←back to thread

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

(www.businessinsider.com)
418 points pyman | 1 comments | 07 Jul 25 09:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.203s | source
Show context
pyman ◴[07 Jul 25 09:20 UTC] No.44488332[source]▶
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.

replies(8): >>44488391 #>>44488540 #>>44488816 #>>44490720 #>>44491032 #>>44491583 #>>44492035 #>>44493242 #
x3n0ph3n3 ◴[07 Jul 25 10:45 UTC] No.44488816[source]▶
Copyright infringement is not stealing.
replies(4): >>44488893 #>>44488987 #>>44490404 #>>44490503 #
pyman ◴[07 Jul 25 11:10 UTC] No.44488987[source]▶
Pirating a book and selling it on claude.ai is stealing, both legally and morally.
replies(4): >>44489073 #>>44489353 #>>44489445 #>>44492112 #
zb3 ◴[07 Jul 25 11:20 UTC] No.44489073[source]▶
Who got robbed? Just because I'd pay for AI it doesn't mean I'd buy these books.
replies(1): >>44489291 #
pyman ◴[07 Jul 25 11:44 UTC] No.44489291[source]▶
You should ask the teachers who spent years writing those books.
replies(2): >>44491497 #>>44492124 #
azangru ◴[07 Jul 25 15:40 UTC] No.44491497[source]▶
You keep saying the word "teachers"; but that word does not appear in the text of the article. Why focus on the teachers in particular?

Also, there are various incentives for teachers to publish books. Money is just one of them (I wonder how much revenue books bring to the teachers). Prestige and academic recognition is another. There are probably others still. How realistic is the depiction of a deprived teacher whose livelihood depended on the books he published once every several years?

replies(1): >>44496317 #
1. pyman ◴[08 Jul 25 02:03 UTC] No.44496317[source]▶
I can only speak for myself, my family, and colleagues, but it's not just teachers. Plenty of other professionals are being affected too.