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

nytimes.com

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

#541

Post by InCom-0 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #381
rchaud wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buying used copies of books, scanning them, and training on it is fine. But nobody was ever going to that, not when there are billions in VC dollars at stake for whoever moves fastest. Everybody will simply risk the fine, which tends to not be anywhere close to enough to have a deterrent effect in the future. That is like saying Uber would have not had any problems if they just entered into a licensing contract wit…

> It was faster to just put unlicensed taxis on the streets and use investor money to pay fines and lobby for favorable legislation And thank god they did. There was no perfectly legal channel to fix the taxi cartel. Now you don't even have to use Uber in many of these places because taxis had to compete - they otherwise never would have stopped pulling the "credit card reader is broken" scam, taking long routes on p…

The supposed 'taxi cartel' were just (some) scummy operators ... not really a cartel. Fast forward to today => you are paying more for what is essentially very similar service (because it literally turned into a monopoly because of network effects) and the money ends up in the pocket of some corporate douche not even the people doing the actual work.

This is the business model: get more money out of customers (because no real alternative) and the drivers (because zero negotiating power). Not to mention that they actually got to that position by literally operating at a loss for over a decade (because venture money). Textbook anti-competitive practices.

However, the idea itself (that is having an app to order taxi) is spectacular. It also something a high-school kid could make in a month in his garage. The actual strength of the business model is the network effects and the anti-competitive practices, not the app or anything having to do with service quality.

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

#542

Post by kelnos »

mantas wrote: post #470
jack_pp wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk how it is in the US but in eastern Europe that's only true if surge is on and even so considering how shitty the quality of service was before Uber it's fine.

And it’s still shitty. Uber/Bolt is like on par with 90s taxis. At least here there was a short attempt to make things better in early 2010s with nicer cars and trying to force drivers to be nicer. But then it was „disrupted“.

I far, far, far prefer Uber (or Lyft, in the US) wherever I am, over whatever local taxi service there is. Yes, the quality of cars varies a lot. Yes, you never know if you're going to get a quiet driver or a way-too-talkative one.

But I know what I'm going to pay up-front, can always pay with a credit card (which happens automatically without annoying post-trip payment), the ride is fully tracked, and I can report issues with the driver that I have an expectation will actually be acted upon. And when I'm in another country where there are known to be taxis that scam foreigners, Uber is a godsend.

Yes, pre-Uber taxis were expensive and crappy, and even if Uber is expensive now, it's not crappy; it's actually worth the price. And I'm not convinced Uber is even that expensive. We always forget to account for inflation... sure, we might today say, "that ride in a taxi used to cost $14, but in an Uber it costs $18". But that ride in a taxi was 15 years ago.

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

#543

Post by mkl »

Onavo wrote: post #18
therobots927 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is related to scalable mode training, however. Chopping the spine off books and putting the pages in an automated scanner is not scalable. And don't forget about the cost of 1) finding 2) purchasing 3) processing and 4) recycling that volume of books.

> Chopping the spine off books and putting the pages in an automated scanner is not scalable. That's how Google Books, the Internet Archive, and Amazon (their book preview feature) operated before ebooks were common. It's not scalable-in-a-garage but perfectly scalable for a commercial operation.

No, that's not how Google Books did it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books#Scanning_of_books

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

#544

Post by _heimdall »

Lu2025 wrote: post #373
_heimdall wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you describe is in fact what Waymo has had, of chosen to, deal with. They didn't go for an end run around regulations related to vehicles on public roads. They committed to driverless vehicles and worked with local governments to roll it out as quickly as regulators were willing to allow. Uber could have made the same decision and worked with regulators to be allowed into markets one at a time. It was an intenti…

I think the difference between Waymo and Uber is risk level. Maybe Waymo would like to skirt regulations but they won't be allowed to by citizens and officials alike.

Waymo could likely have done something similar to Tesla. Pay a licensed driver to sit behind the wheel and claim the car only has driver assist. That likely would have worked long enough to gain traction and leverage to pressure a green light for full driverless mode.

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

#545

Post by kelnos »

utyop22 wrote: post #523
ghiculescu wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all those countries what’s illegal is abuse of a monopoly, which is not what’s being discussed here. The parent cited Uber and Lyft when they first started. Nothing is illegal about startups undercutting established competitors.

No you’re missing the point. They acquired market power by killing them through predatory pricing, leaving incumbents unprofitable and forcing them to exit - while creating a steep barrier to entry for any new comers and strategically manipulating existing riders by offering high take rates initially and subsidising rides to create artificial demand and inflate market share - then once they kicked out the incumbents,…

I get why we look on Uber with disdain today. They're the big rich behemoths who treat drivers poorly, previously had a CEO who was a raging asshole, and have now raised their prices (gasp!) to a level that they need to be for a sustainable business.

