3 ms·

Maybe Anthropic should have paid attention to the law that has $150k statutory damages per violation if the infringement is willful. So much cheaper just to bu

by adrr 1y ago

Maybe Anthropic should have paid attention to the law that has $150k statutory damages per violation if the infringement is willful. So much cheaper just to buy the books and scan it instead of violating a law that has a statutory damage clause.

ripped_britches 1y ago
I really want to see an alternative universe where we have mechanical turk folks scanning a huge literal book library into a data warehouse.
- kg 1y ago
  Google and the Internet Archive both did/do this with elaborate setups. https://archive.org/details/eliza-digitizing-book_202107 https://archive.org/details/eliza-digitizing-book_202107
- wrsh07 1y ago
  I think anthropic has this operation now
eschaton 1y ago
In general buying books and scanning them for this type of use would *also* be copyright infringement.
- adrr 1y ago
  No. Thats fair use. Format shifting is fair use as affirmed by RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia which was about ripping CDs to MP3s.
  - eschaton 1y ago
    …for personal use, just as timeshifting was with MPAA v. Sony. Neither were about commercial use/exploitation.
    - adrr 1y ago
      Meta case just affirmed that training an LLM is fair use under transformative use. Alsom, Google's indexing(transformative use) of scanned books is settled law with Authors Guild v. Google.
      - eschaton 1y ago
        And Roe v. Wade was settled law too, until it wasn’t.
atleastoptimal 1y ago
If a person pirates a book should they have to pay 150k?
- ch_fr 1y ago
  So true! I too think the average person is basically indistinguishable from anthropic.
  - atleastoptimal 1y ago
    And I remember the part in copyright law where it says "if the violation is done by a big corporationy corportation, then the punishment must be more severe even on a per-violation basis"
    - ch_fr 1y ago
      I mean, it's not crazy talk, you frame it as crazy but this difference in treatment is fairly normal. If punitive damages were limited to what an individual person could manage, they would hardly ever be "punitive" for corporate actors. You're the second person I've talked to in this thread who thinks "The law is not applied with perfect consistency in practice!? Dear god why is it not like computer programs?". It's just my personal take, but I don't think extreme rigidity and consistency in a "code is law" fashion would ever be desirable. look over to the crypto world to see how DAOs are faring.
      - atleastoptimal 1y ago
        150k per violation of copyright law by means of pirating a book is excessive even for the largest company in the world. I agree that punishment should be somewhat proportional so that "too big to fail" firms don't see it as just a fine to be accounted for as any expense, but among things that ought to be worth a a fine of that magnitude, downloading a book is not among them.
        ch_fr 1y ago

by adrr 1y ago

ripped_britches 1y ago

I really want to see an alternative universe where we have mechanical turk folks scanning a huge literal book library into a data warehouse.

kg 1y ago
Google and the Internet Archive both did/do this with elaborate setups. https://archive.org/details/eliza-digitizing-book_202107 https://archive.org/details/eliza-digitizing-book_202107
wrsh07 1y ago
I think anthropic has this operation now

eschaton 1y ago

In general buying books and scanning them for this type of use would *also* be copyright infringement.

adrr 1y ago
No. Thats fair use. Format shifting is fair use as affirmed by RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia which was about ripping CDs to MP3s.
- eschaton 1y ago
  …for personal use, just as timeshifting was with MPAA v. Sony. Neither were about commercial use/exploitation.
  - adrr 1y ago
    Meta case just affirmed that training an LLM is fair use under transformative use. Alsom, Google's indexing(transformative use) of scanned books is settled law with Authors Guild v. Google.
    - eschaton 1y ago
      And Roe v. Wade was settled law too, until it wasn’t.

atleastoptimal 1y ago

If a person pirates a book should they have to pay 150k?

ch_fr 1y ago
So true! I too think the average person is basically indistinguishable from anthropic.
- atleastoptimal 1y ago
  And I remember the part in copyright law where it says "if the violation is done by a big corporationy corportation, then the punishment must be more severe even on a per-violation basis"
  - ch_fr 1y ago
    I mean, it's not crazy talk, you frame it as crazy but this difference in treatment is fairly normal. If punitive damages were limited to what an individual person could manage, they would hardly ever be "punitive" for corporate actors. You're the second person I've talked to in this thread who thinks "The law is not applied with perfect consistency in practice!? Dear god why is it not like computer programs?". It's just my personal take, but I don't think extreme rigidity and consistency in a "code is law" fashion would ever be desirable. look over to the crypto world to see how DAOs are faring.
    - atleastoptimal 1y ago
      150k per violation of copyright law by means of pirating a book is excessive even for the largest company in the world. I agree that punishment should be somewhat proportional so that "too big to fail" firms don't see it as just a fine to be accounted for as any expense, but among things that ought to be worth a a fine of that magnitude, downloading a book is not among them.
      - ch_fr 1y ago