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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

#531

Post by MrJohz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #462
MrJohz wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot point to the case, because my entire knowledge about the legality of this stuff comes from vaguely following the articles about this case. But feel free to read the judgement in this case where it will be spelled out in much more detail. Also, I don't quite understand how your example is relevant to the case. If you give a book to a friend, they are now the owner of that book and can do what they like with i…

> If you give a book to a friend, they are now the owner of that book and can do what they like with it. We're talking about lending rather than ownership transfers, though of course you could regard lending as a sort of ownership transfer with an agreement to transfer it back later. > If you photocopy that book and give them the photocopy, they are not the owner of the book and you have reproduced it without permiss…

You are talking about lending, but I'm not really sure why because it's not that relevant to the case.

If you photocopy a single page from a library book, this is often (but not always) fair use because you're copying only a limited part of the book. In the same way, you can quote a section or paragraph of a book under fair use. You cannot copy the whole book, though. Therefore:

> Even if the copy they make falls under fair use and the person who does own that copy of the book has no objection to their doing this?

If the copy had been made under fair use, then yes, this wouldn't be illegal. But it wasn't, because it was a reproduction and distribution of the entire book by someone who did not have the right to do that.

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

#532

Post by greenie_beans »

something i've been trying to reconcile: i buy a cheap used book on biblio and i'm morally ok even though the writer doesn't get paid. but if i pirate the book, then i'm wrong for that because the writer doesn't get paid?

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

#533

Post by downrightmike »

admissionsguy wrote: post #203
downrightmike wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, piracy sounds better than copyright violation. “Piracy” is mostly a rhetorical term in the context of copyright. Legally, it’s still called infringement or unauthorized copying. But industries and lobbying groups (e.g., RIAA, MPAA) have favored “piracy” for its emotional weight.

Does piracy have negative connotations? I thought everyone thought pirates were cool

Really that is just the hollywood version of pirates

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

#534

Post by johnnyanmac »

conradev wrote: post #515
pier25 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

My understanding is that Suno does not sell music , but instead makes a tool for musicians to generate music and sells access to this tool . The law doesn't distinguish between basement and cloud – it's a service. You can sell access to the service without selling songs to consumers.

That doesn't seem to track in my mind. So you can't sell music but you can sell 10 second snippets of music you pirated? It doesn't math out.

But i guess I'm not surprised that 2025 has little respect for artists.

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

#535

Post by johnnyanmac »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #381
dmd wrote: post #340

Earlier 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…

They can. That's how any media service from Spotify to Netflix to Audible have to do things.

They simply don't want to and think they can skirt the law while the judges catch up.

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

#536

Post by AlotOfReading »

travoc wrote: post #526
AlotOfReading wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just checked first individual suit I could find, which was BMG v. Gonzalez. She used P2P, but the case was specifically about her downloading , not redistributing.

Most P2P tools work in a way where you cannot download without simultaneously uploading.

Which is beside the point if the plaintiffs don't claim it as an issue. Take the anthropic opinion in the article, where the judge explicitly calls out that there's an unresolved question of whether the model outputs might be infringing that can't be ruled on because the plaintiffs only talk about the inputs.

Gonzalez is a ruling about downloading even though there was also distribution.

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

#537

Post by johnnyanmac »

Aeolun wrote: post #518
exe34 wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is literally why a lot of people pirate content, yes. It’s pretty much always the only way to obtain the content, even if you are otherwise fine with paying for it.

Yes, and it's technically copyright infringement, even for private use. It's just that damages and enforcement is in feasible.

But if you tried to open a black market selling that media: you'd be hunted down to the ends of the earth. Or to China/North Korea, at least.

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

#538

Post by johnnyanmac »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #501
freejazz wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So for example, if the bookstore has a nice 4k surveillance camera and you have access to it because you work there, sitting at home and using it to look at the cover art on all the books on display is something you'd expect to be sued over?

Probably not sued, but it's possible Le to be. They'd probably just fire you instead.

Having access to a camera doesn't permit you to take the footage home to review.The company still owns that footage, after all.

Now, if you had your own camera recording everything at your desk... I guess that falls into one or two party states.

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

#539

Post by johnnyanmac »

freejazz wrote: post #411
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #381

Earlier 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…

> and that kind of efficiency loss is the sort of thing fair use exists to prevent. No it's not. And you ever heard of a publishing house? They don't need to negotiate with every single author individually. That's preposterous.

>They don't need to negotiate with every single author individually.

Yeah they do. What do you think the employees of a publishing house do? They make deals, work with authors, and accept/reject pitches. They 100% need to make sure every work is under a negotiated contract.

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

#540

Post by jpalawaga »

impossiblefork wrote: post #441
jpalawaga wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you assume only way people are obtaining the media is by unlicensed reproduction, then it doesn’t matter.

Big if. Practically, the movie studios aren’t poor because their product has instances of infringement.

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