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Anthropic judge rejects $1.5B AI copyright settlement

(news.bloomberglaw.com)
290 points nobody9999 | 1 comments | 09 Sep 25 08:46 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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jawns ◴[09 Sep 25 19:02 UTC] No.45187038[source]▶
I'm an author, and I've confirmed that 3 of my books are in the 500K dataset.

Thus, I stand to receive about $9,000 as a result of this settlement.

I think that's fair, considering that two of those books received advances under $20K and never earned out. Also, while I'm sure that Anthropic has benefited from training its models on this dataset, that doesn't necessarily mean that those models are a lasting asset.

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visarga ◴[09 Sep 25 19:32 UTC] No.45187519[source]▶
How is it fair? Do you expect 9,000 from Google, Meta, OpenAI, and everyone else? Were your books imitated by AI?

Infringement was supposed to imply substantial similarity. Now it is supposed to mean statistical similarity?

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gruez ◴[09 Sep 25 19:35 UTC] No.45187577[source]▶
>Were your books imitated by AI?

Given that books can be imitated by humans with no compensation, this isn't as strong as an argument as you think. Moreover AFAIK the training itself has been ruled legal, so Anthropic could have theoretically bought the book for $20 (or whatever) and be in the clear, which would obviously bring less revenue than the $9k settlement.

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visarga ◴[09 Sep 25 19:39 UTC] No.45187621[source]▶
Copyright should be about copying rights, not statistical similarities. Similarity vs causal link - a different standard all together.
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dotnet00 ◴[09 Sep 25 19:55 UTC] No.45187851[source]▶
Those statistical similarities originate from a copyright violation, there's your causal link. Basically the same as selling a game made using pirated Photoshop.
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reissbaker ◴[09 Sep 25 20:11 UTC] No.45188135[source]▶
Selling a game whose assets were made with a pirated copy of Photoshop does not extend Adobe's copyright to cover your game itself. They can sue you for using the pirated copy of Photoshop, but they can't extend copyright vampirically in that manner — at least, not in the United States.

(They can still sue for damages, but they can't claim copyright over your game itself.)

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1. thaumasiotes ◴[09 Sep 25 23:30 UTC] No.45190966[source]▶
Well, there are damages torts and there's also an unjust enrichment tort. In the paradigm example where you make funding available to your treasurer and he makes an unscheduled stop in Las Vegas to bet it on black, you can sue him for damages. If he lost the bet, he owes you the amount he lost. If he won, he owes you nothing (assuming he went on and deposited the full amount in your treasury as expected).

Or you could sue him on a theory of unjust enrichment, in which case, if he lost, he'd owe you nothing, and if he won, he'd owe you all of his winnings.

It's not clear to me why the same theory wouldn't be available to Adobe, though the copyright question wouldn't be the main thrust of the case then.