Wooo, I sure could use $3k right now and I've got something in the pirate libraries they scraped. Nice.
Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
281–290 of 761 posts
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Piracy is not stealing. I don't know why everyone on HN suddenly turned into a copyright hawk, only big companies benefit from our current copyright regime, like Disney and their lobbying for increasing its length.
> only big companies benefit from our current copyright regime You’ve never authored, created, or published something? Never worked for a company that sells something protected by copyright?
All my works are open source or in the public domain. I don't like copyright for a reason.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#283(Everyone say it with me)
Thats a weird way for Anthropic to announce they're going out of business.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#284To 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.
> Buying used copies of books, scanning them, and training on it is fine. But nobody was ever going to that, not when there are billions in VC dollars at stake for whoever moves fastest. Everybody will simply risk the fine, which tends to not be anywhere close to enough to have a deterrent effect in the future. That is like saying Uber would have not had any problems if they just entered into a licensing contract wit…
Anthropic literally did exactly this to train its models according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit found that Anthropic didn't even use the pirated books to train its model. So there is that
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#285Wait, I’m a published author, where’s my check
The court has to give preliminary approval to the settlement first. After that there should be a notice period during which the lawyers will attempt to reach out and tell you what you need to do to receive your money. (Not a lawyer, not legal advice). You can follow the case here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69058235/bartz-v-anthro... You can see the motion for settlement (what the news article is about) her…
Thank you very much. There seems to be a lot of friction in this seemingly simple process…
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google scanned many books quite a while ago, probably way more than LibGen. Are they good to use them for training?
If they legally purchased them I dont think why not. IIRC they did borrow from libraries so probably not every book in Google Books
Anthropic legally purchased the books it used to train its model according to the judge. And the judge said that was fine. Anthropic also downloaded books from a pirate site and the judge said that was bad -- even though the judge also said they didn't use those books for training....
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#287Great. Which rich person is going to jail for breaking the law?
No one, rich or poor, goes to jail for downloading books.
If I walked into a store and stole $1000 of books I would go to jail. If a tech company steals countless thousands of dollars worth of books, someone should go to jail.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a prior ruling, the court stated that Anthropic didn't train on the books subject to this settlement. The record is that Anthropic scanned physical books and used those for training. The pirated books were being held in a general purpose library and were not, according to the record, used in training.
So how did they profit off the pirated books?
According to the judge, they didn't. The judge said they stored those books in a general purpose library for future use just in case they decided to use them later. It appears the judge took much issue with the downloading of "pirated content." And Anthropic decided to settle rather than let it all play out more.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Piracy is not stealing. I don't know why everyone on HN suddenly turned into a copyright hawk, only big companies benefit from our current copyright regime, like Disney and their lobbying for increasing its length.
> only big companies benefit from our current copyright regime You’ve never authored, created, or published something? Never worked for a company that sells something protected by copyright?
> Never worked for a company that sells something protected by copyright?
I.e. never created software in exchange of money.
Re: Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
In a prior ruling, the court stated that Anthropic didn't train on the books subject to this settlement. The record is that Anthropic scanned physical books and used those for training. The pirated books were being held in a general purpose library and were not, according to the record, used in training.
That is something which is extremely difficult to prove from either side. It is 500,000 books in total so did they really scan all those books instead of using the pirated versions? Even when they did not have much money in the early phases of the model race?
The 500,000 number is the number of books that are part of the settlement. If they downloaded all of Libgen and the other sources it was more like >7Million. But it is a lot of work to determine which books can legitimately be part of the lawsuit. For example, if any of the books in the download weren't copyright (think self published) or not protected under US copyright law (maybe a book only published in Venezula) or it isn't clear who own the copyright then that copyright owner cannot be part of the class. So it seems like the 500,000 number is basically the smaller number of books for which the lawyers for the plaintiff felt they could most easily prove standing.