Judge Allows Nationwide Class Action Against Anthropic Over Alleged Piracy of 7 Million Books For AI Training (reuters.com) 37
A California federal judge has ruled that three authors suing Anthropic for copyright infringement can represent writers nationwide whose books the AI startup allegedly pirated to train its Claude chatbot.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from pirate libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to create a repository of millions of books in 2021 and 2022.
Alsup said Anthropic may have illegally downloaded as many as 7 million books from the pirate websites, which could make it liable for billions of dollars in damages if the authors' case succeeds.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the authors can bring a class action on behalf of all U.S. writers whose works Anthropic allegedly downloaded from pirate libraries LibGen and PiLiMi to create a repository of millions of books in 2021 and 2022.
Alsup said Anthropic may have illegally downloaded as many as 7 million books from the pirate websites, which could make it liable for billions of dollars in damages if the authors' case succeeds.
Re: (Score:1)
People are moving the goalpost since ELIZA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I already met people who say chess AI are no AI because they don't use plain English to play.
Let's see when people start claiming that LLM are no longer AI.
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"LLM was never AI. It's a very clever probabilistic next word predictor."
So is the brain. Whether an LLM is "AI" or not, this isn't a good reason.
"Unlike you, apparently, some of us actually studied or even majored in this field in university."
If that "some of us" includes you, how embarrassing.
"It is not in ANY way Intelligent."
Neither are right-wingers, but they are still people. Intelligence doesn't have to be intelligent, DJT got your vote, after all.
Re: Excellent, Smithers (Score:2)
If a chess program can figure out how to email Gary Kasparov, it's AGI. Nothing like this exists.
If a chess program learns from playing human opponents or through its own simulations, it's an AI. I don't know off hand which ones, but I'm guessing there are a few chess AIs out there.
If you throw computation at a large dataset to produce an effective chess agent, that's machine learning, but the chess game has no AI. This is what LLMs are.
If you hand code a chess algorithm based on input from chess masters, i
Re: Excellent, Smithers (Score:1)
How old? (Score:1)
How old is each of those 7 million copyrights? I support people getting paid for their work. I don't support the crazy "lifetime plus 70 years", or "95 years", or "120 years" that copyright offers, that is crazy.
This is the perfect time to address the overboard nature of copyrights.
Re:How old? (Score:5, Insightful)
From the summary: "Alsup said Anthropic may have illegally downloaded as many as 7 million books from the pirate websites"
So that figure is the 'upper' range (probably based on the total number of books on those sites), and it'll be up to the authors to prove how many have valid copyrights.
This is the perfect time to address the overboard nature of copyrights.
Agreed. Especially if said books aren't available for purchase (shouldn't be able to claim lost sales on something you don't actually sell).
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shouldn't be able to claim lost sales on something you don't actually sell
They'll use the "Disney Vault" argument. Remember when Disney would only have certain movies on shelves for a certain number of years and then stopped production only to bring out a new "special edition" for every anniversary of the release? The movies never got discounted much or went on a big clearance sale because they were always "new" releases. Artificial scarcity is part of the value of the work.
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The class action will just result in lawyers getting most of the 'winnings', followed by the publishers. The actual writers will get the scraps, if there are any left over.
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Copyright fights are usually unbalanced, where the copyright holder has a lot of resources and lawyers while the accused does not. Things have changed with AI, where the AI companies have a lot of resources too (even if lawyers is not the best way to spend it).
Obviously, the course of this case doesn't change copyright. But the outcome of this case could get tech companies with cash interested in changing copyright.
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But the best chance of changing copyright is to enforce it mercilessly so the megacorps will lobby to get it changed. The only thing worse than draconic IP laws are draconic IP laws that are selectively enforced only on the poor.
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No, this is the perfect time to claw back some of the billions of dollars the AI companies are sucking out of the working class before they use our work to replace all of the jobs with no plan for how people will make a living.
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If I were an author of one of the books in question, I'd opt out of the class action. Don't let the thieving bastards get away with a tiny little sweetheart deal.
I wish Harlan Ellison were still alive. He'd show them what for.
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It's either cut a deal or suddenly Antropic is owned by a consortium of authors - assuming the suit would succeed. Which would get a bit interesting. They would end up forming some sort of RIAA licensing scheme to keep future payouts in line.
Waiting for the mental gymnastics (Score:2)
"This isn't piracy. Nothing was stolen. The dollar amount is just pulled out of someone's ass because no sales were lost."
"Authors need to get paid for their work. Fuck LLMs and their piracy."
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No mental gymnastics. I disagree with (1) and agree with (2).
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Then same applies to those who make movies, songs, and software.
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Yes, absolutely. Creators should be compensated for their works.
Now, I happen to use almost exclusively open-source software, whose creators generously let me use it for free, but I recognize that it's generosity on their part and not some natural right of mine. I also contribute to free software development in time and money.
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Third position, copyright terms are too damn long, so I don't respect them.
I support Authors getting paid for their work, yes. I don't support that work being squeezed for nickels in perpetuity when it should become fair game and part of our cultural background.
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"Authors need to get paid for their work. Fuck LLMs and their piracy."
Talk to the publishers about that one. The middlemen at the publishing company have broken the customer-to-author revenue stream.
Ouch (Score:2)
Anthropic clearly forgot to pay bribe money to the US gov... err, I mean, democracy-loving "lobbying" money, like OpenAI / Google / et al.
Additional charges (Score:2)
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"...and by extension the value extracted from these sources..."
False. Copyright covers the work, not the value you extract from the work.
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Otherwise college textbook publishers would want to try to collect on patents that graduates who studied their works went on to create. Though I shouldn't give them any ideas, it does seem like something they would try.
End the thievery (Score:3)
GenAI and LLMs are nothing but giant criminal enterprises stealing the hard work of humans. I want the entire industry to fail so hard.
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Yes, I wrote that I want the industry to fail hard, not the tech.
Most of the useful AI tools such as the ones you mention are not generative AI or LLMs. They are machine-learning tools, yes, but not LLMs.
China wins (Score:2)
You don't think China and other countries haven't done this too? The elites worldwide will have access to AI with the sum of human knowledge. While you guys lose your jobs to robots.
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You don't think China and other countries haven't done this too? The elites worldwide will have access to AI with the sum of human knowledge. While you guys lose your jobs to robots.
China also locks its citizens up in reeducation camps for disagreeing with the government. Do you want to copy that too? At some point we'll have to decide whether we want to live under the rule of law or be ridden over roughshot by the rich and/or powerful.
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"At some point we'll have to decide whether we want to live under the rule of law or be ridden over roughshot by the rich and/or powerful."
The OP would ask who the law would be enforced upon by the rich and powerful, that's all that matters to him.
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Fear what you don't know, and use it to demonize your enemies. Yep, right winger.
Piracy? (Score:2)
They have not downloaded them, they have not made copies, not sold copies...
They just READ them.