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They're starting out allocating $10MM AUD for copyright payments, when Anthropic has just paid $2.3BB AUD to settle their lawsuit. While I give them credit for

They're starting out allocating $10MM AUD for copyright payments, when Anthropic has just paid $2.3BB AUD to settle their lawsuit. While I give them credit for realizing that $10MM is just the starting point, I don't understand how they can possibly build a competitive model while spending less than $100MM when others are spending 20x that amount just on copyright.

gpm 1y ago
Anthropic paid $3000USD per work because they pirated works and US copyright law comes with statutory damages completely unrelated to the amount it would have cost to acquire the same thing legally. The same thing, legally, according to the judge in that lawsuit would have been a purchased (potentially used) copy of the book scanned - i.e. what Anthropic also did after pirating works. It'd be surprising if that would cost even $30USD/work, two orders of magnitude less. $10AUD million doesn't seem sufficient for a competitive set (and as you say they aren't saying it is), but if you told me $50AUD million was enough to build a legal (according to Judge Alsup's interpretation of US law) repository of training data I would not be surprised.
- apparent 1y ago
  If they spend half of their budget on copyright, does that leave enough for hardware, energy, salary, etc.?
crowcroft 1y ago
Do they even have $10mm? What exactly is being allocated?
- apparent 1y ago
  I think the allocation is purely a theoretical exercise. They have apparently put in a million dollars or something, and are now looking to raise more.
myhf 1y ago
LLM training is not fair use. It would cost trillions to genuinely secure the rights to use any data set that could include any excerpts of copyrighted work. The millions and billions you hear about in copyright "settlements" are just the amount it takes to bribe a local court, so $10MM is reasonable for Australia.
- danielbln 1y ago
  I don't think it has been settled yet of training is fair use or not. Also, how is a settlement a bribed court? The other party has to accept a settlement, not the judge.
  - gpm 1y ago
    > The other party has to accept a settlement, not the judge. Not to defend the absurd statement about a bribe, but with regards to the $1.5 billion dollar settlement this isn't quite true. Because it's a class action the judge will also have to approve the settlement - finding that it was fair and agreed to without collusion. This is done because the incentive structures set up a bit of a conflict of interest between class action lawyers and members of the class... Of course none of the settlement goes to the judge or court, there's no bribing going on. But judges do reject class action settlements sometimes.
    - apparent 1y ago
      You're right to point out that a judge's sign-off is also required, but it's a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition. The point GP was presumably trying to make was that bribing a judge doesn't get the job done. The first task is to convince the other side.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  The earlier Anthropic case found that training was fair use. Anthropic got slammed for how they obtained the digital copies, not how they used them. > June 24 (Reuters) - A federal judge in San Francisco ruled late on Monday that Anthropic's use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law. Siding with tech companies on a pivotal question for the AI industry, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthropic made "fair use", opens new tab of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train its Claude large language model. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/anthropic-wins-key-ruling-ai-authors-copyright-lawsuit-2025-06-24/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/anthropic-wins-key-...

gpm 1y ago

Anthropic paid $3000USD per work because they pirated works and US copyright law comes with statutory damages completely unrelated to the amount it would have cost to acquire the same thing legally. The same thing, legally, according to the judge in that lawsuit would have been a purchased (potentially used) copy of the book scanned - i.e. what Anthropic also did after pirating works. It'd be surprising if that would cost even $30USD/work, two orders of magnitude less. $10AUD million doesn't seem sufficient for a competitive set (and as you say they aren't saying it is), but if you told me $50AUD million was enough to build a legal (according to Judge Alsup's interpretation of US law) repository of training data I would not be surprised.

apparent 1y ago
If they spend half of their budget on copyright, does that leave enough for hardware, energy, salary, etc.?

crowcroft 1y ago

Do they even have $10mm? What exactly is being allocated?

apparent 1y ago
I think the allocation is purely a theoretical exercise. They have apparently put in a million dollars or something, and are now looking to raise more.

myhf 1y ago

LLM training is not fair use. It would cost trillions to genuinely secure the rights to use any data set that could include any excerpts of copyrighted work. The millions and billions you hear about in copyright "settlements" are just the amount it takes to bribe a local court, so $10MM is reasonable for Australia.

danielbln 1y ago
I don't think it has been settled yet of training is fair use or not. Also, how is a settlement a bribed court? The other party has to accept a settlement, not the judge.
- gpm 1y ago
  > The other party has to accept a settlement, not the judge. Not to defend the absurd statement about a bribe, but with regards to the $1.5 billion dollar settlement this isn't quite true. Because it's a class action the judge will also have to approve the settlement - finding that it was fair and agreed to without collusion. This is done because the incentive structures set up a bit of a conflict of interest between class action lawyers and members of the class... Of course none of the settlement goes to the judge or court, there's no bribing going on. But judges do reject class action settlements sometimes.
  - apparent 1y ago
    You're right to point out that a judge's sign-off is also required, but it's a necessary-but-not-sufficient condition. The point GP was presumably trying to make was that bribing a judge doesn't get the job done. The first task is to convince the other side.
rpdillon 1y ago
The earlier Anthropic case found that training was fair use. Anthropic got slammed for how they obtained the digital copies, not how they used them. > June 24 (Reuters) - A federal judge in San Francisco ruled late on Monday that Anthropic's use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law. Siding with tech companies on a pivotal question for the AI industry, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthropic made "fair use", opens new tab of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train its Claude large language model. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/anthropic-wins-key-ruling-ai-authors-copyright-lawsuit-2025-06-24/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/anthropic-wins-key-...