But I remember when I started using Uber back in 2012. It was amazing compared to every single other option out there. Yes, they entered the market in questionably-legal or often probably outright illegal ways. But illegal is not the same thing as immoral. And I don't think it's unethical to force out competition when that competition is a lazy, shitty, legally-enforced monopoly that treats its customers poorly.

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

#546

Post by mdp2021 »

tene80i wrote: post #440
petralithic wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Piracy is not stealing. I don't know why everyone on HN suddenly turned into a copyright hawk, only big companies benefit from our current copyright regime, like Disney and their lobbying for increasing its length.

It’s very funny when people declare “piracy isn’t stealing”, as if the metaphor of piracy is all about singing and drinking. Copying and distributing works isn’t identical to theft (deliberately depriving someone of their property), but you’re enjoying someone’s work without compensating them, so it isn’t totally unlike depriving them of something . I guess it depends how you feel about refusing to pay a window washe…

> you’re enjoying someone’s work without compensating them

Which is foreseen in societal decision: libraries (again and again).

> refusing to pay a window washer

The window washer is providing a service for a price, that service is not equivalent to knowledge production, and nobody has decided that that service (cleaning windows) should be done for free.

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

#547

Post by kelnos »

silisili wrote: post #512
33MHz-i486 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i dont know that its such a great thing in the end. Uber/Lyft is 50-100% more expensive now than taxis were before. Theyre entrenched in different ways.

Uber did a great job convincing lay people that taxis were ripoffs and they were a good deal. For some time that was probably true. Now, I see people at the airport walk over to the pickup lot, joining a crowd of others furiously messing with their phones while scanning the area for presumably their driver. All the while the taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door were $2 more expensive, last time I checked.

I mean, that seems pretty unfair, no, giving one set of transportation companies an arbitrary advantage over another? This sort of thing is exactly why Uber started in the first place: because taxis had unfair monopolistic advantages for no particular reason, and gave customers a poor experience, because they knew they didn't have to do better to keep their jobs.

I have no idea what I'm going to get with those taxis waiting immediately outside the exit door. Even in my home country, at the airport next to my city, I have no idea. I know exactly what I'm getting with an Uber/Lyft, every time. That's valuable to me.

I was just in another country a couple months ago, and when trying to leave the airport, I was confused where I'd need to go in order to get an Uber. I foolishly gave up and went for one of those "conveniently-waiting" taxis, where I was quoted a price up-front, in my home currency, that I later (after doing the currency conversion on the Uber price) realized was a ripoff. The driver also aggressively tried to get me to instead rent his "friend's car" rather than take me to the rental car place like I asked. And honestly I consider that lucky: he didn't try to kidnap me or threaten me in any way, but I was tense during the whole ride, wondering if something bad was going to happen.

That sort of thing isn't an anomaly; it happens all the time to tourists in many countries.

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

#549

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

InCom-0 wrote: post #541
jimmaswell wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was faster to just put unlicensed taxis on the streets and use investor money to pay fines and lobby for favorable legislation And thank god they did. There was no perfectly legal channel to fix the taxi cartel. Now you don't even have to use Uber in many of these places because taxis had to compete - they otherwise never would have stopped pulling the "credit card reader is broken" scam, taking long routes on p…

The supposed 'taxi cartel' were just (some) scummy operators ... not really a cartel. Fast forward to today => you are paying more for what is essentially very similar service (because it literally turned into a monopoly because of network effects) and the money ends up in the pocket of some corporate douche not even the people doing the actual work. This is the business model: get more money out of customers (becaus…

Classic indications of a cartel (in the economic sense) are deliberate limitations of supply and fixing of prices through collusion. I don’t know about other cities, but NYC absolutely had a taxi cartel.

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

#550

Post by kelnos »

godelski wrote: post #469
miohtama wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This lawsuit also makes sure that only parties that can train an AI with good enough training material are now - Google - Anthropic - Any Chinese company who do not care about copyright laws What is the cost of buying and scanning books? Copyright law needs to be fixed and its ridiculous hundred years tenure chopped away.

From TFA > Anthropic also agreed to delete the pirated works it downloaded and stored. Also > As part of the settlement, Anthropic said that it did not use any pirated works to build A.I. technologies that were publicly released.

That's not really the point, though, is it? Now Anthropic can afford to buy books and get them scanned. They likely didn't have the money or time to do that before.

And even if they didn't use the illegally-obtained work to train any of the models they released, of course they used them to train unreleased prototypes and to make progress at improving their models and training methods.

By engaging in illegal activity, they advanced their business faster and more cheaply than they otherwise would have been able to. With this settlement, other new AI companies will see it on the record that they could face penalties if they do this, and will have to go the slower, more expensive route -- if they can even afford to do so.

It might not make it impossible, but it makes the moat around the current incumbents just that much wider.

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