For the second time in three years I’ve found someone incorporating my chatbots (and those of many others) for their personal use without my knowledge or permission.

The last time was in in June of ‘09 when someone felt no obligation or legal requirement prevented him from grabbing 20 Pandorabots and including them in a script that would allow people to place one or many of them in irc channels.  It’s a free script available to anyone, and while I was successful in getting my bots removed, old copies of the script are still being passed around.

The latest is a mobile app that’s charging .99, which is not being shared with the botmaster who have had their work stolen from them, without their knowledge or permission.  I haven’t purchased the app, so I don’t know if all of the bots are Pandorabots, or if your bot may be one of them, nor do I know how many are included in the app.

Besides resenting my work being taken without my knowledge or permission, or without compensation, I don’t want my bots included for several additional reasons.  Among them is that my bots were developed with an HTML page in mind, and they do things that don’t translate to text.  Pictures and sounds, as well as clickable links don’t appear, nor do an of the images and links on the HTML page, itself.

Lastly, I view this as a copyright violation, but the developer thinks he’s covered that because, in his words, “...we leave full credit to the botmaster if you ask questions like who created you.”

I’ve requested for any and all of my bots to be removed, but to date, that’s not happened. 

Pandorabots, for whatever reason, is unwilling to help.  They’ve washed their hands in my personal plight, yet they don’t seem to know how to handle the overall problem of people just taking things from them (or us) without permission or compensation.  They’ve asked for feedback.  Thanks, Pandorabots.  I always knew I could count on you.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14AmCyCiO__7f6491Acg6qNoe21vFQC7bZoTu5WRjB5k/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1

Do you have a lawyer? I’d bet one cease and desist letter from a legal firm would get results. If not, there are templates available online (found <a >this</a> one by googling) and you could always craft one yourself.

Edited to add: That they are stealing your work is bad enough, but the fact that they’re attempting to profit from it as well is especially galling. Please keep us updated as the situation progresses.

A creative commons license should be applied to all of your online work (audio, video, photos, blog text, and yes, your bots too.).  This will allow you easily set whatever level of permissions you want.

http://creativecommons.org/

Not sure if Pandorabots does this or not, but you definitely should.

Tough problem. If no license was provided, the software is copyrighted by default, so they are indeed illegal. You could send an email to the app-store (if they appear in one).

Also, I can understand why Pandorabots doesn’t do anything at this moment. When they limit access to their bots, they will also potentially break legal access.

Thank you for your comments.

Understand, I don’t want to upset the"Apple” cart for Pandorabots, the
Apple/Mac App Store, the developer (who should have obtained permission
before he started) or the people who’ve replied that they didn’t mind
being included in the mobile app because their bots seldom get visitors.

All I requested from Pandorabots was that they “apply some pressure.”  I expected that they might send a simple email to the developer on my behalf, suggesting that he honor my request.  I don’t want Pandorabots to limit anything.  But, by permitting this sort of activity, I feel as though it’s only going to get worse.

I just don’t want my bots used without my permission, and I don’t want my
bots included in this app.  What could be more simple?

Mark tM - Sep 21, 2011:

Tough problem. If no license was provided, the software is copyrighted by default, so they are indeed illegal. You could send an email to the app-store (if they appear in one).

That’s not true everywhere as far as I know. In Australia, a work is the copyright of the author by default, even if there is no declaration made, or any other action taken. However in the USA, I believe that a work is not copyright unless it is explicitly declared (and officially registered?) as such.

There are probably as many different copyright laws as there are jurisdictions.

Actually, Andrew, here in the states, if you can demonstrate that the “work” in question was created by you, then you have a copyright on it, regardless of whether you’ve actually registered it. The problem gets muddied in this instance because Thunder’s chatbots were based, at least in part, on the ALICE AIML sets, of which the copyright belongs to someone else. If this comes down to a lawsuit, it could get really ugly, and some liars (er… Lawyers) could stand to make a lot of money. Don’t get me wrong here. I think Thunder is “in the right” here, but I’m not a judge, and this isn’t a copyright court.

I began reading up on current copyright law from a couple of different websites, namely the following:

1.) http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
2.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

The first, of course, is the US Government’s official stand on the issue, and is so excessively wordy as to make it nearly impossible to follow. Fortunately, I’m accustomed to “legalese”.

The Wiki entry, while much easier to understand, only gives the “general gist” of the intent of the laws involved, but it’s reasonably accurate, for what it is.

In the US, any creative work is the copyright of the owner when it is originally created. You do not have to register it. There are “Fair Use” rights also, which is what the app developer thinks he is covered under. He is incorrect.

Some day a court case will help determine how the copyright law applies to chatbots. Until that time, send him an email and say he is violating the copyright on your creative work.

The way I’m interpreting the whole “fair use” thing with respect to this situation is that the app dev can use only a small portion of the “work” in question, but allowing clients to have full access to the bot through his/her app uses the entire volume of the chatbot to return a response. Granted a single volley returns only a tiny portion of the bot’s total available responses, but the input is searched against the whole, not just apart, which to my way of thinking violates “fair use” right there.

