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

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

#291

Post by xdennis » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

adolph wrote: post #253

organsnyder wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic is selling a service that incorporates these pirated works.

That a service incorporating the authors' works exists is not at issue. The plaintiffs' claims are, as summarized by Alsup: First, Authors argue that using works to train Claude’s underlying LLMs was like using works to train any person to read and write, so Authors should be able to exclude Anthropic from this use (Opp. 16). Second, to that last point, Authors further argue that the training was intended to memorize…

> That a service incorporating the authors' works exists is not at issue.

It's not an issue because it's not currently illegal because nobody could have foreseen this years ago.

But it is profiting off of the unpaid work of millions. And there's very little chance of change because it's so hard to pass new protection laws when you're not Disney.

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

#292

Post by jandrese » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #209

ramon156 wrote: post #10

Pirate and pay the fine is probably hell of a lot cheaper than individually buying all these books. I'm not saying this is justified, but what would you have done in their situation? Sayi "they have the money" is not an argument. It's about the amount of effort that is needed to individually buy, scan, process millions of pages. If that's done for you, why re-do it all?

> Pirate and pay the fine is probably hell of a lot cheaper than individually buying all these books. $500,000 per infringement...

And the crazy thing is that might be cheaper when you consider the alternative is to have your lawyers negotiate with the lawyers for the publishing companies for the right to use the works as training data. Not only is it many many billable hours just to draw up the contract, but you can be sure that many companies would either not play ball or set extremely high rates. Finally, if the publishing companies did bring a suit against Anthropic they might be asked to prove each case of infringement, basically to show that a specific work was used in training, which might be difficult since you can't reverse a model to get the inputs. When you're a billion dollar company it's much easier to get the courts to take your side. This isn't like the music companies suing teenagers who had a Kazaa account.

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

#293

Post by rockemsockem » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #256

throwawayffffas wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So all they have to do is go and buy a copy of each book they pirated. They will have ceased and desisted.

> So all they have to do is go and buy a copy of each book they pirated. No, that doesn't undo the infringement. At most, that would mitigate actual damages, but actual damages aren't likely to be important, given that statutory damages are an alternative and are likely to dwarf actual damages. (It may also figure into how the court assigns statutory damages within the very large range available for those, but that r…

> So all they have to do is go and buy a copy of each book they pirated.

For anyone else who wants to do the same thing though this is likely all they need to do.

Cutting up and scanning books is hard work and actually doing the same thing digitally to ebooks isn't labor free either, especially when they have to be downloaded from random sites and cleaned from different formats. Torrenting a bunch of epubs and paying for individual books is probably cheaper

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

#294

Post by badlibrarian » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:39 PM UTC

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #287

superfrank wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to find the quote, but I'm pretty sure the judge specifically said that going and buying the book after the fact won't absolve them of liability. He said that for the books they pirated they broke the law and should stand trial for that and they cannot go back and un-break in by buying a copy now. Found it: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/federal-judge-rules-c... > “That Anthropic later bought a cop…

Did they really steal if they didn't deprive anyone of their copy? I don't think copying is theft.

"Tell it to the Judge..."

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

#295

Post by CaptainFever » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

platunit10 wrote: post #284

Every time an article like this surfaces, it always seems like the majority of tech folks believe that training AI on copyrighted material is NOT fair use, but the legal industry disagrees. Which of the following are true? (a) the legal industry is susceptible to influence and corruption (b) engineers don't understand how to legally interpret legal text (c) AI tech is new, and judges aren't technically qualified to d…

> Every time an article like this surfaces, it always seems like the majority of tech folks believe that training AI on copyrighted material is NOT fair use

Where are you getting your data from? My conclusions are the exact opposite.

(Also, aren't judges by definition the only ones qualified to declare if it is actually fair use? You could make a case that it shouldn't be fair use, but that's different from it being not fair use.)

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

#296

Post by redcobra762 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

platunit10 wrote: post #284

Every time an article like this surfaces, it always seems like the majority of tech folks believe that training AI on copyrighted material is NOT fair use, but the legal industry disagrees. Which of the following are true? (a) the legal industry is susceptible to influence and corruption (b) engineers don't understand how to legally interpret legal text (c) AI tech is new, and judges aren't technically qualified to d…

It's not likely you've actually gotten the opinion of the "majority of tech folks", just the most outspoken ones, and only in specific bubbles you belong to.

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

#297

Post by kjkjadksj » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:40 PM UTC

zoklet-enjoyer wrote: post #287

superfrank wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying to find the quote, but I'm pretty sure the judge specifically said that going and buying the book after the fact won't absolve them of liability. He said that for the books they pirated they broke the law and should stand trial for that and they cannot go back and un-break in by buying a copy now. Found it: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/federal-judge-rules-c... > “That Anthropic later bought a cop…

Did they really steal if they didn't deprive anyone of their copy? I don't think copying is theft.

You may not think it is but the law does.

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

#298

Post by rockemsockem » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:41 PM UTC

arandomhuman wrote: post #260

rvnx wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least, they should have purchased the originals once

Yeah, people have gone to jail for a few copies of content. Taking that large of a corpus and getting off without penalty would be a farce of the justice system.

Bad decisions should not be repeated in the name of fair application.

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

#299

Post by kube-system » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:43 PM UTC

arandomhuman wrote: post #257

dialup_sounds wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swartz wasn't charged with copyright infringement.

No but he coincidentally passed away after he was accused of it.

No, the CFAA was the law that had him facing 35 years in prison and $1m+ fines. It wasn't a copyright case.

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

#300

Post by kube-system » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 5:44 PM UTC

natch wrote: post #188

dialup_sounds wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swartz wasn't charged with copyright infringement.

*technically

If you're discussing law, an entirely different law in a different title of US code is more than a technicality.