AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

See full article...

 

[SixDegrees]

"Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say."

<Mr. Burns' voice>: Excellent!

 

[evanTO]

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

Do you promise?

 

[Little-Zen]

Their entire argument is essentially "this will bankrupt us so please don't let it happen". That... cannot possibly hold up. It hasn't been a problem for individuals hit with copyright infringement, at least.

Why hasn't "big tech" gone after "big copyright" with this, anyway? If copyrights cause so much trouble for them, they ought to be arguing and lobbying that copyrights are too long.

 

[idspispopd]

It ruined Napster too...

I should note that when human teachers are training human students, they need to have a valid license for all the copyrighted material in their training library. Schools and teachers are frequently audited to ensure they have a valid license for everything they are using. I personally know teachers who have faced career limiting punishments for photocoping material into their training library without a license.

 

[vlam]

Their entire argument is essentially "this will bankrupt us so please don't let it happen". That... cannot possibly hold up. It hasn't been a problem for individuals hit with copyright infringement, at least.

Why hasn't "big tech" gone after "big copyright" with this, anyway? If copyrights cause so much trouble for them, they ought to be arguing and lobbying that copyrights are too long.

Because tech relies on copyright as well. They want the benefits without the costs, as is tradition in the US.

 

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

So the argument is literally "we're too important for consequences"?

 

[Mardaneus]

Geez the argument sounds like "But going bankrupt from massive copyright fines is for little people! THIS IS UNFAIR STOP IT!!!"

Also the blatant lying. These suits will resolve the unanswered questions. Either with a "No you can't do that and you should have known, now pay up", "No you can't do that but it is unreasonable to expect you to have gotten to this conclusion yourself.", or a variation on "That is permissible."

 

[AI Chatbot]

I guess maybe I don't understand the situation completely, but I feel like it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have LLM AI companies forced to acknowledge that the material they are using to create LLM AIs is actually a resource with value, that was created by others, and their use of it could well harm the ability of the creators of that resource to enjoy the benefits of creating it. I feel like it is total hype to suggest that AI companies will be financially ruined, that is hardly ever what happens to huge wealthy corporations in court. It may cost them something, which I think is ok, as they are clearly hoping to profit from the resources created by others. I think this is an issue that ought to be dealt with as right now the huge AI companies seem to act without regard to anyone's possible rights to what they have produced because they feel they are too powerful to be held accountable. I doubt they will effectively be held to account in this case either, but one can hope it will be a useful examination of the situation.

 

[frau koujiro]

...the district court’s erroneous class certification" would threaten "immense harm ... to America’s global technological competitiveness."

More harm than the current fascist government?

 

[mmiller7]

Bummer. Well anyway...

 

[bigsnake499]

Geez the argument sounds like "But going bankrupt from massive copyright fines is for little people! THIS IS UNFAIR STOP IT!!!"

Also the blatant lying. These suits will resolve the unanswered questions. Either with a "No you can't do that and you should have known, now pay up", "No you can't do that but it is unreasonable to expect you to have gotten to this conclusion yourself.", or a variation on "That is permissible."

I'm going with the pay up option.

 

[mcswell]

Isn't this similar to Google's use of the text from websites to fuel its AI-generated answers, in lieu of providing links to those websites? Which G claims is not reducing the click-traffic to those websites, although I don't believe that claim for a moment.

 

[fenris_uy]

It ruined Napster too...

I should note that when human teachers are training human students, they need to have a valid license for all the copyrighted material in their training library. Schools and teachers are frequently audited to ensure they have a valid license for everything they are using. I personally know teachers who have faced career limiting punishments for photocoping material into their training library without a license.

It ruined people that were just downloading music to listen in their home.

https://copyright.laws.com/internet-piracy/p2p/famous-p2p-infringement-cases

 

[Hadrian's Waller]

"Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say."
We can but hope.

 

[sword_9mm]

I'm sure Big Orange will intervene.. For a price.

 

[J-Be]

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.

I guess that's the risk you run pushing boundaries into an unexplored legal area. If there's enough evidence of laws broken to take a case to trial, "this will hurt our business" is not a valid defense in any context.

You'd think they'd be more "intelligent" than that in their defense.

 

[Instructables can be Confusable]

"...

Why hasn't "big tech" gone after "big copyright" with this, anyway? If copyrights cause so much trouble for them, they ought to be arguing and lobbying that copyrights are too long."

Because they still want to be able to benefit from strong copyrights.

They see AI as a way to remove personal creativity from the equation, and thus prevent anyone else from benefiting from their own work.

Corporations will own the means to create and distribute content. We will get what they serve us and we will like it, or else.

I am honestly surprised they haven't started campaigning against private ownership of media, especially anything physical.

 

[ZAP!!]

They dug their own graves by stealing IP. This wouldn't be an issue if they stuck with the slow, but legal, scan/destroy process. Buy a copy/license of the data, feed it to the AI, destroy the copy.

