Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 686 posts

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

#441

Post by impossiblefork »

jpalawaga wrote: post #421
impossiblefork wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this special infinite-land-land though, what's special about the farmer's land is that he's expended energy to make it that way, just as the author has expended energy to find his text. Just as the farmer obtains his livelihood from the investment-of-energy-to-raise-crops-to-energy cycle the author has his livelihood by the investment-of-energy-to-finding-a-useful-work-to-energy cycle. So he is in fact robbed in…

You're saying that a copy of a digital thing is the same as the "only" of a physical thing. But that's not true. You can't sell grain twice, but you can sell a movie many times (especially when you account for format changes, remasterings, platform locks, licensing for special usecases like remixing, broadcasts, etc). You'd have to steal the author's ownership of the intellectual property in order for the comparison…

The difference here though is that the copyright holder sustains himself by the sales of his particular chosen text, so it doesn't matter that the text can be reproduced infinitely.

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

#442

Post by freejazz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #432
recursive wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to glance at the cover art. I can do ten per second when I really get into my flow state. Sometimes I read them also, but that's incidental.

If you go to the book store and glance at all the cover art without buying any of them, do you expect to be sued for this?

If you do that and reproduce the covers or the protected elements thereof, you should absolutely expect to be sued.

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

#443

Post by cmiles74 »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #431
cmiles74 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree, without all the copyrighted input data there would be no output data for these companies to sell. This output data is the product and they are distributing it for dollars.

Copyright is concerned with the the actual physical copy. The model isn't this. The end user would have to carefully prompt the models algorithm to output a copyright infringing piece. This argument is more along the lines of: blaming Microsoft Word for someone typing characters into the word processors algorithm, and outputting a copy of an existing book. (Yes, it is a lot easier, but the rationale is the same). In…

FWIW, I don’t think there is a prompt that would reliably produce, verbatim, a copyrighted work.

I do think that a big part of the reason Anthropic downloaded millions of books from pirate torrents was because they needed that input data in order to generate the output, their product.

I don’t know what that is, but, IMHO, not sharing those dollars with the creators of the content is clearly wrong.

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

#444

Post by zahma »

stocksinsmocks wrote: post #420
bgwalter wrote: post #119

Here is how individuals are treated for massive copyright infringement: https://investors.autodesk.com/news-releases/news-release-de...

Anthropic isn’t selling copies of the material to its users though. I would think you couldn’t lock someone up for reading a book and summarizing or reciting portions of the contents. Seven years for thumbing your nose at Autodesk when armed robbery would get you less time says some interesting things about the state of legal practice.

Except they aren’t merely reading and reciting content, are they? That’s a rather disingenuous argument to make. All these AI companies are high on billions in investment and think they can run roughshod over all rules in the sprint towards monetizing their services.

Make no mistake, they’re seeking to exploit the contents of that material for profits that are orders of magnitude larger than what any shady pirated-material reseller would make. The world looks the other way because these companies are “visionary” and “transformational.”

Maybe they are, and maybe they should even have a right to these buried works, but what gives them the right to rip up the rule book and (in all likelihood) suffer no repercussions in an act tantamount to grand theft?

There’s certainly an argument to be had about whether this form of research and training is a moral good and beneficial to society. My first impression is that the companies are too opaque in how they use and retain these files, albeit for some legitimate reasons, but nevertheless the archival achievements are hidden from the public, so all that’s left is profit for the company on the backs of all these other authors.

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

#446

Post by kbelder »

ohdeargodno wrote: post #407
pier25 wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buying, physically cutting up, physically digitizing books, and using them for training is fair use So Suno would only really need to buy the physical albums and rip them to be able to generate music at an industrial scale?

Only if the physical albums don't have copy protection, otherwise you're circumenventing it and that's illegal. Or is it, against the right to private copy? If anything, AI at least shows that all of the existing copyright laws are utter bullshit made to make Disney happy. Do keep in mind though: this is only for the wealthy. They're still going to send the Pinkertons at your house if you dare copy a Blu-ray.

No, because they can just play the album for the AI to learn. AI training can be set up to exploit the analog hole. Same with images/movies

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

#447

Post by spandrew »

Amazon has been doing this since the 2000's. Fun fact: This is how AWS came about; for them to scale its "LOOK INSIDE!" feature for all the books it was hoovering in an attempt to kill the last benefit the bookstore had over them.

Ie. This is not a big deal. The only difference now is ppl are rapidly frothing to be outraged by the mere sniff of new tech on the horizon. Overton window in effect.

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

#448

Post by bumby »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #422
bumby wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you save it from the bin you should be able to do whatever you want with it either way, scan it how you see fit. Don’t we already have laws covering this? For example, sometimes excess books can be thrown in the bin. Often, they have the covers removed. Some will say something to the effect that “if you’ve received this without a cover it is a copyright violation.” I think one of the points of the lawsuit is it…

Another good point, and it's a fine point as well. You could split hairs over whether saving an item from the bin occurred after a procedure to remove covers and it was already dumped, or before any contemplation was made about if or when dumping would take place. Saving either way would be preserving what would otherwise be lost, even if it was well premeditated in advance of any imminent risk. What if it was the la…

>What if it was the last remaining copy?

Or even the only copy ever in existence of an original manuscript?

I think these still remove the copyright of the author. As it stands, I have the right to write the best novel about the human condition ever conceived and also the right (if copyrighted) to not allow anyone to read it. I can light it on fire if I wish. I am not obligated to sell it to anyone. In the context of the above, I can stipulate that nobody can distribute excess copies even if they would be otherwise destroyed. You may think that’s wasteful or irrational but we have all kinds of rights that protect our ability to do irrational things with our own property.

>That's a very good sign that probably an entire book of regulations needs to be thrown out instead, and a new law written to replace it with something more sensible.

This sentiment implies that you do not think the owner has those rights. That’s fine, but there are plenty of people (myself included) who think those are reasonable rights. Intellectual property clause is in the first article of the US Constitution for a good reason, although I do think it can be abused.

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

#449

Post by freshtake »

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…

If I allegedly train off of your training, which was trained off of copyrighted content under fair use, we're good right?

Just asking for a friend who's into this sort of thing.

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

#450

Post by piker »

kube-system wrote: post #300
natch wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

*technically

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

No, the parent was referring to how someone “was treated”, and it would have been perfectly valid to reference that case to make the same point.

What you’re saying is like calling Al Capone a tax cheat. Nonsense.

They went after Aaron over copyright.

Post reply on HN