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

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191–200 of 686 posts

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

#191

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…

Copyright is largely about distributing copies. It’s not about making something vaguely similar or about referencing copyrighted work to make something vaguely similar.

Although, there’s an exception for fictional characters:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_protection_for_fic...

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

#192

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...

And now Crunchyroll is owned by (through a lot of companies, like Aniplex of America, Aniplex, A1 Pictures) Sony, who produces a large amount of anime!

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

#193

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…

Apparently it's a common business practice.

It's not a common business practice. That's why it's considered newsworthy.

People on the internet have forgotten that the news doesn't report everyday, normal, common things, or it would be nothing but a listing of people mowing their lawns or applying for business loans. The reason something is in the news is because it is unusual or remarkable.

"I saw it online, so it must happen all the time" is a dopy lack of logic that infects society.

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

#194

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?

Maybe the most memorable version of the response is this the "Copying is not Theft" song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeTybKL1pM4

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

#195
The important parts:

> Alsup ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its AI models was "exceedingly transformative" and qualified as fair use

> "All Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies"

It was always somewhat obvious that pirating a library would be copyright infringement. The interesting findings here are that scanning and digitizing a library for internal use is OK, and using it to train models is fair use.

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

#197

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.

>Society underestimates the chasm that exists between an idea and raising sufficient capital to act on those ideas.

The AI sector, famously known for its inability to raise funding. Anthropic has in the last four years raised 17 billion dollars

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

#198

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.

I disagree that it has anything to do with copyright. It is at most theft. If I steal a bunch of books from the library, I haven't committed any breach of copyright.

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

#199

The important parts: > Alsup ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its AI models was "exceedingly transformative" and qualified as fair use > "All Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies…

I don't think that's new. google set precedent for that more than a decade ago. you're allowed to transform a book to digital.

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

#200
post #2

Anthropic's cofounder, Ben Mann, downloaded million copies of books from Library Genesis in 2021, fully aware that the material was pirated. Stealing is stealing. Let's stop with the double standards.

Information wants to be free.

Then why does Claude cost money?
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