Oh no…I’m super bummed. 🤭

All these desperate attempts to protect copyright. I understand it, I want to publish things and not have it scraped by AI, but let’s be realistic here. No government in the world wants to miss out on AI. The general public profits enormously from AI too. I doubt any of that is going to succeed.

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, unlesd 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 similarly 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, it is so obviously fair use that the argument was summarily dismissed…

🍿

Tell it to Joel

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.

“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.

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.

“Please let us steal” - AI Industry

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.

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

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

Thoughts and prayers.

Wish him the best

Good.