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

Anthropic's cofounder, Ben Mann, downloaded million copies of books from Library Genesis in 2021, fully aware that the material was pirated.

Stealing is stealing. Let's stop with the double standards.

At least most pirates just consume for personal use. Profiting from piracy is a whole other level beyond just pirating a book.

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 favourite charity is and donate their or join their patreon/a direct way to support them.