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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

#731

Post by JustExAWS »

troupo wrote: post #730
JustExAWS wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to decide whether you want the society to provide safety nets through healthcare, strong labor protections etc. or not. My argument is simply that the only “labor protections” the government should enforce on private enterprise is that a company can’t actively harm employees - OSHA protections, discrimination etc. > And yes, it's the literal job of a taxi company to make sure its drivers work a healthy amo…

> Uber never put a gun to anyone’s head to force them to drive for Uber. Oh no. Uber only spent 20 billion dollars on price dumping, driving competing companies out of business, and was the poster child for gig economy. > If anything the government should enforce how long someone can drive because it puts others in danger. Once again, the wages Uber was paying were below substinence if you were to drive just within t…

> Oh, I forgot, it's ridiculously easy to become a writer and sustain living from a podcast. Those ~400 000 people could've easily found a different job.

So the only choices anyone has in the US is to become a writer or an Uber driver? Does Uber have some type of monopoly on employment?

> However, the actual insane thing is this worldview that companies are not responsible for anything, and can do whatever they want;

I said that companies shouldn’t be able to do things that harm their employees - I never said that OSHA and safety standards shouldn’t exist. They also shouldn’t be able to do anything that hurts others. I even said that they should pay taxes to fund a safety net and to provide universal health care like every other civilized company.

> but to go and start supporting yourself with books and podcasts

No I said that the government shouldn’t get involved with creating an environment where adults can’t get into voluntarily contracts where they get to decide how much their labor is worth.

Even a cursory reading of whey I wrote would tell you I used Snell as an example of all of the contractors that wanted to do freelance who were harmed by a law meant to protect them but only created a nanny state that took away agency from adults who freely made a choice.

> and that there should be some magical government that provides some safety net

You mean the same type of safety net that every other industrialized company provides?

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

#732

Post by mdp2021 »

tene80i wrote: post #652
mdp2021 wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> authors get paid In the standard system for libraries, the book is paid once. That is "libraries" as in "we have societally decided to make published knowledge freely available". > window washing vs knowledge production Societies have not decided that window washing should be freely available - on the other side, they have decided that published knowledge be freely available (that is the meaning of the establishmen…

It must differ by geography. In my country, authors are paid library revenue according to the number of times their books are borrowed. Perhaps as well as an upfront purchase. Re: what “society has decided”, are you arguing that because libraries exist, no one may sell books for a price? Seems extreme, not widely agreed by the population or the relevant parties, and likely to cause immense problems with the economics…

> are you arguing that because libraries exist

No, no, no. In general, contextually to the topic of which the submission in part, I am showing that libraries were established through a societal decision that published knowledge shall be freely available. That means, if you want to consult a text, you are enabled to just go to a library and do it - the cost will be societal and contained.

Contextually to your post, and the expression «enjoying someone’s work without compensating them», I showed that the Principle establishing libraries implies you are not required to directly compensate authors to access their work.

And I told you that there is no similar principle regulating access to all other goods or services, such as "mowing your lawn" - society has not decided to bear the cost of the operation. It has, for the realm of accessing knowledge.

Do not misread.

Edit: maybe this will further help you to understand:

some societies have decided that health care services shall be easy to access, with collectively borne costs. Most societies have decided that published knowledge shall be easy to access, with collectively borne costs. Few societies have decided that having private lawns mowed shall be easy to access, with collectively borne costs.

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

#733

Post by stodor89 »

spwa4 wrote: post #574
Macha wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only speak in EU terms in any more detail here, but the EU laws are based on "dominant market position". Monopoly is one route to that but it's not the only route and there is no minimum market share required, as e.g. Qualcomm found out ( https://www.cliffordchance.com/insights/resources/blogs/talk... )

Which EU country reacted against Uber's predatory pricing when it was actually happening? Ie. which EU government refused investor money flowing into their economy? The only examples I can find are a few cities, and some of those are in the US. No EU state did, unless I'm missing something. Sure now that it costs them money, they're reacting, making things worse for literally everyone: the taxi drivers, who've been v…

> Which EU country reacted against Uber's predatory pricing when it was actually happening?

Bulgaria kicked out Uber for not obeying taxi regulations.

Sounds unrelated? Well it used to be a socialist dictatorship and laws are still written in a ham-fisted-yet-vague* way so that (1) you can't realistically obey them and (2) they can be used against anyone state authorities (or their friends) don't like.

So what's the actual reason? Uber was on its way to price taxi companies out of the market by offering better service at a price of €0.25/km.

* If you're from a developed country and this sounds like what your government is currently doing, you should start panicking.

