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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

#601

Post by immibis »

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.

They charge you by the amount of music you get from them. That's selling music. Selling a tool would be if they charge you once, you download the tool, and you can use it on your computer to generate as much music as you want to pay electricity for.

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

#602

Post by x187463 »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #45
pyman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone on Twitter said: "Oh well, P2P mp3 downloads, although illegal, made contributions to the music industry" That's not what's happening here. People weren't downloading music illegally and reselling it on Claude.ai. And while P2P networks led to some great tech, there's no solid proof they actually improved the music industry.

I really feel as if Youtube is the best sort of convenience for music videos where most people watch ads whereas some people can use an ad blocker. I use an adblocker and tbh I think so many people on HN are okay with ad blocking and not piracy when basically both just block the end user from earning money. I kind of believe that if you really like a software, you really like something. Just ask them what their favou…

And somehow actually paying for youtube which fully removes advertising and provides revenue to the service/creators is seen as an utterly absurd proposition by a staggering number of people.

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

#603

Post by js8 »

pyman wrote: post #592
js8 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with this thinking is that hundreds of thousands of teachers who spent years writing great, useful books and sharing knowledge and wisdom probably won't sue a billion dollar company for stealing their work. What they'll likely do is stop writing altogether. I think this is a fantasy. My father cowrote a Springer book about physics. For the effort, he got like $400 and 6 author copies. Now, you might say…

I see where you are coming from: "My 8-yo son can also build websites". Writing books is a profession. Some people write full-time and make a living from it, through book sales, speaking gigs, teaching, or other related work. Maybe ask Tim O’Reilly what he thinks about this so-called fantasy. Like I said, Anthropic needs to stop stealing books or face the consequences.

No you don't see where I am coming from. And my father was a university professor. I am certainly not opposed to authors being fairly remunerated for their work, that's why I brought up that example.

My point is, the controversy is not an AI corporation vs 10^5 ordinary teachers. It's a battle of two corporations, or business models, if you will. But regardless of the result, most of the book authors will continue to get screwed, maybe the means will change. But it will not prevent them from writing, either. So I don't see any mass writers protests coming, sorry.

I also don't think Anthropic AI is going to be any less intelligent if it didn't read any modern fiction book, instead of reading a Wikipedia summary. Stories and myths are a human way of understanding the world, machines probably don't need them. And for non-fiction books - there really isn't that many irreplaceable high-profile authors out there. If it can't read, say, Feynman's Lectures on Physics, it can learn the same from 100s of other physics textbooks. Maybe they are slightly worse organized but why should superintelligence care?

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

#604

Post by bayindirh »

frozenseven wrote: post #244
bayindirh wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I have worded my question wrong. I asked about not about how AI affects the financials of these smaller artists, but their wellbeing in general. There are many small artists who do this not for money, but for fun and have their renowned styles. Even their styles are ripped off by these generative AI companies and turned into a slot machine to earn money for themselves. These artists didn't consent to that, an…

(1) You can't copyright an art style. That's not a thing. (2) Once you make something publicly available, anyone can learn from it. No consent necessary. (3) Being upset does not grant you special privileges under the law. (4) If you don't like the idea of paying for AI art, free software is both plentiful and competitive with just about anything proprietary.

(1) I think I acknowledged that on my last comment before you have written that.

(2) Learning and copying are different. If we're going to enter to the "but AI learns just like humans" realm, let's please don't, because ML tries to mimic human learning, they are not the same, even remotely.

(3) I don't think I said laws behave differently because "some humans are upset".

(4) I haven't told anything about paying for (AI) art. I don't pay for AI art, but I pay for "real" art, made by humans. I also make art sometimes, and don't use AI/ML while doing that, and don't feed models with my art (I stopped sharing on multiple platforms because of that).

(5) If we presume that every law is "correct, right and forever", then we have another name for it. It's called dogma. Moreover, we have other "unwritten" rules which generally support or sometimes supersede the laws in place, and the word for that it "ethics".

(6) Staying in the subject of law, as somebody else noted [0], scale matters. While doing style transfer for a couple of things might be considered legal, that needs a reconsideration when scale reaches to today's levels possible with generative AI.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44468480

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

#605

Post by akimbostrawman »

x187463 wrote: post #602
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really feel as if Youtube is the best sort of convenience for music videos where most people watch ads whereas some people can use an ad blocker. I use an adblocker and tbh I think so many people on HN are okay with ad blocking and not piracy when basically both just block the end user from earning money. I kind of believe that if you really like a software, you really like something. Just ask them what their favou…

And somehow actually paying for youtube which fully removes advertising and provides revenue to the service/creators is seen as an utterly absurd proposition by a staggering number of people.

