Anthropic agrees to pay $1.5B to settle lawsuit with book authors

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:16 AM UTC

amradio1989 wrote: post #329

aeon_ai wrote: post #8

To 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.

I think the jury is still out on how fair use applies to AI. Fair use was not designed for what we have now. I could read a book, but its highly unlikely I could regurgitate it, much less months or years later. An LLM, however, can. While we can say "training is like reading", its also not like reading at all due to permanent perfect recall. Not only does an LLM have perfect recall, it also has the ability to distrib…

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:20 AM UTC

safety1st wrote: post #382

aeon_ai wrote: post #8

To 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.

Nevertheless, a crime is a crime. I'm so over this shift in America's business model. Original Silicon Valley model, and generally the engine of American innovation/growth/wealth equality for 200 years: Come up with a cool technology, build it in your garage, get people to fund it and sell it because it's a better mousetrap. New model: Still come up with a cool idea, still get it funded and sold, but the idea involve…

Post by pera » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #293

djoldman wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the settlement doesn't. However, the judge already ruled on the only important piece of this legal proceeding: > Alsup ruled in June that Anthropic made fair use of the authors' work to train Claude...

The ruling also doesn’t establish precedent, because it is a trial court ruling, which is never binding precedent, and under normal circumstances can’t even be cited as persuasive precedent, and the settlement ensures there will be no appellate ruling.

Post by heavyset_go » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:31 AM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #178

hamdingers wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hem and haw about metaphorical "book burning" so much we forget that books themselves are not actually precious. The books that are destroyed in scanning are a small minority compared to the millions discarded by libraries every year for simply being too old or unpopular.

>we forget that books themselves are not actually precious. Book burnings are symbolic (Unless you're in the world of Fareinheit 451). The real power comes from the political threat, not the fact that paper with words on them is now unreadable.

Post by whatever1 » Sat, Sep 06, 2025, 5:35 AM UTC