License

This license applies to all new material created as part of the Ajahn Pasanno Question and Story Archive. This includes all versions of the website itself, the json database files, the material on github, and all versions of the main Google sheet used to generate the database and website. It neither grants nor removes permissions regarding material used in the Archive obtained from other sources.

This is a complex project, and different portions of the APQS Archive are released under separate licenses.

Monastic Dhamma teachings are usually distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND license to prevent modification and commercial use. Most of the recordings underlying the Archive are available outside the Archive for free distribution, but splitting the recordings into excerpts removes much of the context of the teachings. It’s important to reassure teachers that their recordings and transcripts won’t be reused in harmful or undesired ways. Therefore we permit non-commercial distribution of the teachings within the Archive as a unified whole but prohibit distribution of subsections of the Archive.

However, we would like to allow others to reuse portions of this project apart from the recordings and transcripts and so apply less restrictive licenses to the source code and tag hierarchy.

For these reasons, portions of the Archive may be distributed under three different licenses:

1. The audio and transcribed teachings as a unified whole are © 2024 Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery. This material may be distributed non-commercially and without modification. Any distribution of this material must at a minimum include this license and all files needed to display the complete website and play each audio clip. Along with these files, you may additionally include any new material created as part of the Archive (including items #2 and #3 below) and any parts of the Archive drawn from other sources (e.g. session audio recordings and pdf files of the references) as long as the license of that source permits.

Please contact questionsandstories@abhayagiri.org for technical instructions to duplicate the Archive or for permission to reformat or distribute partial copies of the teachings within the Archive.

2. The hierarchical tagging scheme and documentation are © 2024 Abhayagiri Monastery and licensed under CC BY-NC. This consists of the Tags sheet in the APQS Archive main spreadsheet and the markdown files in the documentation directory.

3. The database format and website generation engine are dedicated to the public domain under CC 0. This includes all source code and all sheets in the APQS Archive main spreadsheet except the Tags sheet and sheets containing transcribed audio recordings. It explicitly excludes all audio files and any file or spreadsheet sheet which contains transcribed audio recordings.

This license applies to all versions of the Archive that have been posted on abhayagiri.org. However, we encourage anyone distributing or mirroring the Archive to keep your distribution up to date.

Use in Generative AI

Given the current trajectory of artificial intelligence, it seems plausible that a computer trained on hours of audio and visual recordings of a person answering questions on a subject could recreate that person's responses to similar questions. One could imagine a video screen of Ajahn Pasanno sitting on the Abhayagiri Dhamma seat and responding to verbal questions in real time. Magical animated paintings of dead people who converse with Harry Potter and his friends fit perfectly in their fictional world. A real life AI simulacrum of Ajahn Pasanno seems distinctly creepy.

I mentioned these thoughts to Ajahn Pasanno in June 2023, and he concurred with my impressions. He added that he doesn't think humans are currently discerning enough to make skillful use of artificial intelligence.

Organizing Ajahn Pasanno's teachings into this archive makes them more accessible to intelligences both human and artificial. Given all the uncertainties about how AI will unfold, there's no way I can write a license that will rule out using this material to train an AI. However, I hope that anyone contemplating creating such a thing will respect Ajahn Pasanno's opinion on the matter. In short: Please don't.