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

(www.businessinsider.com)
393 points pyman | 5 comments | 07 Jul 25 09:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.45s | source
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marapuru ◴[07 Jul 25 11:17 UTC] No.44489031[source]▶
Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There is some more in this Article [0].

https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files...

Funky quote:

> Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained ‘Scene’ labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn’t been obtained officially.

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1. techjamie ◴[07 Jul 25 13:07 UTC] No.44490004[source]▶
Crunchyroll was originally an anime piracy site that went legit and started actually licensing content later. They started in mid-2006, got VC funding in 2008, then made their first licensing deal in 2009.

https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technol...

https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-ani...

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2. haiku2077 ◴[07 Jul 25 14:38 UTC] No.44490845[source]▶
Good Old Games started out with the founders selling pirated games on disc at local markets.
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3. Cyph0n ◴[07 Jul 25 15:06 UTC] No.44491155[source]▶
Yep, they were huge too - virtually anyone who watched free anime back then would have known about them.

My theory is that once they saw how much traffic they were getting, they realized how big of a market (subbed/dubbed) anime was.

4. Shank ◴[07 Jul 25 15:55 UTC] No.44491662[source]▶
And now Crunchyroll is owned by (through a lot of companies, like Aniplex of America, Aniplex, A1 Pictures) Sony, who produces a large amount of anime!
5. techjamie ◴[07 Jul 25 18:15 UTC] No.44493171[source]▶
Pirated games translated to Polish if possible, because game devs weren't catering to the market with translations, and Poland didn't respect foreign copyright.