They've all done that, it should be obvious by now. Training on just freely available data only gets you so far.
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
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
It's not an issue because it's not what this case was about, as the linked document explicitly states. The Authors did not contest the legality of the model's outputs, only the inputs used in training.
Correct, the New York Times and Disney are suing for the output side. I am going to hazard a guess that you won't be able to circumvent copyright and trademark just because you are using AI. Where that line is has yet to be determined though.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#393Earlier 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.
Generally you don't want laws to work that way. You want to set the penalties so that they discourage violating the law. Setting the penalty to what it would have cost to obey the law in the first place does the opposite.
That's for criminal laws where prosecutorial discretion can then (in principle) be used in borderline cases to prevent unjust outcomes.
If you give people a claim for damages which is an order of magnitude larger than their actual damages, it encourages litigiousness and becomes a vector for shakedowns because the excessive cost of losing pressures innocent defendants to settle even if there was a 90% chance they would have won.
Meanwhile both parties have the incentive to settle in civil cases when it's obvious who is going to win, because a settlement to pay the damages is cheaper than the cost of going to court and then having to pay the same damages anyway. Which also provides a deterrent to doing it to begin with, because even having to pay lawyers to negotiate a settlement is a cost you don't want to pay when it's clear that what you're doing is going to have that result.
And when the result isn't clear, penalizing the defendant in a case of first impression isn't just either, because it wasn't clear and punitive measures should be reserved for instances of unambiguous wrongdoing.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did they really steal if they didn't deprive anyone of their copy? I don't think copying is theft.
It's fine that you think that way. But this is a discusion of the laws of the United States of America and ruling by American courts, not a discussion of your own legal theories.
The GP isn’t talking about some edge case legal dilemma that requires a lawyer or judge to comment. It’s already widely documented that copyright infringement is legally distinct from theft.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#395If ingesting books into an AI makes Anthropic criminals, then Google et al are also criminals alike for making search indexes of the Internet. Anything published online is equally copyrighted.
Exactly! If Anthropic is guilty of copyright infringement for the mere act of downloading copyrighted books then so is Google, Microsoft (Bing), DuckDuckGo, etc. Every search engine that exists downloads pirated material every day. They'd all be guilty.
Not only that but all of us are guilty too because I'm positive we've all clicked on search results that contained copyrighted content that was copied without permission. You may not have even known it was such.
Remember: Intent is irrelevant when it comes to copyright infringement! It's not that kind of law.
Intent can guide a judge when they determine damages but that's about it.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
I love this argument so much. "But judge, there's no way I could ever afford to buy those jewels, so stealing them must be OK."
The argument is more along the lines of, negotiating with millions of individuals each over a single copy of a work would cause the transaction costs to exceed the payments, and that kind of efficiency loss is the sort of thing fair use exists to prevent. It's not socially beneficial for the law to require you to create $2 in deadweight loss in order to transfer $1, and the cost to the author of not selling a single…
That's right, so I can't individually discuss terms with each and every media creator, so from now on, I can just pirate everything.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The music pie is bigger now but it is split between more people. Spotify brings in the most revenue for musicians as a whole.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
The argument is more along the lines of, negotiating with millions of individuals each over a single copy of a work would cause the transaction costs to exceed the payments, and that kind of efficiency loss is the sort of thing fair use exists to prevent. It's not socially beneficial for the law to require you to create $2 in deadweight loss in order to transfer $1, and the cost to the author of not selling a single…
That's right, so I can't individually discuss terms with each and every media creator, so from now on, I can just pirate everything.
Needing a copy of one book you're going to spend a week reading has a lot less overhead than needing a copy of every book that you're going to process with a computer in bulk.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#399If 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?
Where are you reading that?
You are allowed to buy and scan books, and then used those scanned books to create products. I guess you are also allowed to pirate books and use the knowledge to create products if you are willing to pay the damages to the rights holders for copyright violations.
Re: Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge
#400It’s easy to point fingers at others. Meanwhile the top comment in this thread links to stolen content from Business Insider.
How is it stolen from Business Insider? When I visit businessinsider.com/anthropic-cut-pirated-millions-used-books-train-claude-copyright-2025-6 I get the same story. My browser caches the story, and I save it for archival purposes. How is this theft?
BI decides who can access this content and who will get the paywall. The link to archive page allows people to access this content without permission. That’s called stealing.