Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude • Hacker News Board

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#481

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 2:56 PM UTC

aetherspawn wrote: post #349

davidguetta wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

copyright is bullshit

Copyright is what stops someone from copy+pasting a book that took years to write, then selling it $1 cheaper than the original author on Amazon or whatever and making a margin 1 million percent higher than the original author. Imagine a society without copyright… only physically intensive jobs could make money because everything else would be pirated, ripped-off or free. Thus, only those who are financially independ…

It's funny because copyright only benefits the rich now. Record labels hold all the copyright to songs, same with publishers for books, Disney made sure it lasts over a hundred years. The days of copyright being held by individuals in any real sense is long gone.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#482

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

deaton wrote: post #465

Lerc wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, perhaps I should have said There needs to be a way to support the creation of art.

Great, that way is called copyright. The author has the right to control who has the rights to distribute their work, and can require compensation in exchange for that right; what economists refer to as "selling".

People have been paid artists before copyright even existed, what some might call patronage.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#483

Post by jcelerier » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

economistbob wrote: post #433

jcelerier wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it was a crime to run your own unregistered taxi service in many places until uber came and the laws changed to adapt

They did not change the laws. The rich tribe guy ignored them and they let him off just like the Anthropic guy. They did not change the laws. The old businesses just folded and the new ones via unlicensed independent contractors made cottage industries out of small scale fraud and tax evasion. How many Uber drivers can show their local business license for every town they pick people up in? How many have sales tax ac…

> They did not change the laws.

yes they did?

in Québec: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/uber-is-officially-a...

in France: loi Thévenoud and Grandguillaume (which were the follow up to negociations between the french gov' and uber), etc.

other countries are the same around the same period, e.g. https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act... etc etc

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#484

Post by consensus1 » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 2:57 PM UTC

tarnith wrote: post #464

flir wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever "training" is, if you can't persuade the machine to spit substantially the same text back out verbatim, it's clearly not something that falls under copy right law either, because there's no copy. Yes, for some texts that's possible. But for the vast majority, it is not.

Can you cite any information on this not being possible for the vast majority? Or is it simply that the correct prompt hasn't been written for all possible cases? I also fail to see the difference if logic/harnessing is added around a vector database that can output the complete corpus, but simply is instructed not to. It very clearly is still compressing the information into the vector weights, and then recovering t…

You are asking to prove a negative. But even assuming that the model is capable of returning every bit of its training data verbatim (a mathematical impossibility) that would not be enough as mere capability is insufficient here. If capability alone were the standard any library that also has a photocopier / scanner would be in violation.

To prove distribution of copyrighted materials it would have to be practical and actually used in the wild by people to circumvent copyright and generate copies of those works. Again, I can't prove a negative, but that isn't the standard, and nobody has shown a practical exploit here.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#485

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 2:58 PM UTC

andsoitis wrote: post #414

skinfaxi wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it did enable a lot of good work to happen. How do we know that when we don't have a copy of the world without this regime? How much more and greater works could have been produced without such a repressive system? A really successful work becomes part of the culture, and remixing, derivatives and other modes of integrating cultural artifacts are prohibited. Why should we allow corporations to own our culture?

You’re arguing that freely remixing original work will give rise to greatness that’s even better than original work?

Yes? I don't understand how this is even a question, this is exactly how it worked throughout human history.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#486

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 2:59 PM UTC

deaton wrote: post #468

skinfaxi wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it did enable a lot of good work to happen. How do we know that when we don't have a copy of the world without this regime? How much more and greater works could have been produced without such a repressive system? A really successful work becomes part of the culture, and remixing, derivatives and other modes of integrating cultural artifacts are prohibited. Why should we allow corporations to own our culture?

Go read a few fanfics and tell me you still think that theres added value.

Quite rich coming from a creator apparently, only certain creations are deemed worthy by you, seems like it invalidates your entire stance on the sanctity of art that all these pro-copyright people seem to hold.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#487

Post by thayne » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

smolder wrote: post #338

phire wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This settlement has basically nothing to do with LLMs. At least not as far as the courts are concerned. Alsup ruled [0] that feeding a book into an LLM is transformative and counts as fair use. Especially when they purchased a physical copy of the book, scanned it, and destroyed the original. But if I'm reading the ruling correctly, Anthropic might have been fine even with feeding pirated books into their LLM (as lon…

As far as I'm concerned, the courts are wrong, and training on ill gotten copyrighted material is not fair use. Given the clear value of highly trained LLMs, the investment they have taken on, and the amount of disruption to the existing economy they stand to make, in a just world, the people who created the training data deserve some level of compensation. I think, in the US, they are very afraid of falling behind C…

IMO, using copyrighted works to train models should only be "fair use", if the models are then released as (at least) open weight, so that the public can benefit from it. (Although as noted by a sibling, this would require a law change, not action by the court).

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#488

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:01 PM UTC

reactordev wrote: post #399

zelphirkalt wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be fine with abandoning copyright ... If it is done for everyone equally, and not just tech giants and VC money businesses get a free pass, while everyone else still has to follow the copyright laws. Lets go ahead and usher in an age of free information and experiencing all forms of human expression for everyone. But lets also come up with a way, to compensate our creative minds and our educators and artists.…

This. Copyright is a flawed system. There can be alternatives that allow more than 1 player to play and not create monopolies. For example. I invent a new method of power washing. I start a power washing business using new tech. I file the tech for patent and copyright-equivalent use. This is then made available to other power wash companies that wish to use the tech and be certified in it so long as a small portion…

Isn't that just...patent licensing? But I agree that it should be a forced outcome so everyone can use it rather than waiting a ridiculous 20 years.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#489

Post by satvikpendem » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

economistbob wrote: post #463

Jensson wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah its wrong in very very similar ways to communism.

What very very similar ways would that be?

I guess they presume it requires on the good will of everyone to live peacefully without violating (non-existent) property laws over, say, robbing you in your sleep.

Re: Judge approves $1.5B Anthropic settlement for pirated books used to train Claude

#490

Post by insanitybit » Wed, Jul 22, 2026, 3:02 PM UTC

skinfaxi wrote: post #402

roysting wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So will you owe life long compensation for all the knowledge you got from books too? How about all the pirated books, music, movies, etc you consumed? When will you set up a life long payment plan to corporations that own these rights, because I have a bridge to sell you if you think any of this settlement will go to any of the people who created anything. I’m guessing you have some kind of imagined idea of some smal…

> So will you owe life long compensation for all the knowledge you got from books too? No because we are people and the laws differ for people, corporations, and machines.

I think people forget that laws are perfectly capable of carving out exceptions, leaving purposeful ambiguity, expressing intent, etc. Yes, humans can have special rules, and very obviously should since laws exist to improve human lives.