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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

#481
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?

Yes! Training and generation are fair use. You are free to train and generate whatever you want in your basement for whatever purpose you see fit. Build a music collection, go ham. If the output from said model uses the voice of another person, for example, we already have a legal framework in place for determining if it is infringing on their rights, independent of AI. Courts have heard cases of individual artists c…

> Yes!

But Suno is definitely not training models in their basement for fun.

They are a private company selling music, using music made by humans to train their models, to replace human musicians and artists.

We'll see what the courts say but that doesn't sound like fair use.

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

#482
post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This part of the ruling is pretty much existing law. If you have a physical book (or own a digital copy of a book), you can largely do what you like with it within the confines of your own home, including digitising it. But you are not allowed to distribute those digital copies to others, nor are you allowed to download other people's digital copies that you don't own the rights to. Can you point me to the US Supre…

It is “established” law because the Copyright Act itself and a string of unanimous or near-unanimous appellate decisions (google ReDigi on digital transfers and Sony and the first-sale for personal use and physical lending) uniformly apply the same principles, leaving no circuit split and no conflicting precedent for the Supreme Court to resolve. In the U.S. system statutory text interpreted consistently by the Court…

Sony v. Universal is a Supreme Court case, but that's the one where they say that sort of thing is fair use rather than that it isn't. ReDigi isn't a Supreme Court case, and it seems rather inconsistent with the Sony case which is. To claim uniformity you'd then need all the other circuit courts coming to the same conclusion rather than just not having had any relevant cases there yet, but is that the case?

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

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Is that why the biggest source of income for musicians these days are live shows? Streaming basically killed recording income for 99.9999% of musicians.

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

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The > Statutory damages were added to reduce the burden on plaintiffs. Which encourages people to stay in line. It encourages people to not spend a lot of resources speculating about damages. That doesn't mean you need the amount to be punitive rather than compensatory.

Agree that a photo of a celebrity and a film containing that celebrity shouldn't have the same number. But a large punitive number in the context of willful infringement seems right to me. And in practice it's all negotiated down anyway, as evidenced by Internet Archive's fourth 30-day stay of its pending $600+ million lawsuit.

"In practice it's negotiated down anyway" is precisely the issue. If they bring a questionable case against you and you think there's a significant chance you could win, but then there's a small chance you get bankrupted, there is unreasonable pressure for you to settle even if the plaintiffs are in the wrong.

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

#485

The important parts: > Alsup ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its AI models was "exceedingly transformative" and qualified as fair use > "All Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies…

How times change .They wanted to lock up Aaron Schwartz for life for essentially doing the same thing Anthropic is doing.

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

#486

It’s easy to point fingers at others. Meanwhile the top comment in this thread links to stolen content from Business Insider.

Best godamn comment in this whole thread. Now we can have fun reading the the mental gymnastics !

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is copyright in America different to Britain? There, it is legal to download books you don't own. Only distribution is a crime, which most torrenters break by seeding.

What do you mean by 'it is legal'? Do you mean: A) It's not a criminal offence? B) The copyright owner cannot file a civil suit for damages? C) Something else?

> Only distribution is a crime

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

#488

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…

Seeing as (a) is true in the US Supreme Court, it's probably at least as true in the lower courts.

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

#489

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…

Is copyright in America different to Britain? There, it is legal to download books you don't own. Only distribution is a crime, which most torrenters break by seeding.

I think it's very similar in both countries, but you have got it wrong. Downloading a book without permission is copyright infringement in both countries, regardless of whether you distribute it.

In the UK it's a criminal offense if you distribute a copyrighted work with the intent to make gain or with the expectation that the owner will make a loss.

Gain and loss are only financial in this context.

Meaning that in both countries the copyright owner can sue you for copyright infringement.

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by 'it is legal'? Do you mean: A) It's not a criminal offence? B) The copyright owner cannot file a civil suit for damages? C) Something else?

> Only distribution is a crime

Only distribution with the intent to make money is a crime. If you are doing it for free you are not criminally liable. Unless I am missing something.
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