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

#734

Post by mdp2021 »

vkou wrote: post #335
nl wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By US law, cccording to Author's Guild vs Google[1] on the Google book scanning project, scanning books for indexes is fair use. Additionally: > Every human has the right to read those books. Since when? I strongly disagree - knowledge should be free. I don't think the author's arrangement of the words should be free to reproduce (ie, I think some degree of copyright protection is ethical) but if I want to use a tool…

> Since when? Since in our legal system, only humans and groups of humans (the corporation is a convenient legal proxy for a group of humans that have entered into an agreement) have rights. Property doesn't have rights. Land doesn't have rights. Books don't have rights. My computer doesn't have rights. And neither does an LLM.

The right to access knowledge remains human oriented even when the reading is automated.

It does not matter that your screwdriver does not have rights: you will be using it for the purpose consistent with the principle of your freedom and encouragement to fix your cabling. You are not required to "hand-screw them drives".

In context, for example, you can take notes. That has nothing to do with the "rights of the paper".

Nothing forbids an automated reader by principle - especially when the automated reader is an intermediate tool for human operation.

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

#736

Post by lobsterthief »

bakies wrote: post #581
mbrochh wrote: post #536

After their recent change in tune to retain data for longer and to train on our data, I deleted my account. Try to do that. There is no easy way to delete your account. You need to reach out to their support via email. Incredibly obnoxious dark pattern. I hate OpenAI, but everything with Anthropic also smells fishy. We need more and better players. I hope that XAi will give them all some good competition, but I have…

X doesn't smell fishy to you??

Yeah, xAi is messing with their models to force political leanings. Doesn’t instill confidence using it for my business.

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

#737

Post by xp84 »

mkagenius wrote: post #718
xp84 wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t think there’s any demand out there for re-bound used paper books when most books can be had in their real binding for $3 or less. It would cost at least $3 to re-bind, then they’d have to be listed on Amazon marketplace in “Poor condition” where they’d be valued at maybe $0.50 and cost $3 to ship, and they’d take years of warehousing at great expense waiting to be sold. As for needy people, they alread…

> Nothing of value was lost here But then they shouldn't have done that in the first place. It seems like a crime to destroy so many books. Imagine, 10 more companies come to join the AI race and decide to do the same.

Books are printed in very large quantities, and there isn't infinite warehousing space for them "just in case." Surplus books just get sent straight to recycling all the time to make room for new books. I would be surprised if while this project was running, it represented even 10% of the daily books being destroyed. It's just never been practical to save every book printed forever.

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

#738

Post by petralithic »

OhioMan2943 wrote: post #250
petralithic wrote: post #21

This is sad for open source AI, piracy for the purpose of model training should also be fair use because otherwise only the big companies who can afford to pay off publishers like Anthropic will be able to do so. There is no way to buy billions of books just for model training, it simply can't happen.

I wish the hn rules were more flexible because I would write the best comment to you right now.

Are you implying some sort of threat?

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

#739

Post by bigyabai »

thfuran wrote: post #621
scotty79 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a sign of rent seeking economy in decline. Rising economies never respect IPs.

IP protections are in the US Constitution. Has the US been in decline since the late 1700s?

With respect to the IP protected under the Constitution of the United States, unquestionably and absolutely. The past 50 years of macroeconomic activity is basically a warning sign that says "your IP is basically worthless" in big red flashing letters. China mass-manufactures ARM chips and turbojet engines using unlicensed stolen schematics - Russia endlessly pirates foreign entertainment with impunity. These are entire nations of people who benefit from American financial assets without paying us a dime for them.

In case you missed it, the other day China showed off their F-35 clone for the PRC military parade. Your constitution can say pigs fly for all George Washington cares, trusting absolutely in IP protection is a game for butthurt chumps.

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

#740

Post by kjkjadksj »

mkagenius wrote: post #718
xp84 wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t think there’s any demand out there for re-bound used paper books when most books can be had in their real binding for $3 or less. It would cost at least $3 to re-bind, then they’d have to be listed on Amazon marketplace in “Poor condition” where they’d be valued at maybe $0.50 and cost $3 to ship, and they’d take years of warehousing at great expense waiting to be sold. As for needy people, they alread…

> Nothing of value was lost here But then they shouldn't have done that in the first place. It seems like a crime to destroy so many books. Imagine, 10 more companies come to join the AI race and decide to do the same.

To be fair, a book is fundamentally a wear item. I remember learning how my university library had its own incinerator. After a certain point it makes no sense to have 30 copies of an outdated textbook taking up space in the racks. Same goes for beatup old fiction and what have you. One might think a little urban school or branch library might want some but they too deal with realities of shelf space constraints and would probably prefer that their patrons had materials more current or in better shape.

That being said, I’m sure these companies did not exclusively buy books at the end of their life.

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