5 ms·

This article is from 2024 and points to Kaggle, which hosts the data set. I'm surprised that JKR's people haven't come down like a tonne of bricks on Kaggle /

This article is from 2024 and points to Kaggle, which hosts the data set. I'm surprised that JKR's people haven't come down like a tonne of bricks on Kaggle / Microsoft. Does anyone know whether there is some special reason why this has lasted so long without being taken down?

anonymous908213 9mo ago
My best guess is that it flew under the radar. The Kaggle dataset has 'only' 10,000 downloads, and the article itself probably doesn't have that many views. Still, this seems pretty far beyond the pale. Given the other case of AI-related plagiarism by Microsoft that was on the front page[1], it seems whatever review process they have for content that is published by their employees, if there is any review process at all, is deeply flawed. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47057829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47057829, "Microsoft morged my diagram". It was in a discussion there that someone pointed out this article linking to full downloads of the Harry Potter novels, which I thought deserved more visibility.
- zythyx 9mo ago
  Also, I imagine that most of those 10k downloads are probably from AI trainers that are just speed running through Kaggle to obtain absolutely anything to train their AI. There are definitely other, more 'known' ways to obtain these books without finding them as random text files in an AI dataset operation
- selridge 9mo ago
  Why did you think that?
  - anonymous908213 9mo ago
    It rubs me the wrong way that corporations get a free pass on copyright infrigement, while the rest of us are prosecuted as harshly as possible if caught. I think this, together with the morging plagiarism, also indicates a pattern of behaviour from Microsoft that should be reformed. I would prefer if Microsoft were not able to produce AI slop degradations of other people's work and claim it as their own.
    - ryandrake 9mo ago
      In general, if you want to get away with a crime, just do it as a corporation or as a billionaire.
    - walletdrainer 9mo ago
      > while the rest of us are prosecuted as harshly as possible if caught But this is just a lie. Approximately nobody is prosecuted for copyright infringement.
      - queenkjuul 9mo ago
        Okay but people have had their lives ruined deliberately by media companies over it. I'm sure you knew what they meant.
        walletdrainer 9mo ago
        No matter how generously you want to interpret it, it’s obviously false. We’re moving the goalposts from the government systematically targeting normal people “if caught”, to only a handful of civil cases.
        eggsome 9mo ago
        Sure, as a percentage it's very rare - but some people have died as a result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz I think most would agree that cases like that act as a deterrent?
        walletdrainer 9mo ago
        That’s not even more than tangentially copyright-related? > I think most would agree that cases like that act as a deterrent? I think we could hardly get any further from “the rest of us are prosecuted as harshly as possible if caught”.
blibble 9mo ago
brb poking Rowling on twitter (done, contacted her lawyers too)
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- k__o 9mo ago
  make sure u worded it right or she'll block you
- thunfischtoast 9mo ago
  Rowling is among the last persons on earth that need help on this. But ignoring that: I do not think that these txt files being online do any economic harm. Noone will go and say "hey, I'm going to read these un-formatted text files instead of buying the 30 year old books for little money or pirating proper epubs which are trivial to find". If at all the kaggle dataset is free publicity. So as the author I would leave them online.
miki123211 9mo ago
Back in the day, text mining for science was mostly ignored, even though it was technically illegal. Authors didn't feel threatened by models for spam detection or sentiment classification. Demanding money from poor academics was pointless (they'd just move on to a different author) and bad PR. I mean, books3 contained hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books, and people released it under their own name.

anonymous908213 9mo ago

My best guess is that it flew under the radar. The Kaggle dataset has 'only' 10,000 downloads, and the article itself probably doesn't have that many views. Still, this seems pretty far beyond the pale. Given the other case of AI-related plagiarism by Microsoft that was on the front page[1], it seems whatever review process they have for content that is published by their employees, if there is any review process at all, is deeply flawed. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47057829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47057829, "Microsoft morged my diagram". It was in a discussion there that someone pointed out this article linking to full downloads of the Harry Potter novels, which I thought deserved more visibility.

zythyx 9mo ago
Also, I imagine that most of those 10k downloads are probably from AI trainers that are just speed running through Kaggle to obtain absolutely anything to train their AI. There are definitely other, more 'known' ways to obtain these books without finding them as random text files in an AI dataset operation
selridge 9mo ago
Why did you think that?
- anonymous908213 9mo ago
  It rubs me the wrong way that corporations get a free pass on copyright infrigement, while the rest of us are prosecuted as harshly as possible if caught. I think this, together with the morging plagiarism, also indicates a pattern of behaviour from Microsoft that should be reformed. I would prefer if Microsoft were not able to produce AI slop degradations of other people's work and claim it as their own.
  - ryandrake 9mo ago
    In general, if you want to get away with a crime, just do it as a corporation or as a billionaire.
  - walletdrainer 9mo ago
    > while the rest of us are prosecuted as harshly as possible if caught But this is just a lie. Approximately nobody is prosecuted for copyright infringement.
    - queenkjuul 9mo ago
      Okay but people have had their lives ruined deliberately by media companies over it. I'm sure you knew what they meant.
      - walletdrainer 9mo ago
        No matter how generously you want to interpret it, it’s obviously false. We’re moving the goalposts from the government systematically targeting normal people “if caught”, to only a handful of civil cases.
        eggsome 9mo ago
        Sure, as a percentage it's very rare - but some people have died as a result: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz I think most would agree that cases like that act as a deterrent?
        walletdrainer 9mo ago
        That’s not even more than tangentially copyright-related? > I think most would agree that cases like that act as a deterrent? I think we could hardly get any further from “the rest of us are prosecuted as harshly as possible if caught”.

blibble 9mo ago

brb poking Rowling on twitter (done, contacted her lawyers too)

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
k__o 9mo ago
make sure u worded it right or she'll block you
thunfischtoast 9mo ago
Rowling is among the last persons on earth that need help on this. But ignoring that: I do not think that these txt files being online do any economic harm. Noone will go and say "hey, I'm going to read these un-formatted text files instead of buying the 30 year old books for little money or pirating proper epubs which are trivial to find". If at all the kaggle dataset is free publicity. So as the author I would leave them online.

miki123211 9mo ago

Back in the day, text mining for science was mostly ignored, even though it was technically illegal. Authors didn't feel threatened by models for spam detection or sentiment classification. Demanding money from poor academics was pointless (they'd just move on to a different author) and bad PR. I mean, books3 contained hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books, and people released it under their own name.