Before my career as a struggling botmaster, I spent several years as a strugling free-lance writer, which required me to delve into the copyright and fair use laws.  I posted about at the AI Nexus Forum under Copyright and the Phone App.

The latest is the developer has agreed to remove my bots, but he said something troubling.

“sorry I have not been in front of a computer lately, i’m traveling and do most things from my phone. I will take care of your request as soon as i get home. By the way, chatbot is not a mobile application, it’s a desktop application for mac”

I’ve been referring to it as a phone app because visitors tell my bots they are chatting with them using a cell phone.  This activity is relatively new.  I’ve also had people say they are using an iPad.  So, now I’m wondering if there’s a different app I also need to be concerned about.

Yes, one of the fair use tests is how much of the work is copied. But, case law changed a few years back and there is no easy answer. A few years back a number of artists were copying snippets of music from other songs and mashing it up. That was determined to by a violation and now has stopped.

From the copyright office:

One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords. This right is subject to certain limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the copyright law (title 17, U. S. Code). One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of “fair use.” The doctrine of fair use has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years and has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair:
The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
The nature of the copyrighted work
The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

The distinction between fair use and infringement may be unclear and not easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

Glad to hear that he is being reasonable and removing your bot without a legal fuss.

Thunder Walk - Sep 22, 2011:

I’ve been referring to it as a phone app because visitors tell my bots they are chatting with them using a cell phone.  This activity is relatively new.  I’ve also had people say they are using an iPad.  So, now I’m wondering if there’s a different app I also need to be concerned about.

Could it simply be that users are accessing your bot via web browsers on their phones/tablets?

Could it simply be that users are accessing your bot via web browsers on their phones/tablets?

I’ve also been wondering about that. If the app actually contains your bot in it’s installer, I think that’s not very legal, but when the app is just a browser that provides custom interfaces to web based bots, I think things can get very ‘muddy’. Not all web-browsers are free, what about those then? I don’t think you can do much about that.

The core problem for Thunder is that Pandorbots has 2 ways of interfacing with bots. The primary way is through a web page that he has control over.

The XML-RPC interface alternative is text only. There is much less control and if the developer is not careful in his design of the UI and interface, each input will be registered as a totally new conversation.

One of my bots was also being included in this app. I found the easiest way to have it removed was for the bot to check what URL it was being accessed from and do nothing apart from present a “I have been stolen” message to the chatter.

I informed the app developer that this rather polite message from the bot would be turned into a torrent of abuse and swearing before I reported it to Apple. This seemed to do the trick

As for Fair Use… the only reason I mentioned it is because that’s usually the first defense.  Two of the hallmarks of the law have always been that the user provide attribution to the author, and that you were permitted to use excerpts, not the entire work. You couldn’t reproduce an entire copy of the latest novel or movie, and then claim Fair Use.  In my estimation, in this case, the entire bot was grabbed (actually several bots) and the developer was saying you could easily learn who the botmaster was by asking the bot. First, notification is his burden, not mine, and secondly, my bots won’t tell you who their creator is.  I feel as though the developer failed in both of those tests.

The “phone” connection is something new.  I always thought it would be possible to access the custom HTML web pages using something like a Blackberry or a smart phone.  Suddenly, I began seeing a lot of chatlogs mentioning they were connected using a phone, and asking questions about Mac computers.  There were also a lot of conversations asking about “qwerty,” the first bot listed in the app.  I suppose it was confusion on my part, but I was simply paying attention to the evidence.  I was getting a lot of new traffic from this app.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chatbot/id449856276?mt=12

In my mind, both the irc script that I became involved with (mentioned in the first post of this thread) and this latest affair with the Mac script were very similar.  The one exception in my favor was that the developer of the Mac script was charging a fee.

In the former issue, Pandoras Talking Bot irc script, the old server was frequently unstable because it was (I was told) already overloaded.  I didn’t see how this script was a good idea for Pandorabots.  However, when I brought it to their attention, Pandorabots responded at the Talking Script page, “We welcome your community to Pandorabots. FordL (the developer) may be correct that this could be one of the best things to happen to Pandorabots. We appreciate very much your interest and want to support your projects.”

http://www.hawkee.com/snippet/6306/

I’m one of a small number of people (compared to the total registered at Pandorabots) who works diligently on their bots, and I wasn’t the first botmaster to complain about the Mac app, yet, Pandorabots didn’t seem to want to speak out about it.

I don’t know what the philosophy is at Pandorabots, or what the plan is (if there is one) but, they seem to want to be all things to all people.  My concern is, with this level of permissiveness, it’s only going to get worse for people who care about their property. I feel the need to always be on guard, and for me, that takes a lot of the “fun” out of chatbots.

I’m disappointed that Pandorabots doesn’t want to help protect their members.  Usually when I say that, the reply from other botmasters is that it’s a free service, so I have no standing.  I also have a free checking account at the bank, but just try to rob them.