• Null User Object@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry

    No. Just the LLM industry and AI slop image and video generation industries. All of the legitimate uses of AI (drug discovery, finding solar panel improvements, self driving vehicles, etc) are all completely immune from this lawsuit, because they’re not dependent on stealing other people’s work.

    • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      But it would also mean that the Internet Archive is illegal, even tho they don’t profit, but if scraping the internet is a copyright violation, then they are as guilty as Anthropic.

      • magikmw@piefed.social
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        3 months ago

        IA doesn’t make any money off the content. Not that LLM companies do, but that’s what they’d want.

        • axmo@lemmy.ca
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          3 months ago

          Profit (or even revenue) is not required for it to be considered an infringement, in the current legal framework.

        • CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          And this is exactly the reason why I think the IA will be forced to close down while AI companies that trained their models on it will not only stay but be praised for preserving information in an ironic twist. Because one side does participate in capitalism and the other doesn’t. They will claim AI is transformative enough even when it isn’t because the overly rich invested too much money into the grift.

      • carg@feddit.org
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        3 months ago

        Scrapping the Internet is not illegal. All AI companies did much more beyond that, they accessed private writings, private code, copyrighted images. they scanned copyrighted books (and then destroyed them), downloaded terabytes of copyrighted torrents … etc

        So, the message is like piracy is OK when it’s done massively by a big company. They’re claiming “fair use” and most judges are buying it (or being bought?)

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    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.

    So you knew what stealing the copyrighted works could result in, and your defense is that you stole too much? That’s not how that works.

    • zlatko@programming.dev
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      3 months ago

      Actually that usually is how it works. Unfortunately.

      *Too big to fail" was probably made up by the big ones.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      3 months ago

      The purpose of copyright is to drive works into the public domain. Works are only supposed to remain exclusive to the artist for a very limited time, not a “century of publishing history”.

      The copyright industry should lose this battle. Copyright exclusivity should be shorter than patent exclusivity.

        • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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          3 months ago

          Their winning of the case reinforces a harmful precedent.

          At the very least, the claims of those members of the class that are based on >20-year copyrights should be summarily rejected.

          • snooggums@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Copyright owners winning the case maintains the status quo.

            The AI companies winning the case means anything leaked on the internet or even just hosted by a company can be used by anyone, including private photos and communication.

            • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              3 months ago

              Copyright owners are then the new AI companies, and compared to now where open source AI is a possibility, it will never be, because only they will have enough content to train models. And without any competition, enshittification will go full speed ahead, meaning the chatbots you don’t like will still be there, and now they will try to sell you stuff and you can’t even choose a chatbot that doesn’t want to upsell you.

  • PushButton@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Let’s go baby! The law is the law, and it applies to everybody

    If the “genie doesn’t go back in the bottle”, make him pay for what he’s stealing.

    • Zetta@mander.xyz
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      3 months ago

      The law absolutely does not apply to everybody, and you are well aware of that.

    • SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I just remembered the movie where the genie was released from the bottle of a real genie, he turned the world into chaos by freeing his own kind, and if it weren’t for the power of the plot, I’m afraid people there would have become slaves or died out.

      Although here it is already necessary to file a lawsuit for theft of the soul in the literal sense of the word.

        • SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Damn, what did you watch those masterpieces on? What kind of smoke were you sitting on then? Although I don’t know what secret materials you’re talking about. Maybe I watched something wrong… And what an episode?

    • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      This would mean the copyright holders like Disney are now the AI companies, because they have the content to train them. That’s even worse, man.

      • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        It’s not because they would only train on things they own which is an absolute tiny fraction of everything that everyone owns. It’s like complaining that a rich person gets to enjoy their lavish estate when the alternative is they get to use everybody’s home in the world.

          • BussyCat@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            They have 0.2T in assets the world has around 660T in assets which as I said before is a tiny fraction. Obviously both hold a lot of assets that aren’t worthwhile to AI training such as theme parks but when you consider a single movie that might be worth millions or billions has the same benefit for AI training as another movie worth thousands. the amount of assets Disney owned is not nearly as relevant as you are making it out to be

            • ShadowWalker@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Until they charge people to use their AI.

              It’ll be just like today except that it will be illegal for any new companies to try and challenge the biggest players.

              • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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                3 months ago

                why would I use their AI? on top of that, wouldn’t it be in their best interests to allow people to use their AI with as few restrictions as possible in order to maximize market saturation?

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    An important note here, the judge has already ruled in this case that "using Plaintiffs’ works “to train specific LLMs [was] justified as a fair use” because “[t]he technology at issue was among the most transformative many of us will see in our lifetimes.” during the summary judgement order.

    The plaintiffs are not suing Anthropic for infringing on their copyright, the court has already ruled that it was so obvious that they could not succeed with that argument that it could be dismissed. Their only remaining claim is that Anthropic downloaded the books from piracy sites using bittorrent

    This isn’t about LLMs anymore, it’s a standard “You downloaded something on Bittorrent and made a company mad”-type case that has been going on since Napster.

    Also, the headline is incredibly misleading. It’s ascribing feelings to an entire industry based on a common legal filing that is not by itself noteworthy. Unless you really care about legal technicalities, you can stop here.


    The actual news, the new factual thing that happened, is that the Consumer Technology Association and the Computer and Communications Industry Association filed an Amicus Brief, in an appeal of an issue that Anthropic the court ruled against.

