"If we have to pay for the intellectual property that we steal and repackage, our whole business model will be destroyed!"

Hmm. I'm finding it hard to come up with more clever response to them than.

" good "

They have the entire public domain at their disposal.

If giant megacorporations didn't want their chatbots talking like the 1920s, they shouldn't have spent the past century robbing society of a robust public domain.

You had me at "financially ruin AI industry".

If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.

Maybe they should have thought of that before they ripped off a century's worth of published literature?

I’m no fan of the copyright fuckery so commonly employed by (amongst others) the RIAA and MPAA, but this is honestly the best use of copyright law I can think of in recent memory.

Are they expecting me to feel bad for them? Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

AI industry, fucking around: Woo! This is awesome! No consequences ever! Just endless profits!

AII, finding out: this fucking sucks! So unfair!

"copyright class action could ruin AI industry"

Oh nooooooo....... How do I sign on to this lawsuit?

I would not hold my breath. There is a high likelihood that the courts will side AI companies because the American courts are compromised.

Corps fight class actions, because individuals can't sue on their own...

Copywrite holders have money and legal teams on call. Even if they stop this, they'll just have a shit ton of lawsuits instead

I've read this entire thread and could not find a single person who seems to have actually read anything about this case.

The article is a huge pile of bullshit.

Here is what happened: An industry group filed an amicus brief during the appeal of a ruling where the judge certified the 3 plaintiffs as a class. Boring legal minutae in a case that doesn't matter, see below.

The author is either incompetent at understanding legal filings or deliberately being misleading to write clickbait trash. Human slop, if you prefer.

This is not noteworthy, at all. The issue being argued about is if the 3 people can represent the class of "everyone Anthropic downloaded books from". This is a non-story, unless you're a legal nerd and care about exactly how courts define classes and the legal steps required for the analysis.

But, more importantly for the frothing anti-AI masses:

In the order certifying the defendants as a class, the judge dismissed the plaintiff's claims of copyright violation related to the training of LLMs. The judge said that training LLMs was transformative and thus fair use under copyright law and since this is so obvious that that argument could be summarily dismissed.

Don't believe me, go click on the links in the article to the summary judgement yourself. The information is not hard to find if you read farther than the headline.

The only remaining issue in the lawsuit is if Anthropic is civilly liable for downloading the books on bittorrent.

This case isn't even about AI anymore, it's the same kind of lawsuit that we've seen since Napster was popular. Uploading copyrighted material, like when you use BitTorrent, is a copyright violation and you could be sued.

That's all this case is now, the argument that everyone is fighting over in the comments: "Is training an LLM on copyrighted material a violation of copyright?" is already answered by the judge:

No, using copyrighted material to train a LLM is so obviously fair use that the argument was summarily dismissed.

Here's the relevant quote from the judge, in summary judgement:

To summarize the analysis that now follows, the use of the books at issue to train Claude and its precursors was exceedingly transformative and was a fair use under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. The digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use, but not for the same reason as applies to the training copies. Instead, it was a fair use because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient, space-saving, and searchable digital copies without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies. However, Anthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library, and creating a permanent, general-purpose library was not itself a fair use excusing Anthropic’s piracy.

"Please let us steal" - AI Industry

Yeah, who the fuck gave all these rich assholes the right to make money on others' work?

I'd like to know how these assholes get away with even training on GPL licensed code.

Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said.

The judge didn’t apply critical thinking but instead just did whatever was the most likely decision based on all the information it was fed in its training? That must be very inconvenient and it would be a shame if we had companies advertising exactly that as a world changing technology.

Oh no...I'm super bummed. 🤭

Wish him the best

Good

Good.

🍿

Thoughts and prayers.

AI is piracy.