Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

171–180 of 686 posts

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

#171
post #60
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who got robbed? Just because I'd pay for AI it doesn't mean I'd buy these books.

You should ask the teachers who spent years writing those books.

You keep saying the word "teachers"; but that word does not appear in the text of the article. Why focus on the teachers in particular?

Also, there are various incentives for teachers to publish books. Money is just one of them (I wonder how much revenue books bring to the teachers). Prestige and academic recognition is another. There are probably others still. How realistic is the depiction of a deprived teacher whose livelihood depended on the books he published once every several years?

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

#172

Two of the top AI companies flouted ethics with regard to training data. In OpenAI's case, the whistleblower probably got whacked for exposing it. Can anyone make a compelling argument that any of these AI companies have the public's best interest in mind (alignment/superalignment)?

[dead]

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

#173

I'm not seeing how this is fair use in either case. Someone correct me if I am wrong but aren't these works being digitized and transformed in a way to make a profit off of the information that is included in these works? It would be one thing for an individual to make person use of one or more books, but you got to have some special blindness not to see that a for-profit company's use of this information to improve…

They clearly were being digitized, but I think its a more philosophical discussion that we're only banging our heads against for the first time to say whether or not it is fair use. Simply, if the models can think then it is no different than a person reading many books and building something new from their learnings. Digitization is just memory. If the models cannot think then it is meaningless digital regurgitation…

> Simply, if the models can think then it is no different than a person reading many books and building something new from their learnings.

No, that's fallacious. Using anthropomorphic words to describe a machine does not give it the same kinds of rights and affordances we give real people.

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

#175

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

What point are you making? 20 years ago, someone sold pirated copies of software (wheres the transformation here) and that's the same as using books in a training set? Judge already said reading isnt infringement.

This is reaching at best.

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

#176
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?

The unethical ones didn't buy any books.

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

#177

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

> illegally copying and selling pirated software

This is very different to what Anthropic did. Nobody was buying copies of books from Anthropic instead of the copyright holder.

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least most pirates just consume for personal use. Easy for the pirate to say. Artists might argue their intent was to trade compensation for one's personal enjoyment of the work.

[flagged]

The way you've presented this, the evidence is just "common sense", which isn't much evidence at all.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

copyright is not the same as piracy

Can you explain why? What makes them categorically different or at the very least why is "piracy" quantitatively worse than 'just' copyright violation?

Saying that piracy isn't copyright violation is an RMS talking point. It's not worth trying to ask why because the answer will be RMS said so and will not be backed by the common usage of the word.

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

#180

If ingesting books into an AI makes Anthropic criminals, then Google et al are also criminals alike for making search indexes of the Internet. Anything published online is equally copyrighted.

Yeah, we can all agree that ingesting books is fair use and transformative, but you gotta own what you ingest, you can't just pirate it.

I can read 100 books and write a book based on the inspiration I got from the 100 books without any issue. However, if I pirate the 100 books I've still committed copyright infringement despite my new book being fully legal/fair use.

Post reply on HN