapper API would avoid this problem.
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Copyright Compliance: LAION Must Prove File Deletion Records
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Publish code & logs upfront show files were deleted. Complying with Copyright exceptions means the burden of proof is on LAION to show they qualify. They're required to delete the files so keeping records of this (or publishing them upfront) could help avoid court.
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img2dataset User-Agent Spoofing Ethics and Web Protection
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Give img2dataset a correct User Agent name. The img2dataset tool also by default presents itself with a User-Agent field defined as Mozilla Firefox only. This spoofing circumvents copy-protection mechanisms built-in to web servers, and can be considered a form of fraud.
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LAION Should Disclose User Agent Strings and IP Addresses
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Announce user agent and IP addresses upfront. It's industry-standard for search engines to disclose their User Agent strings before starting operations, and also a list of IP addresses doing the crawling. LAION could have done this in a public manner upfront.
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LAION Dataset Compliance: Robots.txt Verification Ethics
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Check opt-out themselves! LAION relies on the fact that CommonCrawl allegedly checked opt-out, but the legal defense "our upstream provider is compliant so we don't need to be" isn't strong. Instead, LAION could have checked robots.txt themselves when creating the dataset.