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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

#261

Post by parliament32 »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #245
guywithahat wrote: post #211

If you own a book, it should be legal for your computer to take a picture of it. I honestly feel bad for some of these AI companies because the rules around copyright are changing just to target them. I don't owe copyright to every book I read because I may subconsciously incorporate their ideas into my future work.

Something missed in arguments such as these is that in measuring fair use there's a consideration of impact on the potential market for a rightsholder's present and future works. In other words, can it be proven that what you are doing is meaningfully depriving the author of future income. Now, in theory, you learning from an author's works and competing with them in the same market could meaningfully deprive them of…

> a consideration of impact on the potential market for a rightsholder's present and future works

This is one of those mental gymnastics exercises that makes copyright law so obtuse and effectively unenforceable.

As an alternative, imagine a scriptwriter buys a textbook on orbital mechanics, while writing Gravity (2013). A large number of people watch the finished film, and learn something about orbital mechanics, therefore not needing the textbook anymore, causing a loss of revenue for the textbook author. Should the author be entitled to a percentage of Gravity's profit?

We'd be better off abolishing everything related to copyright and IP law alltogether. These laws might've made sense back in the days of the printing press but they're just nonsensical nowadays.

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

#262

Post by Paradigma11 »

pyman wrote: post #65
YPPH wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Stealing" isn't an apt term here. Stealing a thing permanently deprives the owner of the thing. What you're describing is copyright infringement, not stealing. In this context, stealing is often used as a pejorative term to make piracy sound worse than it is. Except for mass distribution, piracy is often regarded as a civil wrong, and not a crime.

Pirating a book and selling it on claude.ai is stealing, both legally and morally. Pirating 7 million books, remixing their content, and using that to make money on Claude.ai is like counterfeiting 7 million branded products and selling them on your Shopify website. The original creators don't get payment, and someone's profiting off their work. Try doing that yourself and you'd get a knock on the door real quick.

There are tests that determine if a work infringes on the copyright of another. That is well established law. Just use that test and show that this work is infringing on that work. If you cant it doesn't.

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

#263

Post by jonas21 »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #212
dehrmann wrote: post #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…

You skipped quotes about the other important side: > But Alsup drew a firm line when it came to piracy. > "Anthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library," Alsup wrote. "Creating a permanent, general-purpose library was not itself a fair use excusing Anthropic's piracy." That is, he ruled that - buying, physically cutting up, physically digitizing books, and using them for training is fair…

As they mentioned, the piracy part is obvious. It's the fair use part that will set an important precedent for being able to train on copyrighted works as long as you have legally acquired a copy.

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

#264

Post by codedokode »

redcobra762 wrote: post #258
codedokode wrote: post #246

If AI companies are allowed to use pirated material to create their products, does it mean that everyone can use pirated software to create products? Where is the line? Also please don't use word "learning", use "creating software using copyrighted materials". Also let's think together how can we prevent AI companies from using our work using technical measures if the law doesn't work?

It's abusive and wrong to try and prevent AI companies from using your works at all. The whole point of copyright is to ensure you're paid for your work. AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however they please, including training an LLM on it. If that LLM reproduces your work, then the AI company is violating copyright, but if the LLM doesn't reproduce your work…

It is not wrong at all. The author decides what to do with their work. AI companies are rich and can simply buy the rights or hire people to create works.

I could agree with exceptions for non-commercial activity like scientific research, but AI companies are made for extracting profits and not for doing research.

> AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however they please, including training an LLM on it.

It doesn't work this way. If you buy a movie it doesn't mean you can sell goods with movie characters.

> then you have not been harmed.

I am harmed because less people will buy the book if they can simply get an answer from LLM. Less people will hire me to write code if an LLM trained on my code can do it. Maybe instead of books we should start making applications that protect the content and do not allow copying text or making screenshots. ANd instead of open-source code we should provide binary WASM modules.

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

#266

Post by organsnyder »

kevinpet wrote: post #238
organsnyder wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is that an LLM is a mechanical process. It may not be deterministic (at least, in a way that my brain understands determinism), but it's still a machine. What you're proposing is considering LLMs to be equal to humans when considering how original works are created. You could make the argument that LLM training data is no different from a human "training" themself over a lifetime of consuming cont…

That's not a philosophical argument at odds with our current understanding of copyright law. That's exactly what this judge found copyright law currently is and it's quoted in the article being discussed.

Thanks for pointing that out. Obviously I hadn't read the whole article. That is an interesting determination the judge made:

> Alsup ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its AI models was "exceedingly transformative" and qualified as fair use, a legal doctrine that allows certain uses of copyrighted works without the copyright owner's permission.

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

#267

Post by redcobra762 »

codedokode wrote: post #264
redcobra762 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's abusive and wrong to try and prevent AI companies from using your works at all. The whole point of copyright is to ensure you're paid for your work. AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however they please, including training an LLM on it. If that LLM reproduces your work, then the AI company is violating copyright, but if the LLM doesn't reproduce your work…

It is not wrong at all. The author decides what to do with their work. AI companies are rich and can simply buy the rights or hire people to create works. I could agree with exceptions for non-commercial activity like scientific research, but AI companies are made for extracting profits and not for doing research. > AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however th…

If you reproduce the material from a work you've purchased then of course you're in violation of copyright, but that's not what an LLM does (and when it does I already conceded it's in violation and should be stopped). An LLM that doesn't "sell goods with movie characters" is not in violation.

And the harm you describe is not a recognized harm. You don't own information, you own creative works in their entirety. If your work is simply a reference, then the fact being referenced isn't something you own, thus you are not harmed if that fact is shared elsewhere.

It is an abuse of the courts to attempt to prevent people who have purchased your works from using those works to train an LLM. It's morally wrong.

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

#269

Post by lawlessone »

m4rtink wrote: post #265

Anyone else thinks destroying books for any reason is wrong ? Or is it perhaps not an universal cultural/moral aspect ? I guess for example in Europe people could be more sensitive to it.

If they aren't one of a kind and they digitally preserved them in some way i think i would be ok with it.

Saying that though there are tools for digitizing books that don't require destroying them

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

#270

Post by ddingus »

arrosenberg wrote: post #170
achierius wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Piracy is theft - you have taken something and deprived the original owner of it. Copyright infringement is unauthorized reproduction - you have made a copy of something, but you have not deprived the original owner of it. At most, you denied them revenue although generally less than the offended party claims, since not all instances of copying would have otherwise resulted in a sale.

Yes, and the struggle with this back in the day was the *IAA and related organizations wanted to equate infringement with theft.

And to be clear, we javelin the word infringement precisely because it is not theft.

In addition to the deprived revenue, piracy also improves on the general relevance the author has or may have in the public sphere. Essentially, one of the side effects of piracy is basically advertising.

Doctorow was one of the early ones to bring this aspect of it up.

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