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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

#561

Post by bombcar »

homebrewer wrote: post #541
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…

I used to order books in English from the US before shipping costs became prohibitive and the cost of shipping the book went to about twice to thrice the cost of the book itself. Is it fair use for me to download books from Anna's Archive now considering that books in English are not available in my region through other means (including the vast majority of ebooks)? Rhetorical question, we all know that me reading bo…

What’s more interesting to me is if you can hire someone in the US to buy the book for you, cut the spine off with a bandsaw, and send you the scans and destroy the pages afterwards.

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

#562

Post by pyman »

azangru wrote: post #171
pyman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should ask the teachers who spent years writing those books.

You keep saying the word "teachers"; but that word does not appear in the text of the article. Why focus on the teachers in particular? Also, there are various incentives for teachers to publish books. Money is just one of them (I wonder how much revenue books bring to the teachers). Prestige and academic recognition is another. There are probably others still. How realistic is the depiction of a deprived teacher who…

I can only speak for myself, my family, and colleagues, but it's not just teachers. Plenty of other professionals are being affected too.

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

#563

Post by bombcar »

Aeolun wrote: post #545
johnnyanmac wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But if you tried to open a black market selling that media Why would you ever do that? Nobody would buy it. They'd just get it in the same place you did.

You’d be surprised, almost any flea market/swap meet will still have bootleg DVDs and “PlayStation 2s” preloaded with a billion games.

Everyone can out a disk in a DVD player; sailing the high seas is much trickier.

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

#564

Post by pyman »

zb3 wrote: post #239
pyman wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should ask the teachers who spent years writing those books.

I did not ask them to write those books, and I wouldn't buy those.

Doesn't make sense what you said. If you're using AI, you might be benefiting from my books, whether you realise it or not.

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

#565

Post by codedokode »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #490
irthomasthomas wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Any distribution of copyrighted material can cause you a big trouble.

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

#566

Post by codedokode »

whycome wrote: post #322
xdennis wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's abusive and wrong to try and prevent AI companies from using your works at all. People don't view moral issues in the abstract. A better perspective on this is the fact that human individuals have created works which megacorps are training on for free or for the price of a single book and creating models which replace individuals. The megacorps are only partially replacing individuals now, but when the models…

> A better perspective on this is the fact that human individuals have created works which megacorps are training on for free or for the price of a single book and creating models which replace individuals. Those damn kind readers and libraries. Giving their single copy away when they just paid for the single.

Going to the library and reading a book takes hours while AI companies chew thousands of books per second. It's different scale.

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

#567

Post by freejazz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #499
badlibrarian wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what a "questionable case" for willful copyright infringement might look like. Or an example where someone was clearly in the right and got screwed. It isn't the debtor's prison era. Four factor test seems to be working, even in this case. Don't love it (it goes against my values and what I need to do in my job) but I get it. Edit: we've triggered HN's patience for this discussion and it's now blocking r…

> I'm not sure what a "questionable case" for willful copyright infringement might look like. You did anything which it's not clear whether it's fair use or not. Willfulness is whether you knew you were doing it, not whether you knew whether it was fair use, which in many cases nobody knows until a court decides it, hence the problem. You have to do it in order to get into court and find out of you're allowed to do i…

What sort of things do you think people do that it is often the case that there is a genuine question of whether or not the use was fair?

>You have to do it in order to get into court and find out of you're allowed to do it (a ridiculous prerequisite to begin with), and then if it goes against you, you have to pay punitive damages?

Nobody made you undertake the questionable fair use. If you're gonna fease, you better not malfease.

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

#568

Post by codedokode »

CaptainFever wrote: post #368
codedokode wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not wrong at all. The author decides what to do with their work. AI companies are rich and can simply buy the rights or hire people to create works. I could agree with exceptions for non-commercial activity like scientific research, but AI companies are made for extracting profits and not for doing research. > AI companies shouldn't pirate, but if they pay for your work, they should be able to use it however th…

> Maybe instead of books we should start making applications that protect the content and do not allow copying text or making screenshots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_hole

That would be "circumvention of DRM".

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

#569

Post by freejazz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #482
op00to wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Do you think that Anthropic did not have the option of getting legal advice before they decided to pirate libraries of books for their own commercial purposes?

I understand that some of these things might be confusing to you, but Anthropic is absolutely within the position of being able to afford attorneys and get good advice as to what they could legally. I hope you also understand that good legal advice isn't being told what you want so you can do the thing you want to do without any regard for what are likely outcomes.

With that in mind, what do you think the inconsistency is between ReDigi and Sony?

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

#570

Post by freejazz »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #539
freejazz wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The publishers could license the works in bulk, without the need for Anthropic to deal with the individual authors. Both sides pointed this out.
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