←back to thread

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

(www.nytimes.com)
989 points acomjean | 3 comments | 05 Sep 25 19:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.318s | source
Show context
non_aligned ◴[05 Sep 25 21:01 UTC] No.45143568[source]▶
I'm gonna say one thing. If you agree that something was unfairly taken from book authors, then the same thing was taken from people publishing on the web, and on a larger scale.

Book authors may see some settlement checks down the line. So might newspapers and other parties that can organize and throw enough $$$ at the problem. But I'll eat my hat if your average blogger ever sees a single cent.

replies(3): >>45143814 #>>45143940 #>>45144227 #
taejavu ◴[05 Sep 25 21:26 UTC] No.45143814[source]▶
The blogger’s content was freely available, this fine is for piracy.
replies(1): >>45143851 #
1. non_aligned ◴[05 Sep 25 21:30 UTC] No.45143851[source]▶
This is not a fine, it's a settlement to recompense authors.

More broadly, I think that's a goofy argument. The books were "freely available" too. Just because something is out there, doesn't necessarily mean you can use it however you want, and that's the crux of the debate.

replies(2): >>45143972 #>>45144001 #
2. ascorbic ◴[05 Sep 25 21:42 UTC] No.45143972[source]▶
It's not the crux of this case. This is a settlement based on the judge's ruling that they books had been illegally downloaded. The same judge said that the training itself was not the problem – it was downloading the pirated books. It will be tough to argue that loading a public website is an illegal download.
3. emtel ◴[05 Sep 25 21:44 UTC] No.45144001[source]▶
But you can use copyrighted works for transformative works under the fair-use doctrine, and training was ruled to be fair use in the previous ruling.