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Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

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Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#271

Post by Lutger »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #200

A one time payment like 1.5B doesn’t do anything. There needs to be a royalty payment based on if the AI regurgitates existing ideas. That is probably the correct way to legislate this. If anything a human does can instantly be copied by an LLM, and then sent to all its subscribers, things need to change

Ideas are not protected by copyright, nor are facts. You need to have a very specific and 'creative' / 'substantial' expression of an idea for copyright to apply.

The output of an LLM can be easily be such, but usually not.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#272

Post by TeMPOraL »

chvid wrote: post #230
nikanj wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't do anything? Au contraire! Now the creations of the LLMs stand on legal ground. This was an excellent deal for Anthropic

It is legal to train LLMs on books but illegal to train on output of LLMs. Perfect - an absolute steal for 1.5B.

> but illegal to train on output of LLMs.

Since when?

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#273

Post by visarga »

penguin_booze wrote: post #192
driverdan wrote: post #70

Judge Alsup issued the original order that determined they were liable for piracy but that training LLMs on books was fair use. It's worth reading if you're interested in the topic. https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69058235/231/bartz-v-an...

So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use? It's funny that crimes can be settled in cash. IOW, everything has a price; and the price is always right. Settlement ought to be the euphemism for blood money. In addition to the settlement, what I'd consider fair is to have these companies pay royalties in perpetuity. Of course, that's not tractable.

> So, continuing to profit--forever--from someone's else work, at scale, without their prior consent, is fair use?

Yeah, you are right. Have you been paying your dues to the authors of your math books in first 4 grades? I think 15% of your wages as an engineer would suffice. These kids continue to profit for years, and they are so many. Gotta pot a stop to that IP theft.

In my mistake I thought copyright was about copying rights, not paying for using ideas themselves. If just being downstream from a copyrighted work is infringement even without substantial similarity, then it's more like patents that expire in lifetime + a million years.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#274

Post by larodi »

So it goes like this: I first you take, then money you make and eventually you repay. This is a very smart loan from society indeed. And seems to be the new normal…

Even though Anthropic is my daily driver I’m done respecting any sort of copyright. I’m okay paying for subscription for a service delivery but never ever again will I believe in copyright or any other utterly non-enforceable similar concept.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#275

Post by khalic »

timmb wrote: post #263
olalonde wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regurgitating existing ideas is not copyright infringement. Reproducing works verbatim is and AI companies already implement guardrails to prevent that.

This is exactly why something more advanced than copyright is needed to protect human creative endeavour against AI appropriation. Copyright is demonstrated here not to be up to the job but it doesn’t mean there isn’t regulation needed to give human creators rights and a reward for their contribution

The solution is… more copyright laws? Noooo thank you

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#276

Post by vovavili »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #237
usef- wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's always interesting the two-sides of a situation like this. Add regulation/enforcement to the big companies and you often shut out the smaller ones following. Meta also has copyright lawsuits for the open models they released, so open models are not immune. ... unless the line we want to draw is "american orgs pay, others don't", as currently seems to be happening.

> Add regulation/enforcement to the big companies and you often shut out the smaller ones following. That is the case, any regulation increases the cost to enter a market. But in this case, its irrelevant because the moat of cost to enter is already unfathomable and secondly, they are not adding regulation but fining them for committing a crime. So yeah, adding that every food compnay needs 3 health inspectors that t…

>the moat of cost to enter is already unfathomable

At the moment.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#277

Post by TeMPOraL »

shakna wrote: post #226
sdenton4 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, ever used a thing you learned from a textbook in your job? Did you have to continue paying for the copy of that knowledge speed on your brain? No, because that's not what copyright is about. Learning from and building on previous work is civilization. Copyright maximalism is a plague.

Well, as not every book is a textbook, I'd say quite a lot of what I've read never went to any kind of knowledge in my head at all. But I reckon the author still deserves to eat.

You too deserve to eat. Does it mean we're all supposed to pay you in perpetuity for that HN comment you just posted, because we read it and it's encoded in our brains now?

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#278

Post by zingar »

olalonde wrote: post #252
sashank_1509 wrote: post #200

A one time payment like 1.5B doesn’t do anything. There needs to be a royalty payment based on if the AI regurgitates existing ideas. That is probably the correct way to legislate this. If anything a human does can instantly be copied by an LLM, and then sent to all its subscribers, things need to change

Regurgitating existing ideas is not copyright infringement. Reproducing works verbatim is and AI companies already implement guardrails to prevent that.

It would be interesting to know what the guardrails are. That would help me with understanding how I can use AI content. For instance I asked Claude to help me draw a diagram to represent a software engineering concept for a public presentation and then I had to stop and think: am I about to just reuse something from a Martin Fowler or Kent Beck book without attribution?

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#279

Post by piltdownman »

gspr wrote: post #231
simianwords wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need prior consent? What sort of rent seeking do you want?

Are you saying that if someone writes a book or records a song, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent? How does intellectual work get funded in this insane world if yours, pray tell?

Intellectual property protections have a finite lifespan to begin with, and as a tenet of Western Civilization are barely 300 years old.

For works published before copyright laws existed or after property protections expire, anyone should be able to use it for anything forever without consent.

Intellectual work still manages to get funded in this 'insane world' - although given the classical artist/patron system has given way to state-based grants and a select capitalisation of Art post-Warhol, the concept of Universal Basic Income tends to be promoted the desired successor.

Speaking of insane worlds, how does the concept of the Public Domain work in yours?

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#280

Post by piltdownman »

JAlexoid wrote: post #196
nextaccountic wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then, its service providers stripped the books from their bindings, cut their pages to size, and scanned the books into digital form — discarding the paper originals. This is worse than pirating books to an absurd degree, it's almost a parody - the company that slurps all human knowledge ends up not only metaphorically, but also physically destroying those books, like an information vampire. Authors don't even rece…

It reads like you're in favor of banning resale and lending(aka libraries) of books... because the authors aren't compensated. There's such a thing as fair use and digitizing privately owned printed material is absolutely legal... including for corporations.

In many territories like Ireland, Authors are compensated for their inclusion in lending libraries. It tends to be of the pitiful 'music rights organisation' style mechanical reproduction royalties, but it does exist.
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