    This is pretty normal legal filing about legal technicalities. This isn’t really newsworthy outside of, maybe, some people in the legal profession who are bored.

    The issue was class certification.

    Three people sued Anthropic. Instead of just suing Anthropic on behalf of themselves, they moved to be certified as class. That is to say that they wanted to sue on behalf of a larger group of people, in this case a “Pirated Books Class” of authors whose books Anthropic downloaded from the book piracy websites.

    The judge ruled they can represent the class, Anthropic appealed the ruling. During this appeal an industry group filed an Amicus brief with arguments supporting Anthropic’s argument. This is not uncommon, The Onion famously filed an Amicus brief with the Supreme Court when they were about to rule on issues of parody. Like everything The Onion writes, it’s a good piece of satire: link

  • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    Well maybe they shouldn’t have done of the largest violations of copyright and intellectual property ever.

    Probably the largest single instance ever.

    • potoooooooo ☑️@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      I feel like it can’t even be close. What would even compete? I know I’ve gone a little overboard with my external hard drive, but I don’t think even I’m to that level.

  • westingham@sh.itjust.works
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    3 months ago

    I was reading the article and thinking “suck a dick, AI companies” but then it mentions the EFF and ALA filed against the class action. I have found those organizations to be generally reputable and on the right side of history, so now I’m wondering what the problem is.

    • pelya@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      AI coding tools are using the exact same backends as AI fiction writing tools, so it would hurt the fledgling vibe coder profession (which according to proper software developers should not be allowed to exist at all).

  • guyincognito@piefed.social
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    3 months ago

    I thought it was hilarious how there was a quote in the article that said

    immense harm not only to a single AI company, but to the entire fledgling AI industry and to America’s global technological competitiveness

    It will only do this because all these idiotic American companies fired all their employees to replace them with AI. Hire then back and the edge won’t dull. But we all know that they won’t do this and just cry and point fingers wondering how they ever lost a technology race.

    Edited because it’s my first time using quotes and I don’t know how to use them properly haha

  • Deflated0ne@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Good. Burn it down. Bankrupt them.

    If it’s so “critical to national security” then nationalize it.

    • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      the “burn it down” variant would only lead to the scenario where the copyright holders become the AI companies, since they have the content to train it. AI will not go away, it might change ownership to someone worse tho.

      nationalizing sounds better; even better were to put in under UNESCO-stewardship.

  • SugarCatDestroyer@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Unfortunately, this will probably lead to nothing: in our world, only the poor seem to be punished for stealing. Well, corporations always get away with everything, so we sit on the couch and shout “YES!!!” for the fact that they are trying to console us with this.

    • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This issue is not so cut and dry. The AI companies are stealing from other companies more than ftom individual people. Publishing companies are owned by some very rich people. And they want thier cut.

      This case may have started out with authors, but it is mentioned that it could turn into publishing companies vs AI companies.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Well, theft has never been the best foundation for a business, has it?

    While I completely agree that copyright terms are completely overblown, they are valid law that other people suffer under, so it is 100% fair to make them suffer the same. Or worse, as they all broke the law for commercial gain.

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Probably would have been cheaper to license everything you stole, eh, Anthropic?

  • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I am holding my breath! Will they walk free, or get a $10 million fine and then keep doing what every other thieving, embezzling, looting, polluting, swindling, corrupting, tax evading mega-corporation have been doing for a century!

    • cmeu@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Would be better if the fee were nominal, but that all their training data must never be used. Start them over from scratch and make it illegal to use anything that it knows now. Knee cap these frivolous little toys

    • hansolo@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      This is how corruption works - the fine is the cost of business. Being given only a fine of $10 million is such a win that they’ll raise $10 billion in new investment on its back.

  • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 months ago

    So, the US now has a choice: rescue AI and fix their fucked up copyright system, or rescue the fucked up copyright system and fuck up AI companies. I’m interested in the decision.

    I’d personally say that the copyright system needs to be fixed anyway, because it’s currently just a club for the RIAA&MPAA to wield against everyone (remember the lawsuits against single persons with alleged damages in the millions for downloading a few songs? or the current tries to fuck over the internet archive?). Should the copyright side win, then we can say goodbye to things like the internet archive or open source-AI; copyright holders will then be the AI-companies, since they have the content.

  • Lexam@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    No it won’t. Just their companies. Which are the ones making slop. If your AI does something actually useful it will survive.

    • A Wild Mimic appears!@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      You know, if they lose, their tech will probably become the property of copyright holders, which means your new AI Overlord has the first name Walt.

    • turtlesareneat@discuss.online
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      3 months ago

      What um, what court system do you think is going to make that happen? Cause the current one is owned by an extremely pro-AI administration. If anything gets appealed to SCOTUS they will rule for AI.

      • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The people who literally own this planet have investigated the people who literally own this planet and found that they literally own this planet and what the FUCK are you going to do about it, bacteria of the planet?

        ^

        • Plurrbear@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          What in the absolute fuck are you talking about?! Your comment is asinine, “bacteria of the planet” the fuck?! Do you have the same “worm in the brain” that RFK claims to have because you sound just as stupid as him?

          You claim people “own” this planet… um… what in the absolute fuck? Yes, people with money have always push an agenda but “owning” it, is beyond the dumbest statement.