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

(www.businessinsider.com)
393 points pyman | 3 comments | 07 Jul 25 09:20 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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bgwalter ◴[07 Jul 25 14:38 UTC] No.44490836[source]▶
Here is how individuals are treated for massive copyright infringement:

https://investors.autodesk.com/news-releases/news-release-de...

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farceSpherule ◴[07 Jul 25 16:21 UTC] No.44491907[source]▶
Peterson was copying and selling pirated software.

Come up with a better comparison.

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organsnyder ◴[07 Jul 25 16:22 UTC] No.44491926[source]▶
Anthropic is selling a service that incorporates these pirated works.
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adolph ◴[07 Jul 25 16:57 UTC] No.44492293[source]▶
That a service incorporating the authors' works exists is not at issue. The plaintiffs' claims are, as summarized by Alsup:

  First, Authors argue that using works to train Claude’s underlying LLMs 
  was like using works to train any person to read and write, so Authors 
  should be able to exclude Anthropic from this use (Opp. 16). 

  Second, to that last point, Authors further argue that the training was 
  intended to memorize their works’ creative elements — not just their 
  works’ non-protectable ones (Opp. 17).

  Third, Authors next argue that computers nonetheless should not be 
  allowed to do what people do.
https://media.npr.org/assets/artslife/arts/2025/order.pdf
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xdennis ◴[07 Jul 25 17:38 UTC] No.44492758[source]▶
> That a service incorporating the authors' works exists is not at issue.

It's not an issue because it's not currently illegal because nobody could have foreseen this years ago.

But it is profiting off of the unpaid work of millions. And there's very little chance of change because it's so hard to pass new protection laws when you're not Disney.

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1. TeMPOraL ◴[07 Jul 25 18:46 UTC] No.44493456[source]▶
It's not an issue because it's not what this case was about, as the linked document explicitly states. The Authors did not contest the legality of the model's outputs, only the inputs used in training.
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2. megaman821 ◴[07 Jul 25 19:18 UTC] No.44493731[source]▶
Correct, the New York Times and Disney are suing for the output side. I am going to hazard a guess that you won't be able to circumvent copyright and trademark just because you are using AI. Where that line is has yet to be determined though.
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3. TeMPOraL ◴[07 Jul 25 19:41 UTC] No.44493917[source]▶
Right, but where that line will be drawn will have major impact on the near-term future of those models. If the user is liable for distributing infringing output that came from AI, that's not a problem for the field (and IMHO a reasonable approach) - but if they succeed in making the model vendors liable for the possibility of users generating infringing output, it'll shake things up pretty seriously.