In 2022, Google settled for $392 million. California sued them separately and got $93 million. They kept doing it for six years. They kept doing it until they were sued. Google will not do the right thing until they have to. They will do it until it is no longer profitable.

In 2020, Google was sued by 40 states. Between 2014 and 2020, Google tracked users' locations even after they turned off location history. Google gave us the option to withdraw permission to track and use our location data. But then they just kept doing it even after we turned it off.

GM's OnStar Guardian service collects speed, braking, acceleration data. GM sold this data to brokers like LexisNexis, regardless of whether people signed up for the OnStar service. It never occurred to them that they were selling something they didn't really have the right to sell.

Mark Zuckerberg admitted before Congress that the company builds profiles of people who have never signed up for its services. They collect massive amounts of information about individuals, regardless of whether they use their platform, people who never consented to any agreement with them.

Device fingerprinting is a method that combines browser settings, hardware configurations, and system attributes to create unique identifiers. That’s all companies need to identify one person in particular. Companies track us across websites and sessions using these fingerprints.

Consider how every bank and credit card company we use runs fraud detection algorithms that use our data to determine whether a specific transaction was really us. Companies invest billions into these systems. Verifying that an action matches a specific identity is the goal. That is the product.

For our data to be useful, it must come from an actual person. Companies could just simulate user data. It is so much quicker and cheaper to simulate data than to actually collect real data. But companies don’t buy simulated user profiles. Companies don’t run A/B tests on simulated user traffic.

“You wouldn’t download a car, would you?”

They use theft as a negotiating tactic because there are rarely real consequences. It’s their opening offer, which is nothing. It’s now on everyone else to be able to stick up for themselves. That FBI warning they put at the start of movies was a bluff

When the FBI put that Copyright Theft warning at the beginning of movies, and then made all of those anti-piracy ads, were they bluffing?

The foundation of the modern AI industry rests on the uncompensated work of people.

With respect, David, but we already have a system for commercializing creative work, even if has its flaws. AI companies stealing her work use theft as a negotiating tactic. It’s the opening offer, which is nothing. It's now on individual creators to fight back if they are to be paid for their labor

The AI companies use theft as a negotiating tactic because there are rarely real consequences. It’s their opening offer, which is nothing. It’s on everyone else to be able to stick up for themselves.

We have been convinced that this is normal. This is not normal. This is not how we handle business deals or contracts for anything else. We don't value anything strictly based on its use to its owner. Not the rights to commercialize anything else. Not even other data. Just when it's our data.

When we accept their terms, we are giving up something valuable. We shouldn't. Something is being taken from us. Something that belongs to us.