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

#341

Post by adolph » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

xdennis wrote: post #291

adolph wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Marx wrote The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an Alp on the brains of the living. and that would be true if one were obligated to pay the full freight of one's antecedents. The more positive truth is that the brains of the living reach new heights from that Alp and build ever new heights for those who come afterwards.

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

#342

Post by Bjorkbat » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #261

Bjorkbat wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, th…

Personally I think a more effective analogy would be if someone used a textbook and created an online course / curriculum effective enough that colleges stop recommending the purchase of said textbook. It's honestly pretty difficult to imagine a movie having a meaningful impact on the sale of textbooks since they're required for high school / college courses.

So here's the thing, I don't think a textbook author going against a purveyor of online courseware has much of a chance, nor do I think it should have much of a chance, because it probably lacks meaningful proof that their works made a contribution to the creation of the courseware. Would I feel differently if the textbook author could prove in court that a substantial amount of their material contributed to the creation of the courseware, and when I say "prove" I mean they had receipts to prove it? I think that's where things get murky. If you can actually prove that your works made a meaningful contribution to the thing that you're competing against, then maybe you have a point. The tricky part is defining meaningful. An individual author doesn't make a meaningful contribution to the training of an LLM, but a large number of popular and/or prolific numbers can.

You bring up a good point, interpretation of fair use is difficult, but at the end of the day I really don't think we should abolish copyright and IP altogether. I think it's a good thing that creative professionals have some security in knowing that they have legal protections against having to "compete against themselves"

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

#343

Post by eikenberry » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

TimorousBestie wrote: post #15

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?

150K per work is the maximum fine for willful infringement (which this is). 105B+ is more than Anthropic is worth on paper. Of course they’re not going to be charged to the fullest extent of the law, they’re not a teenager running Napster in the early 2000s.

Plus they did it with a profit motive which would entail criminal proceedings.

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

#344

Post by KoolKat23 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

hinterlands wrote: post #126

KoolKat23 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that these "small things" are not necessarily small if you're an individual. If you're an individual pirating software or media, then from the rights owners' perspective, the most rational thing to do is to make an example of you. It doesn't happen everyday, but it does happen and it can destroy lives. If you're a corporation doing the same, the calculation is different. If you're small but growing, fu…

I agree, that was the point I was trying to make. It seems small but until the business is up and running at sufficient scale, the costs can be insurmountable.

And the system set up by society doesn't truly account for this or care.

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

#345

Post by blocko » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #217

pyman wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with this thinking is that hundreds of thousands of teachers who spent years writing great, useful books and sharing knowledge and wisdom probably won't sue a billion dollar company for stealing their work. What they'll likely do is stop writing altogether. I'm against Anthropic stealing teacher's work and discouraging them from ever writing again. Some teachers are already saying this (though probably no…

Stealing? In what way? Training a generative model on a book is the mechanical equivalent of having a human read the book and learn from it. Is it stealing if a person reads the book and learns from it?

Depends on how closely that person can reproduce the original work without license or attribution

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

#346

Post by KoolKat23 » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #197

KoolKat23 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Only once chatgpt 3.5 was released...

Other industries do not have it this easy.

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

#347

Post by FirmwareBurner » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

benced wrote: post #206

dathinab wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not just Spotify pretty much any (most?) current tech giant was build by - riding a wave of change - not caring too much about legal constraints (or like they would say now "distrupting" the market, which very very often means doing illigal shit which beings them far more money then any penalties they will ever face from it) - or caring about ethics too much - and for recent years (starting with Amazone) a lot of tec…

As you point out, they mostly did this before they were large companies (where the public choice questions are less problematic). Seems like the breaking of these laws was good for everybody.

>Seems like the breaking of these laws was good for everybody.

Are all music creators better off now than before Spotify?

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

#348

Post by kube-system » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

pyman wrote: 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.

> Stealing is stealing. Let's stop with the double standards.

I get the sentiment, but that statement as is, is absurdly reductive. Details matter. Even if someone takes merchandise from a store without paying, their sentence will vary depending on the details.

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

#349

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

TimorousBestie wrote: post #15

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?

150K per work is the maximum fine for willful infringement (which this is). 105B+ is more than Anthropic is worth on paper. Of course they’re not going to be charged to the fullest extent of the law, they’re not a teenager running Napster in the early 2000s.

> 150K per work is the maximum fine for willful infringement

No, its not.

It's the maximum statutory damages for willful infringement, which this has not be adjudicated to be. it is not a fine, its an alternative to basis of recovery to actual damages + infringers profits attributable to the infringement.

Of course, there's also a very wide range of statutory damages, the minimum (if it is not "innocent" infringement) is $750/work.

> 105B+ is more than Anthropic is worth on paper.

The actual amount of 7 million works times $150,000/work is $1.05 trillion, not $105 billion.

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

#350

Post by CaptainFever » Mon, Jul 07, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #304

codedokode wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downloading and using pirated software in a company is fine then as long as it is not shared outside? If what you describe is legal it makes no sense to pay for software.

> Downloading a document is fine as long as it is not shared outside? I've fixed your question so that it accurately represents what I said and doesn't put words in my mouth. If I click on a link and download a document, is that illegal? I do not know if the person has the right to distribute it or not. IANAL, but when people were getting sued by the RIAA years back, it was never about downloading, but also distribut…

> it was never about downloading, but also distribution.

Did you mean to write "but about distribution" here?