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.
REGULATION
-
User Generated Content Exclusion from AI Training Datasets
By
–
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.
-
LAION criticized for partnering with questionable data hosting site
By
–
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.
-
Respecting Manual Opt-Out Requests After Fact
By
–
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.
-
Database Storage for LAION-5B: Removing Illegal Content Safely
By
–
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.
-
Copyright Compliance: LAION Must Prove File Deletion Records
By
–
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.
-
LAION Should Disclose User Agent Strings and IP Addresses
By
–
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.
-
LAION Dataset Compliance: Robots.txt Verification Ethics
By
–
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.
-
Software Tool Recommendations for Robots.txt Compliance Checking
By
–
Recommend software that checks robots.txt. One of LAION's members built img2dataset, which does not check robots.txt. It would be a stronger legal argument if this recommended tool did check at least robots.txt now, even if better forms of opt-out are added later.
-
LAION-5B Legal Compliance: Dataset Challenges and Solutions
By
–
Legal uncertainty is all around the AI industry, in particular the LAION-5B dataset. Despite the RELAION update, there are still many problems to be addressed… (My peer review follows.) Here's what LAION could have done to make their dataset more legal and more certain!