Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books • Hacker News Board

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#151

Post by a456463 » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

haritha-j wrote: post #79

rpdillon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sentiment posted quite a bit, but have the publishers made any products available that would allow AI training on their works for payment? A naive approach would be to go to an online bookstore and pay $15 for every book, but then you have copyrighted content that is encrypted, that it's a violation of the DMCA to decrypt. I assume you're expecting that they'll reach out and cut a deal with each publishing…

Perhaps because authors don't want their content to be used for this purpose? Because Microsoft refuses to give me a copy of the source code to Windows to 'inspire' my vibe-coded OS, Windowpanes 12, of which I will not give microsoft a single cent of revenue, its acceptable for me to pirate it? Someone doesn't want to sell me their work, so I'm justified in stealing it?

Exactly! ALL of the LLM companies are complicit in this bullying and theft and so are the AI grifters on LinkedIn.

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#152

Post by rpdillon » Tue, Jan 20, 2026, 10:47 PM UTC

haritha-j wrote: post #79

rpdillon wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this sentiment posted quite a bit, but have the publishers made any products available that would allow AI training on their works for payment? A naive approach would be to go to an online bookstore and pay $15 for every book, but then you have copyrighted content that is encrypted, that it's a violation of the DMCA to decrypt. I assume you're expecting that they'll reach out and cut a deal with each publishing…

Perhaps because authors don't want their content to be used for this purpose? Because Microsoft refuses to give me a copy of the source code to Windows to 'inspire' my vibe-coded OS, Windowpanes 12, of which I will not give microsoft a single cent of revenue, its acceptable for me to pirate it? Someone doesn't want to sell me their work, so I'm justified in stealing it?

Oh, I'm certain that authors want to take away every right the reader has. This is easy to see empirically: we used to have the first-sale doctrine with physical books, but every digital platform has made reselling either impossible, or a violation of their terms. And yet, courts have rendered judgements that say training an AI model on a book is fair use if the book was obtained legally, meaning no additional license is needed. You assume the authors' permission is needed, but I'm not sure that assumption holds. I think your argument is mostly emotional, rather than legal.

Your use of the word "stealing" is incorrect, but regardless, I'm not condoning piracy, merely examining the incentives we've set up to lead massive, multi-billion dollar corporations from engaging in it.

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#153

Post by threethirtytwo » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 5:22 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #149

threethirtytwo wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you’re wrong when you said you have to pay for the books. You don’t.

You should go be a lawyer. For the rest of us, we understand context

You’re wrong technically and wrong in context.

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#154

Post by ummonk » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 6:02 PM UTC

Arnt wrote: post #148

tremon wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I went to a concert recently where someone copied every word and (as far as I could hear) every note from a copyrighted work by Bruce Springsteen. Singing and playing. This too is intended to be fair use. Only the learning part is fair use. Playing an artist's songs in public does not violate the copyright of the original performing artist, but it does violate the songwriters' copyright, and you do need a license t…

It can also violate other laws and rules that are not relevant to copyright. Perhaps I should have digressed into listing that? I chose not to.

Performing rights are part of copyright law and thus directly relevant to copyright. Stop dissembling.

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#155

Post by jkaplowitz » Wed, Jan 21, 2026, 11:18 PM UTC

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #70

jkaplowitz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even one of the white papers commissioned by the FSF Quoting the text which the FSF put at the top of that page: "This paper is published as part of our call for community whitepapers on Copilot. The papers contain opinions with which the FSF may or may not agree, and any views expressed by the authors do not necessarily represent the Free Software Foundation. They were selected because we thought they advanced the…

Since I very specifically wrote "commissioned by the FSF" instead of "represents the opinion of the FSF" to avoid misrepresenting the paper, you're arguing against something I have not said.

True, I was only arguing against something that you seemed to me to have implied, not anything you outright said.

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#156

Post by Arnt » Thu, Jan 22, 2026, 11:33 AM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #154

Arnt wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can also violate other laws and rules that are not relevant to copyright. Perhaps I should have digressed into listing that? I chose not to.

Performing rights are part of copyright law and thus directly relevant to copyright. Stop dissembling.

What? I didn't know that. Do you have a reference? I'm particularly interested in the origin — is this something that applies to countries with a common law tradition, a roman law tradition, does it originate in one of the copyright treaties, etc. That kind of question.

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#157

Post by musicale » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 3:31 AM UTC

The reason why it's legal for Nvidia to download Anna's Archive and illegal for you is that they have well-paid lawyers and deep pockets to kick the can down the road for years before negotiating a settlement, making billions in the meantime. The settlement itself becomes a moat.

They also pay millions of dollars to lobbyists to encourage favorable regulation and enforcement.

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#158

Post by musicale » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 3:37 AM UTC

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #29

skilled wrote: post #3

> In response, NVIDIA defended its actions as fair use, noting that books are nothing more than statistical correlations to its AI models. Does this even make sense? Are the copyright laws so bad that a statement like this would actually be in NVIDIA’s favor?

> Does this even make sense? Are the copyright laws so bad that a statement like this would actually be in NVIDIA’s favor? It makes some sense, yeah. There's also precedent, in google scanning massive amounts of books, but not reproducing them. Most of our current copyright laws deal with reproductions. That's a no-no. It gets murky on the rest. Nvda's argument here is that they're not reproducing the works, they're…

> There's also precedent, in google scanning massive amounts of books,

Except that Google acquired the books legally, and first sale doctrine applies to physical books.

> but not reproducing them

See also: "Extracting books from production language models"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569799

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#159

Post by rpdillon » Fri, Jan 23, 2026, 5:43 AM UTC

a456463 wrote: post #151

haritha-j wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps because authors don't want their content to be used for this purpose? Because Microsoft refuses to give me a copy of the source code to Windows to 'inspire' my vibe-coded OS, Windowpanes 12, of which I will not give microsoft a single cent of revenue, its acceptable for me to pirate it? Someone doesn't want to sell me their work, so I'm justified in stealing it?

Exactly! ALL of the LLM companies are complicit in this bullying and theft and so are the AI grifters on LinkedIn.

> ALL of the LLM companies are complicit in this bullying and theft

I know this comes across as pedantic, but theft doesn't even come into the equation. Thousands and judges and lawyers have examined this, and there is no argument for theft, at all, in any jurisdiction. Why use such lazy language like this? Just to inflame the discussion?

Re: Nvidia contacted Anna's Archive to access books

#160

Post by uncivilized » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 4:36 PM UTC

qingcharles wrote: post #65

flipped wrote: post #28

Considering AA gave them ~500TB of books, which is astonishing (very expensive to even store for AA), I wonder how much nvidia paid them for it? It has to be atleast close to half a million?

I have a very large collection of magazines. AI companies were offering straight cash and FTP logins for them about a year or so ago. Then when things all blew up they all went quiet.

How did AI companies find your collection?