Maybe because they don't want to reward Google for continuously running Youtube into the ground while still being worse than the free alternatives. Not to mention that they already watering down permium with premium lite, I give it two tears before you need to get premium+ to not see ads.

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

#607

Post by frozenseven »

bayindirh wrote: post #604
frozenseven wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) You can't copyright an art style. That's not a thing. (2) Once you make something publicly available, anyone can learn from it. No consent necessary. (3) Being upset does not grant you special privileges under the law. (4) If you don't like the idea of paying for AI art, free software is both plentiful and competitive with just about anything proprietary.

(1) I think I acknowledged that on my last comment before you have written that. (2) Learning and copying are different. If we're going to enter to the "but AI learns just like humans" realm, let's please don't, because ML tries to mimic human learning, they are not the same, even remotely. (3) I don't think I said laws behave differently because "some humans are upset". (4) I haven't told anything about paying for (…

(1) Did you really? You pivoted to a version of the argument where "scale matters". That's also not a thing. If scale matters, it doesn't in terms of style. You could conceivably make an argument based on competition, but even that is very hard to prove in court.

(2) "Copying", as in verbatim using/memorizing sizeable chunks of content and suchlike? No, the goal of ML training is to generalize across concepts. I didn't make an argument based on some direct connection to neuroscience, but I also reject the idea that there isn't one.

(3) So it's an irrelevant point. Some people are upset about technology? I honestly don't care.

(4) You said that the big bad corporations are making money. I'm saying that FOSS alternatives are all over the place.

(5) That so? My code of ethics says that Luddites getting steamrolled is an immense moral good.

(6) See (1).

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

#608

Post by Greed »

conradev wrote: post #544
pier25 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like arguing that a restaurant doesn't sell food because it sells the service of cooking it.

The restaurant is not responsible for E. coli if it’s found, are they? Just cooking it out of the food Suno can’t prevent humans from copying other humans, it can only make sure that the direct output of its system isn’t infringing.

You may be reaching the limits of the metaphor here, but restaurants are absolutely responsible for the e coli if it's found in significant quantities whether it's in the initial ingredients or the cooked end product. A restaurant is required to vet its suppliers and ensure food safety protocols throughout the entire process with several independent checks at many points, and is ultimately directly responsible if a customer sues. A restaurant does not get to cook bad ingredients well and then point at the supplier. They will find themselves shut down immediately, andpermanently if they do not resolve the situation.

In this context, this would be the equivalent of Suno explicitly placing stop points throughout the training, tokenization, and generation processes to verify that there was absolutely no chance of it generating copyrighted material through some kind of clean room reconstruction test. They would also need those tests to be audited at random by a third party governing body. Obviously they are not doing this, so the metaphor definitely does not track here.

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

#609

Post by tekknik »

pier25 wrote: post #529
conradev wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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's like arguing that a restaurant doesn't sell food because it sells the service of cooking it.

Look up what a cloud kitchen is.

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

#610

Post by bayindirh »

frozenseven wrote: post #607
bayindirh wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) I think I acknowledged that on my last comment before you have written that. (2) Learning and copying are different. If we're going to enter to the "but AI learns just like humans" realm, let's please don't, because ML tries to mimic human learning, they are not the same, even remotely. (3) I don't think I said laws behave differently because "some humans are upset". (4) I haven't told anything about paying for (…

(1) Did you really? You pivoted to a version of the argument where "scale matters". That's also not a thing. If scale matters, it doesn't in terms of style. You could conceivably make an argument based on competition, but even that is very hard to prove in court. (2) "Copying", as in verbatim using/memorizing sizeable chunks of content and suchlike? No, the goal of ML training is to generalize across concepts. I didn…

> Some people are upset about technology? I honestly don't care.

> My code of ethics says that Luddites getting steamrolled is an immense moral good.

Looks like it's not possible for us to discuss this further. Not because of your views, but how rigid you are on your beliefs and perspective.

With no hard feelings, I wish that time shows that you're right, all the time.

Have a nice day. :)

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