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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

#611

Post by rileymat2 »

smolder wrote: post #338
phire wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This settlement has basically nothing to do with LLMs. 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 lon…

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…

> training on ill gotten copyrighted material is not fair use.

Ill gotten copyrighted material is illegal. What can be done with it after is a completely separate issue.

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

#612

Post by skinfaxi »

roysting wrote: post #552
insanitybit wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people forget that laws are perfectly capable of carving out exceptions, leaving purposeful ambiguity, expressing intent, etc. Yes, humans can have special rules, and very obviously should since laws exist to improve human lives.

I am actually not settled on either side of the matter and I have not forgotten that, but I think what we are really looking at is a rather more complex matter than people want to make it out to be. We are holding several but at the very least contradictory positions and they are incompatible. Either it is theft or not theft. Why would you stealing from me deserve an exception, but when a group of people in an organi…

> Either it is theft or not theft. Why would you stealing from me deserve an exception, but when a group of people in an organization you may refer to as a corporation steal from me, you want them to pay me? Do as I say, not as I do or something like that?

Which system of justice works like this? The law, uniformly applied, is a steamroller. That's why we have courts, to allow people to explain their actions (justify them).

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

#613

Post by flir »

insanitybit wrote: post #607
flir wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, reductio ad absurdum. Here's a highly compressed representation of The Lord of The Rings (all three volumes): 1 Obviously, fidelity when uncompressing it is not great, but I can assure you it was lossily compressed from the original text. Is it infringing the original's copyright? I have to assume you'd agree that the answer is "no". If I had compressed it by removing the letters x y and z, I'd agree with you tha…

My entire point is that compression is irrelevant. A lossily compressed image can absolutely still be in breach of the original's copyright. Showing that some kind of compressed artifact may not be doesn't change that.

"I can use a lossy compression algorithm such that the original could never be recovered from the image I've produced, but that derived image would surely be under copyright."

I've tried my best to show where I think you're wrong. I think all that's left is arguing over the exact definitions of "recoverable" and "irretrievable". As I said, the courts will have to decide that.

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

#614

Post by tetha »

mycall wrote: post #584
tetha wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why the idea of being "Vogelfrei" or "lawless" was honestly a terrifying concept in the middle ages. They are neither bound by law, nor protected by law. A lawless man can be struck down with force without persecution by law, because they are lawless.

> A lawless man can be struck down with force without persecution by law, because they are lawless. Doesn't this define modern day police force theory?

I am not 100% familiar with this theory, but I'm fairly sure there is an important difference: The monopoly of violence current police forces are granted did not exist in this particular way.

If a lawless man robbed from a village, any of the villagers could do whatever they wanted to them in retribution. Maybe limited a bit by religion.

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

#615

Post by insanitybit »

flir wrote: post #613
insanitybit wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My entire point is that compression is irrelevant. A lossily compressed image can absolutely still be in breach of the original's copyright. Showing that some kind of compressed artifact may not be doesn't change that.

"I can use a lossy compression algorithm such that the original could never be recovered from the image I've produced, but that derived image would surely be under copyright." I've tried my best to show where I think you're wrong. I think all that's left is arguing over the exact definitions of "recoverable" and "irretrievable". As I said, the courts will have to decide that.

I have no clue what you're talking about tbh. I can use a lossy compression algorithm that is definitionally holding less information than the original while still be subject to the copyright of the original. This is just obviously true, converting a PNG to a JPEG does not invalidate the copyright on the PNG. You can also produce an imagine using a lossy compression algorithm that is not subject to the copyright of the original, I haven't said that that's not true.

Regardless, the argument that LLM output is or is not subject to copyright based on information theory is entirely defeated by what I've said.

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

#616

Post by insanitybit »

roysting wrote: post #552
insanitybit wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people forget that laws are perfectly capable of carving out exceptions, leaving purposeful ambiguity, expressing intent, etc. Yes, humans can have special rules, and very obviously should since laws exist to improve human lives.

I am actually not settled on either side of the matter and I have not forgotten that, but I think what we are really looking at is a rather more complex matter than people want to make it out to be. We are holding several but at the very least contradictory positions and they are incompatible. Either it is theft or not theft. Why would you stealing from me deserve an exception, but when a group of people in an organi…

> Either it is theft or not theft. Why would you stealing from me deserve an exception, but when a group of people in an organization you may refer to as a corporation steal from me, you want them to pay me? Do as I say, not as I do or something like that?

Because the goal of laws is to improve human flourishing, not to be consistent. Laws are not strictly based on some sort of virtue ethics, they are often practical ways to accomplish the task of improving human lives. If having "applies to X but not Y and maybe Z depending on some criteria" accomplishes that then... that's the whole point.

> but they cannot be just, inherently

That's sort of an absurdly strong assertion. Why would exceptions not be "just"? "Killing someone is wrong, except in the case where it is strictly necessary to save lives in self defense" etc are generally consider just exceptions. This seems trivial. Very few people hold to an actual system of ethics that does not take context into account...

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

#617

Post by TheCoelacanth »

potlee wrote: post #178
blackqueeriroh wrote: post #120

For anyone who thinks the problem is Anthropic, I want you all to know that most authors make less than the median income. Most make less than $20,000 a year, because publishing houses give authors an advance, and then authors must pay back that entire advance in sales before they see a dollar of profit from their work. Most never do. Maybe publishers should JUST pay authors WELL, and get a book every 2-3 years. http…

> then authors must pay back that entire advance in sales before they see a dollar of profit from their work. Most never do. Thats a nice way of saying publishing houses are paying most authors more than they make from the sales

That's not accurate either. If the royalties are 15%, for example, then covering a $15k advance would take $100k of sales.

A typical book isn't making the publisher much profit but they aren't losing money on it either.

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

#618

Post by satvikpendem »

capr wrote: post #610
satvikpendem wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they presume it requires on the good will of everyone to live peacefully without violating (non-existent) property laws over, say, robbing you in your sleep.

It doesn't require that at all, on the contrary. Why don't you educate yourself on these basic assumptions?

Your comment says basically nothing, no explanation of your point whatsoever, and either way I was talking about what I think they believe, not what I personally believe.

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

#619

Post by satvikpendem »

insanitybit wrote: post #608
satvikpendem wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What AI is doing is not analogous to compression so even if you think they are they same, it legally and technically speaking is not subject to the copyright of the original.

Are you missing the comment that I'd responded to? > Information entropy. The amount of data an LLM ingests cannot be compressed to the size of the weights even at maximum theoretical compression.

I wrote that comment. As I said, an LLM's weights are less than the size of theoretical compression, therefore what LLM training is doing is not compression at all.

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

#620

Post by s3p »

satvikpendem wrote: post #354
archerx wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He wasn’t just some famous redditor. Aaron Swartz helped create Reddit and invented RSS. If I put my conspiracy theory hat one and I always get piled on for this theory in other online communities but I think it could be possible. The theory is I think Aaron found some very dark stuff while exploring the MIT private networks, things that he was not supposed to see and could be very damaging to a lot people if they we…

That's the joke, why do you think they put it in quotes?

I didn't understand it
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