classic HN, ignoring the Billions of users who find chatGPT, Gemini, Claude not only useful but life changing, including some of the poorest. So that they can fight for Disney, Record Labels and Trust fund Williamsburg friends
Their defense seems to be that AI requires crime to exist, so they should be allowed to do crime. This is not a defense permitted in any body of law. They're going to need to work on that.
Copyright is a deal society has made to advance the arts and sciences. We get more innovative media of all kinds, and in exchange, we pay for the government's policing of the right to copy.
I'm not AI optimist or booster, but AI is an advancement in the arts and sciences, despite all the risks and downsides. AI is a derivative work from all digitized media.
There's an argument to be made that the AI companies should borrow a copy of every book, rent every movie, etc. But the money accruing to the owners of those copyrights would be marginal, and even summing over all those individual copyright claims, I'd say that the societal benefit to AI is greater.
Maybe it's time that we have compulsory licensing the way that radio can license music to play. As training data for AI, a compulsory license, in principle, should be quite cheap, on par with renting that media.
The bigger question is to what extent AI will tend to make other media obsolete. We are already seeing this with AI summaries in web search undermining the search results themselves. I don't have an answer to that, except to say that severely restricting the training data available to AI is not very helpful.
Compulsory licensing with reasonable standard rates would be a better solution for creators than what's happening now, which is essentially just compulsory giving.
But that's unlikely to happen, because any kind of compulsory licensing scheme that could allow creators to actually survive would still be cripplingly expensive for AI companies, given the number of works they have devoured under the assumption that all the world is theirs to take...and they clearly have the ear of the current administration.
> Copyright is a deal society has made to advance the arts
Corn subsidies are a deal society made to advance the consumption of sugar water.
Who really makes these deals and who benefits from them?
Maybe having so much new content all the time is making us too content while the backroom deal makers laugh their way to the bank and fund more wars.
> and sciences
People en masse want cheaper energy, better machines and better medicine regardless of profitability of the producers. I don't buy into the idea that the only way to incentivize new inventions is with fame and wealth. People like to do good work they are proud of - not enough people, arguably, but they exist.
Some inventions may be too powerful to go without strict regulations like nuclear energy. I'd argue AI is in the same basket. I believe the internet, and by extension internet connected AI, should be considered a public utility and governed by the public.
I just don't trust the system any more. I bet somebody pulled strings and lobbied to get it certified, knowing it would be too broad and get defeated later, just so the AI companies can operate with impunity later. They'll point at this and say, "Hey, we're fine. Look, the case was thrown out"
The best possible outcome is for both to fall apart under extreme logical scrutiny and laws protecting them are heavily changed to better mankind. One can hope.
So, if I scraped thousands of WEB sites, it is legal ? I remember a person being charged with doing that to just a very few WEB Sites was charged. The poor person ended up committing suicide.
If I record every song played on the radio for years to a digital file, will I be charged ? You know I would be.
How are these different than what AI is doing. In the US, companies are considered a person, so to me, off to jail these companies go. Why is this turning into a big deal. We know AI is stealing copyrighted data. So I hope they get what they deserve.
If the companies are profiting profoundly off an extremely diffuse reaping of intellectual property, doesn’t it make sense to distribute funds diffusely back over the whole of the society they are profiting from?
Which in a way is basically the UBI they claim to want anyway.
> Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued.
“Our case is so weak, that a trial could pose a huge risk to our finances. So we’ll choose to forgo our day in court and settle instead. And that means you’ve violated our right to defend ourselves because LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO.”
This amount of spin is breathtaking. Puts every politician to shame, really.
And that worked well against google right? Get over yourselves. You are fucked and just don't want to admit it. Think about this I'm Google: I have literally more money than you, I can hire 10 lawyers for each of yours looking for every technicality, loophole, stalling tactic, and typo in anything any of you do.
Guess who wins? Not John and Jane Schmoe. So yeah enjoy being bent over, and just ask for lube first.
Reading through the comments there seems to be some misunderstandings leading to issues with a stance that the potential class action is not taking.
The class action doesn't relate to normal training based on legally acquired materials, which US courts have already said is fair use. It is concerned specifically with training on materials obtained illegally (pirated content).
18 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 35.8 ms ] threadIt is amazing how shamelessly these LLM thieves argue.
I'm not AI optimist or booster, but AI is an advancement in the arts and sciences, despite all the risks and downsides. AI is a derivative work from all digitized media.
There's an argument to be made that the AI companies should borrow a copy of every book, rent every movie, etc. But the money accruing to the owners of those copyrights would be marginal, and even summing over all those individual copyright claims, I'd say that the societal benefit to AI is greater.
Maybe it's time that we have compulsory licensing the way that radio can license music to play. As training data for AI, a compulsory license, in principle, should be quite cheap, on par with renting that media.
The bigger question is to what extent AI will tend to make other media obsolete. We are already seeing this with AI summaries in web search undermining the search results themselves. I don't have an answer to that, except to say that severely restricting the training data available to AI is not very helpful.
But that's unlikely to happen, because any kind of compulsory licensing scheme that could allow creators to actually survive would still be cripplingly expensive for AI companies, given the number of works they have devoured under the assumption that all the world is theirs to take...and they clearly have the ear of the current administration.
Corn subsidies are a deal society made to advance the consumption of sugar water.
Who really makes these deals and who benefits from them?
Maybe having so much new content all the time is making us too content while the backroom deal makers laugh their way to the bank and fund more wars.
> and sciences
People en masse want cheaper energy, better machines and better medicine regardless of profitability of the producers. I don't buy into the idea that the only way to incentivize new inventions is with fame and wealth. People like to do good work they are proud of - not enough people, arguably, but they exist.
Some inventions may be too powerful to go without strict regulations like nuclear energy. I'd argue AI is in the same basket. I believe the internet, and by extension internet connected AI, should be considered a public utility and governed by the public.
If I record every song played on the radio for years to a digital file, will I be charged ? You know I would be.
How are these different than what AI is doing. In the US, companies are considered a person, so to me, off to jail these companies go. Why is this turning into a big deal. We know AI is stealing copyrighted data. So I hope they get what they deserve.
Which in a way is basically the UBI they claim to want anyway.
“Our case is so weak, that a trial could pose a huge risk to our finances. So we’ll choose to forgo our day in court and settle instead. And that means you’ve violated our right to defend ourselves because LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO.”
This amount of spin is breathtaking. Puts every politician to shame, really.
Guess who wins? Not John and Jane Schmoe. So yeah enjoy being bent over, and just ask for lube first.
The class action doesn't relate to normal training based on legally acquired materials, which US courts have already said is fair use. It is concerned specifically with training on materials obtained illegally (pirated content).