To be very clear on this point - this is not related to model training. It’s important in the fair use assessment to understand that the training itself is fair use, but the pirating of the books is the issue at hand here, and is what Anthropic “whoopsied” into in acquiring the training data. Buying used copies of books, scanning them, and training on it is fine. Rainbows End was prescient in many ways.
Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
231–240 of 761 posts
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#232Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#233This is sad for open source AI, piracy for the purpose of model training should also be fair use because otherwise only the big companies who can afford to pay off publishers like Anthropic will be able to do so. There is no way to buy billions of books just for model training, it simply can't happen.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are no terms and conditions attached to library books beyond copyright law (which says nothing about scanning) and the general premise of being a library (return the book in good condition on time or pay).
Copyright law in the USA may be more liberal about scanning than other jurisdictions (see the parallel comment from gpm), which expressly regulate the amount of copying of material you do not own as an item.
I'd be interested to know if you knew of one with bright line rules delineating what is and isn't allowed.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Rainbows End was prescient in many ways. Agreed. Great book for those looking for a read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/102439.Rainbows_End The author, Vernor Vinge, is also responsible for popularizing the term 'singularity'.
RIP to the legend. He has a lot of really fun ideas spread across his books.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
The message being you’ll likely get away with it?
They're setting up a pretty simple EV calc: (Probability of not getting away with it) 0.01 * (Cost if caught) 1000 = 10x (Expected Cost) = not worth it
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#237To be very clear on this point - this is not related to model training. It’s important in the fair use assessment to understand that the training itself is fair use, but the pirating of the books is the issue at hand here, and is what Anthropic “whoopsied” into in acquiring the training data. Buying used copies of books, scanning them, and training on it is fine. Rainbows End was prescient in many ways.
Paying $3,000 for pirating a ~$30 book seems disproportionate.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#238Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#239To be very clear on this point - this is not related to model training. It’s important in the fair use assessment to understand that the training itself is fair use, but the pirating of the books is the issue at hand here, and is what Anthropic “whoopsied” into in acquiring the training data. Buying used copies of books, scanning them, and training on it is fine. Rainbows End was prescient in many ways.
The settlement was a smart decision by anthropic to remove a huge uncertainty. 1.5 is not small, but it won't stop them or slow them significantly.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#240They also agreed to destroy the pirated books. I wonder how large of a portion of their training data comes from these shadow libraries, and if AI labs in countries that have made it clear they won't enforce anti-piracy laws against AI companies will get a substantial advantage by continuing to use shadow libraries.