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Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

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Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the underlying caste system coming to life right before your eyes :D.

I think caste system is the wrong analogy here. Comment is more about the pseudo ethical high ground

Companies being above the law does create a stratified system in this country for those who can benefit from said companies and those who cannot. Call it what you like.

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#122

Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There is some more in this Article [0]. https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... Funky quote: > Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in…

Crunchyroll was originally an anime piracy site that went legit and started actually licensing content later. They started in mid-2006, got VC funding in 2008, then made their first licensing deal in 2009. https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technol... https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-ani...

Good Old Games started out with the founders selling pirated games on disc at local markets.

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#123
as far as I understand while training on books is clearly not fair use (as the result will likely hurt the lively hood of authors, especially not "best of the best" authors).

as long as you buy the book it still should be legal, that is if you actually buy the book and not a "read only" eBook

but the 7_000_000 pirated books are a huge issue, and one from which we have a lot of reason to believe isn't just specific to Anthropic

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#124
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

:D Note: My definition of singularity isn't the one they use in San Francisco. It's the moment founders who stole the life's work of thousands of teachers finally go to prison, and their datacentres get seized.

You can bet that this never gonna happen...

When the rich and powerful face zero consequences for breaking laws and ignoring the social contracts that keep our society functioning, you wind up with extreme overcorrections. See Luigi.

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I have worded my question wrong. I asked about not about how AI affects the financials of these smaller artists, but their wellbeing in general. There are many small artists who do this not for money, but for fun and have their renowned styles. Even their styles are ripped off by these generative AI companies and turned into a slot machine to earn money for themselves. These artists didn't consent to that, an…

I see your point, "AI art" sucks in general and this is ethically sketchy as hell, but AIAK style copying has never been covered by copyright in the first place. Yea, it sucks to be alienated form your works. That's one of the externalites I mentioned in the original comment. But there is simply no remedy there. That's how the reality is.

Thanks for your answer, and taking your time for writing it!

Yes, style copying is generally considered legal, but as another commenter posted in a related thread "scale matters".

Maybe this will be reconsidered in the near future as the scale is in a much more different level with Generative AI. While there can be no technological solution to this (since it's a social problem to begin with), maybe public opinion about this issue will evolve over time.

To be crystal clear: I'm not against the tech. I'm against abusing and exploiting people for solely monetary profit.

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#126

Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There is some more in this Article [0]. https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... Funky quote: > Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in…

There's plenty of startups gone legitimate. Society underestimates the chasm that exists between an idea and raising sufficient capital to act on those ideas. Plenty of people have ideas. We only really see those that successfully cross it. Small things EULA breaches, consumer licenses being used commercially for example.

The problem is that these "small things" are not necessarily small if you're an individual.

If you're an individual pirating software or media, then from the rights owners' perspective, the most rational thing to do is to make an example of you. It doesn't happen everyday, but it does happen and it can destroy lives.

If you're a corporation doing the same, the calculation is different. If you're small but growing, future revenues are worth more than the money that can be extracted out of you right now, so you might get a legal nastygram with an offer of a reasonable payment to bring you into compliance. And if you're already big enough to be scary, litigation might be just too expensive to the other side even if you answer the letter with "lol, get lost".

Even in the worst case - if Anthropic loses and the company is fined or even shuttered (unlikely) - the people who participated in it are not going to be personally liable and they've in all likelihood already profited immensely.

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#127
post #7

These are the people shaping the future of AI? What happened to all the ethical values they love to preach about? We've held China accountable for counterfeiting products for decades and regulated their exports. So why should Anthropic be allowed to export their products and services after engaging in the same illegal activity?

> We've held China accountable for counterfeiting products for decades and regulated their exports

We have? Are we from different multi-verses?

The one I've lived in to date has not done anything against Chinese counterfeits beyond occasionally seizing counterfeit goods during import. But that's merely occasionally enforcing local counterfeit law, a far cry from punishing the entity producing it.

As a matter of fact, the companies started outsourcing everything to China, making further IP theft and quasi-copies even easier

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#128

Here is how individuals are treated for massive copyright infringement: https://investors.autodesk.com/news-releases/news-release-de...

I thought you'd go with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Swartz

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#129

Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There is some more in this Article [0]. https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... Funky quote: > Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in…

not just Spotify pretty much any (most?) current tech giant was build by

- riding a wave of change

- not caring too much about legal constraints (or like they would say now "distrupting" the market, which very very often means doing illigal shit which beings them far more money then any penalties they will ever face from it)

- or caring about ethics too much

- and for recent years (starting with Amazone) a lot of technically illegal financing (technically undercutting competitors prices long term based on money from else where (e.g. investors) is unfair competitive advantage (theoretically) clearly not allowed by anti monopoly laws. And before you often still had other monopoly issues (e.g. see wintel)

So yes not systematic not complying with law to get unfair competitive advantage knowing that many of the laws are on the larger picture toothless when applied to huge companies is bread and butter work of US tech giants

Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

#130

Pirate and pay the fine is probably hell of a lot cheaper than individually buying all these books. I'm not saying this is justified, but what would you have done in their situation? Sayi "they have the money" is not an argument. It's about the amount of effort that is needed to individually buy, scan, process millions of pages. If that's done for you, why re-do it all?

This is not about paying for a single copy. It would still be wrong even if they have bought every single one of those books. It is a form of plagiarism. The model will use someone else's idea without proper attribution.

Legally speaking, we don't know that yet. Early signs are pointing at judges allowing this kind of crap because it's almost impossible for most authors to point out what part of the generated slop was originally theirs.
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