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Anthropic Faces Potentially "Business-Ending" Copyright Lawsuit
- lvl155 1y agoJust another pathetic money grab attempt in the AI space.
- biglyburrito 1y ago[flagged]
- dowager_dan99 1y agothe courts have been pretty clear in this area so far, siding with some variation on "progress" over the ownership argument. It definitely feels like a "too big to fail" scenario at this stage. >> The judge ruled last month, in essence, that Anthropic's use of pirated books had violated copyright law This is not what certification of a class action lawsuit means. It's procedural, not substantive and doesn't weigh in on the merits of the lawsuit. It's about the mechanics of bringing about action representing a potentially huge group of class representatives. The article then goes on to speculate about how Anthropic will post bond for the billions that have been awarded while trying to fundraise, so the clickbait title is backed up with "what if" fan fiction and there's nothing substantive here.
- reverendsteveii 1y ago>It definitely feels like a "too big to fail" scenario at this stage The courts are just reading the room. If you're a judge appointed by a guy who wants it to be illegal to regulate AI at all, you're not gonna be too keen on regulating AI.
- dcre 1y agoThe article responds to its own headline with “...but not really”: > While the risk of a billion-dollar-plus jury verdict is real, it’s important to note that judges routinely slash massive statutory damages awards — sometimes by orders of magnitude. Federal judges, in particular, tend to be skeptical of letting jury awards reach levels that would bankrupt a major company.
- daveguy 1y agoWould anthropic be considered a "major company"? Paper value is not the same thing as being a Microsoft, Google, or even OpenAI. An example company that would set precedent and get the "major companies" to stop stealing from creators might be allowed. Not saying they'll allow a bankrupting judgement, but I don't think it will be dropped to slap-on-the-wrist level either.
- ijk 1y agoAnthropic is arguing, among other things, that bankrupting the smallest major AI player while all the bigger ones do the same thing should be a reason to reduce the consequences.
- daveguy 1y agoWell, I agree with that argument in the sense that their punishment should be relative to their size. But I was just talking about plantiff strategy. A judgement against Anthropic of any magnitude might open the floodgates for class action lawsuits by creators against major tech companies. I also think that's a good thing, because AI models are clearly laundering work done by original authors.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoThis might not be the right way to highlight it but I personally am very interested in the ways in which the proscribed penalties for breaking the law greatly diverge from the actual penalties inflicted, with the variance being directly correlated to the offender's budget for legal defense. Doubly so because giving one appointed official the final say over actual community members kinda feels like an inversion of the way our government claims to work and a backdoor implementation of a different laws for different people.
- Incipient 1y agoEven IF they were awarded such damages, there would be a queue of rich people lining up to foot the bill to take a stake of anthropic.
- TuringNYC 1y agoThis. And I think the US Gov will step up and decide that Gen AI is too critical to disrupt for continued US hegemony vs China.
- tonyhart7 1y agoYou acting like copyright would stop china doing the same thing
- TuringNYC 1y agoThat is my point -- China will proceed forward regardless. The US Government will likely squash this lawsuit to compete with China.
- Incipient 1y agoThere are two competing ideologies here, and I'm not sure which is the right way to go. 1) take the higher road, otherwise you're no better than the others (eg support copyright) 2) no point in dying on this hill if you're just going to become a footnote in history (eg relax copyright here to continue to be competitive)
- CuriouslyC 1y agoYeah, zero percent chance we don't get lawmakers and the executive stepping in to squash this if the courts don't rule the way they want.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoyeah, we're getting wartime government when it comes to AI. we're getting government of endless special cases, "here's why the law shouldn't apply this time" every time
- comrade1234 1y agoWhy is it fair use (hashed out in court already) for google to copy every book they can get a hold of and store the full pages and use them to create their n-grams data and presumably to train their ai, but not for this company? If they had bought each book themselves would it be fair use? So this is only about the piracy?
- sidewndr46 1y agoThe way I understand the case, yes. If Anthropic had just 1 copy of each book that would be permitted. Apparently they at some point bought copies of most books then shredded them. I'm not entirely sure how that makes any difference, but it was done after the piracy.
- qgin 1y agoAt some point this starts to feel like witchcraft spells.
- s1mplicissimus 1y ago> Apparently they at some point bought copies of most books then shredded them. An awfully convenient explanation of what went down. Gives some good "dog ate my homework" vibes. The double standard vs google etc. is of course despicable
- tonyhart7 1y ago
- noitemtoshow 1y agoNope. Books don't worth much.
- dbalatero 1y agoI can tell.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- AznHisoka 1y ago"As a matter of practice (and sometimes doctrine), judges rarely issue rulings that would outright force a company out of business.... So while the jury’s damages calculation will be the headline risk, it probably won’t be the last word." That should've been the first sentence in this article. Nothing to see here, folks. Just another baity headline.
- volleygman180 1y agoHow many members of the class have abstained from using the LLMs provided by the major AI companies, raise your hands... That's what I thought. Members of the class should be disqualified from joining based on this criteria alone
- x______________ 1y ago>But Alsup split a very fine hair. In the same ruling, he found that Anthropic’s wholesale downloading and storage of millions of pirated books — via infamous “pirate libraries” like LibGen and PiLiMi — was not covered by fair use at all. In other words: training on lawfully acquired books is one thing, but stockpiling a central library of stolen copies is classic copyright infringement. I am not actively following this trend but didn't Meta do the exact same and successfully argued that it was fair use because.. they didn't seed or upload any data? What am I missing here?
- EMIRELADERO 1y agoYou're not missing anything. The Anthropic and Meta judges simply disagreed with each other and issued two opposite holdings.
- x______________ 1y agoThank you. Will keep in watching to see how this unfolds..