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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

#451

Post by basilgohar »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #79
theplumber wrote: post #72

But why not jail like Kim Dotcom? And why no Feds jumping on Dario’s window? They are not only pirating, they also resell it!

Yeah. These AI settlements make such a mockery of past copyright enforcement victims that it's straight up offensive. Police descended upon Kim Dotcom like he was a terrorist or something. They rappelled down helicopters and stormed his home like he was bin Laden. Then these big techs come along and they make some absurd cost of doing business settlement.

Let's place the rage in the rage in the right place. What they did to past infringements is wrong. What they're doing now is also wrong, but less wrong.

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

#452

Post by themgt »

smolder wrote: post #447
dghlsakjg wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I'm concerned, the courts are wrong, and training on ill gotten copyrighted material is not fair use. It’s important to remember that a court’s job is to apply law to a situation. When a court gets something wrong it’s a misinterpretation of the law and will, by definition, be overturnable on appeal. I suspect that your objection isn’t that the court is wrong, it’s that the law is wrong.

Yes, ultimately the problem is that the law is vague or inadequate. The courts have their definitions of fair use, which are their best efforts at interpreting the law, and I have mine, which is different.

William Roper: "So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!"

Sir Thomas More: "Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?"

William Roper: "Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!"

Sir Thomas More: "Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!"

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

#453

Post by flir »

freejazz wrote: post #436
roysting wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So will you owe life long compensation for all the knowledge you got from books too? How about all the pirated books, music, movies, etc you consumed? When will you set up a life long payment plan to corporations that own these rights, because I have a bridge to sell you if you think any of this settlement will go to any of the people who created anything. I’m guessing you have some kind of imagined idea of some smal…

> So will you owe life long compensation for all the knowledge you got from books too? You're just falling into the trap of anthropomorphizing the phrase "training" in the context of LLMs, which is not the same things as what humans do. There is no evidence they are the same thing and there is nothing to support the notion that what an LLM does when it "trains" on a book is equivalent to a human reading it.

Whatever "training" is, if you can't persuade the machine to spit substantially the same text back out verbatim, it's clearly not something that falls under copyright law either, because there's no copy.

Yes, for some texts that's possible. But for the vast majority, it is not.

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

#454

Post by papercrane »

petterroea wrote: post #261

Settlement would mean it doesn't become legal precedence, right? This outcome seems to be the best possible for Anthropic. Over 100B$ have been invested in AI so far, venture capital can afford to pay a few billions per big company as a South Park style "Sorry". Or am I missing something?

> Settlement would mean it doesn't become legal precedence, right?

The summary judgment ruling from 2025 in this case will still be legal precedence, the settlement will mean that there is no trial for damages.

However, since this is a district court ruling it is non-binding on other courts.

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

#455

Post by [deleted] »

Jensson wrote: post #423
oblio wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Libertarianism is not a philosophy. It's selfishness taken to extremes and trying to find ways to justify it at a societal level. The only reason we're the top species is because we're ultra social and have culture, which is inherently a social trait (don't eat those red berries, they're poisonous). Libertarianism want all the benefits of working together with no actual thought into how that working together happens…

Yeah its wrong in very very similar ways to communism.

[deleted]

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

#456

Post by [deleted] »

WarmWash wrote: post #446
smolder wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm concerned, the courts are wrong, and training on ill gotten copyrighted material is not fair use. Given the clear value of highly trained LLMs, the investment they have taken on, and the amount of disruption to the existing economy they stand to make, in a just world, the people who created the training data deserve some level of compensation. I think, in the US, they are very afraid of falling behind C…

"I haven't loaded an advertisement in 20 years, I have 6TB of movies, 2TB of music, and seemingly endless file trees of mangas, all acquired for free over the years. Now having not said that, I beg you enforce copyright on these AI labs, so I can get a cut of their revenue for my years of writing well researched comments on the internet" The internet, in true internet fashion, still has the general logic level of a 1…

[deleted]

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

#457

Post by embedding-shape »

phire wrote: post #393
embedding-shape wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding comes from here, seems pretty clear to me but won't claim to be a lawyer of course: > Ultimately, Judge William Alsup ruled that this destructive scanning operation qualified as fair use—but only because Anthropic had legally purchased the books first, destroyed each print copy after scanning, and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them. The judge compared the process to “cons…

I've read through the order again. I can't find anywhere where Alsup says the destruction was required. He cites three cases where a conversion from one format to another (without destruction of the previous version) was ruled to be fair use. Including scanning books with the google books case. (And referenced the Napster case, where a similar argument was rejected) Then made the following comparison. "Here, every pu…

> So it wasn't transformative because of the destruction

I mean, the parts of "in order to save storage space" and "The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other." again makes it clear (to me at least) that the destruction is pretty much what sticks out here that makes it "more transformative" (whatever that means) than the previous cited cases.

But yeah, agree that also "didn't distribute the scanned copies" seems to have mattered a great deal, as well as the destruction part.

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

#458

Post by gspr »

pishpash wrote: post #288
gspr wrote: post #225

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? They are, presumably, human. We can perfectly well say that humans have certain rights without needing to give machines those same rights. For example, we've more or less all agreed that it's fine for a human to watch a movie and enjoy the memories forever, and be i…

If you buy the movie you most definitely have a copy that some machine made and you can keep it forever.

Yes. But you can't redistribute it. Which is what the AI companies are doing.

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

#459

Post by dd8601fn »

phire wrote: post #306
embedding-shape wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least not as far as the courts are concerned. Alsup ruled [0] that feeding a book into an LLM is transformative and counts as fair use. Especially when they purchased a physical copy of the book, scanned it, and destroyed the original. > But if I'm reading the ruling correctly, Anthropic might have been fine even with feeding pirated books into their LLM (as long as they eventually deleted them afterwards) The w…

> And since they literally destroyed the books (not just delete files, which would be copied), that made it transformative. You have to be careful, just because the judge points a factor out as notable, doesn't mean that factor was required. The destruction of source books makes Anthropic's fair use argument [2] especially air tight, but it would be a mistake to assume that act was required, or is what made it transf…

What does that mean to be "transformative", as a defense?

I thought that was explicitly disallowed use... like turning someone else's book into an audiobook and selling streaming access to it.

Or writing a film adaptation and selling the film.

Clearly I was thinking about it all wrong. Those wouldn't be allowed, even if you legally aquire the book from a store or library.

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

#460

Post by gspr »

piltdownman wrote: post #279
gspr wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you really saying that because IP protections are (and should be, I agree) time-limited, they're not doing anything in the first place? This is patently ridiculous.

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

Can you elaborate on what you're asking? I don't understand your question.

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