10 ms·
Anthropic's cofounder, Ben Mann, downloaded million copies of books from Library Genesis in 2021, fully aware that the material was pirated. Stealing is steali
by pyman 1y ago
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.
- damnesian 1y agooh well, the product has a cute name and will make someone a billionaire, let's just give it the green light. who cares about copyright in the age of AI?
- originalvichy 1y agoAt least most pirates just consume for personal use. Profiting from piracy is a whole other level beyond just pirating a book.
- pyman 1y agoSomeone 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.
- drcursor 1y agoLet's not forget Spotify ;) https://gizmodo.com/early-spotify-was-built-on-pirated-mp3-files-new-book-1795109991 https://gizmodo.com/early-spotify-was-built-on-pirated-mp3-f...
- pyman 1y agoThose claims were never proved.
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoI 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.
- Workaccount2 1y agoIf you are someone who can think clearly, it's extremely obvious that the conversation around copyright, LLMs, piracy, and ad-blocking is "What serves me personally the best for any given situation" for 95% of people.
- timeon 1y agoI think that critique of this case is not about piracy in itself but how these companies are treated by courts vs. how individuals are treated.
- x187463 1y agoAnd somehow actually paying for youtube which fully removes advertising and provides revenue to the service/creators is seen as an utterly absurd proposition by a staggering number of people.
- akimbostrawman 1y agoMaybe because they don't want to reward Google for continuously running Youtube into the ground while still being worse than the free alternatives. Not to mention that they already watering down permium with premium lite, I give it two tears before you need to get premium+ to not see ads.
- x187463 1y agoThen don't use the service? Use one of the 'better' free alternatives. Let's see how long they remain free once (if) they actually see a meaningful amount of traffic. Complaining about advertising while using a service for which you pay nothing is immature and unreasonable. I hate advertising and have done everything I can to remove it from my life. That means paying for services that I enjoy using. I would rather provide value to the business via money than ad attention.
- mnky9800n 1y agoI feel like profit was always a central motive of pirates. At least from the historical documents known as, "The Pirates of the Caribbean".
- KoolKat23 1y agoThis isn't really profiting from piracy. They don't make money off the raw input data. It's no different to consuming for personal use. They make money off the model weights, which is fair use (as confirmed by recent case law).
- j_w 1y agoThis is absurd. Remove all of the content from the training data that was pirated and what is the quality of the end product now?
- pyman 1y agoWith Claude, people are paying Anthropic to access answers that are generated from pirated books, without the authors permission, credit, or compensation.
- KoolKat23 1y agoThere is no copyright on knowledge. If it outputs parts of the book verbatim then that's a different story.
- pyman 1y agoLet's don't change the focus of the debate. Pirating 7 million books, remixing their content, and using that to power Claude.ai is like counterfeiting 7 million branded products and selling them on your personal website. The original creators don't get credit or payment, and someone’s profiting off their work. All this happens while authors, many of them teachers, are left scratching their heads with four kids to feed
- KoolKat23 1y agoThat may be the case, but you'd have to have laws changed.
- SirMaster 1y ago
- mrcwinn 1y ago> At least most pirates just consume for personal use. Easy for the pirate to say. Artists might argue their intent was to trade compensation for one's personal enjoyment of the work.
- Workaccount2 1y agoThe gut punch of being a photographer selling your work on display, someone walks by and lines up their phone to take a perfect picture of your photograph, and then exclaims to you "Your work is beautiful! I can't wait to print this out and put it on my wall!"
- jobs_throwaway 1y ago[flagged]
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoThe way you've presented this, the evidence is just "common sense", which isn't much evidence at all.
- jobs_throwaway 1y agowrong https://news.iu.edu/live/news/25720-the-hidden-treasure-of-digital-piracy-it-can-boost https://news.iu.edu/live/news/25720-the-hidden-treasure-of-d...
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago"Wrong" would imply somehow the first post was better that it was. What you mean to say is "You're right, here's a link with some details". That article also focuses on larger media and "moderate" amounts of piracy, so there's absolutely caveats in your claim. "As with other studies, Kim and his colleagues found that when enforcement is low and piracy is rampant, both manufacturers and retailers suffer." “'The implication is simply that, situated in a real-world context, our manufacturer and retailer should recognize that a certain level of piracy or its threat might actually be beneficial'..."
- x3n0ph3n3 1y agoCopyright infringement is not stealing.
- 1oooqooq 1y agoactually, the Only time it's a (ethical) crime is when a corporation does it at scale for profit.
- pyman 1y ago[flagged]
- zb3 1y agoWho got robbed? Just because I'd pay for AI it doesn't mean I'd buy these books.
- pyman 1y agoYou should ask the teachers who spent years writing those books.
- azangru 1y agoYou 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?
- pyman 1y agoI can only speak for myself, my family, and colleagues, but it's not just teachers. Plenty of other professionals are being affected too.
- 1y ago
- Der_Einzige 1y agoInformation wants to be free.
- troyvit 1y agoThen why does Claude cost money?
- akimbostrawman 1y agoBecause regurgitated information is not the same
- dathinab 1y agostealing with the intent to gain a unfair marked advantage so that you can effectively kill any ethically legally correctly acting company in a way which is very likely going to hurt many authors through the products you create is far worse then just stealing for personal use that isn't "just" stealing, it's organized crime
- 1970-01-01 1y agoLet's get actual definitions of 'theft' before we leap into double standards.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago[flagged]
- kube-system 1y ago> Stealing is stealing. Let's stop with the double standards. I get the sentiment, but that statement as is, is absurdly reductive. Details matter. Even if someone takes merchandise from a store without paying, their sentence will vary depending on the details.