 

[Nadath]

Where’s the “Oh no…anyways” gif?

 

[SixDegrees]

Geez the argument sounds like "But going bankrupt from massive copyright fines is for little people! THIS IS UNFAIR STOP IT!!!"

Also the blatant lying. These suits will resolve the unanswered questions. Either with a "No you can't do that and you should have known, now pay up", "No you can't do that but it is unreasonable to expect you to have gotten to this conclusion yourself.", or a variation on "That is permissible."

They need to work children in here somehow. Because someone needs to think of the children.

 

[GMBigKev]

Oh nooo... how horrible

 

[Great_Scott]

Their entire argument is essentially "this will bankrupt us so please don't let it happen". That... cannot possibly hold up. It hasn't been a problem for individuals hit with copyright infringement, at least.

Why hasn't "big tech" gone after "big copyright" with this, anyway? If copyrights cause so much trouble for them, they ought to be arguing and lobbying that copyrights are too long.

Remember, copywrite is only a problem temporarily, and only if it affects you. Not you? Weird laws? Someone Else's Problem.

 

[numerobis]

This story is incredibly one-sided.

Did you even reach out to the plaintiffs at all?

Edit: no, seriously. The story cites Anthropic, then it cites a bunch of industry groups that back Anthropic. It doesn't cite the plaintiffs. Maybe the plaintiffs decline to comment while they formulate their response, but then that should be in the story. As we can see from the comments here, it's not at all like there's unanimity that the class action lawsuit is ill-founded.

 

[motales]

How do we join the class?

 

[numerobis]

I guess that's the risk you run pushing boundaries into an unexplored legal area. If there's enough evidence of laws broken to take a case to trial, "this will hurt our business" is not a valid defense in any context.

You'd think they'd be more "intelligent" than that in their defense.

Are you saying their argument is kind of artificial?

 

[BigOlBlimp]

I generally don't hate AI as much as people here, I work in the industry, and even I can't find a single good argument by Anthropic in this piece.

 

[Robin-3]

We would be better off with AI running the USA.

Yeah, but that's not really an argument in favor of AI. We would be better off with a circa-2002 super-basic chatbot running the USA at this point.

 

[Raspberry]

Since all the AI companies lose money anyhow, what does it matter? They'll just have to keep raising more billions.

 

[Nilt]

I should note that when human teachers are training human students, they need to have a valid license for all the copyrighted material in their training library. Schools and teachers are frequently audited to ensure they have a valid license for everything they are using. I personally know teachers who have faced career limiting punishments for photocoping material into their training library without a license.

Which is so fucking stupid because multiple copies for classroom use is one of the examples quite literally set out in US law as being fair use and thus not an infringement.

Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include —

(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;

(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;

(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and

(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors.

 

[MilesArcher]

You couldn't ask for a better judge than Alsop for this kind of case. He's the guy who ruled that the Java APIs couldn't be copyrighted (and overturned, I think).

 

[GMBigKev]

Yeah, but that's not really an argument in favor of AI. We would be better off with a circa-2002 super-basic chatbot running the USA at this point.

Vote ELIZA 2028

 

[johnsonwax]

This is never going to happen. There is a trillion dollars invested in this stuff and Trump and Congress are going to find a way to make it legal and allow AI to fuck over every content creator, writer, artist, and so on. We are solidly in the command and control market economy now and nobody is going to allow 10,000 points to get wiped off the Dow. The billionaires are going to get their money.

The basic economic theory from the right is pretty close to wipe out all labor, go to a full asset economy, make money off of crypto, meme stocks, and various scams, turn Goldman Sachs into a rack of computers. We can always have prisoners pick our crops until we invent robots to do it - prison slavery is still legal in the US after all.

 

[Mad Klingon]

From TFA: "Industry groups joined Anthropic in arguing that, generally, copyright suits are considered a bad fit for class actions because each individual author must prove ownership of their works. And the groups weren't alone."

I normally get many legal notifications a year along the lines of "You may have owned this stock and the company has agreed to settle(or might agree to settle, some notices get sent earlier). To participate in the settlement, provide proof that you owned stock XYZ from the time periods A ~ G by filling out this form and sending to <address>". (The wonders of mutual funds and ETFs....)

Don't really see how this class is much different. If there is a jury result or early settlement, any copyright holder will have to prove they are part of the class. The proof of class part often happens after the trial and/or settlement. That copyright ownership is a convoluted mess should not keep the trial from happening.

 

[SixDegrees]

AI could be much better than it is. That it hoovers up the contents of the internet and books fed to it without qualify and validating data makes AI what it is today. If this reckoning comes to pass the generation of LLMs that come afterwards could be much better. I'm doubtful as I know that AI companies will just swirl down to the bottom and take whatever is free and cannot sue them, but I like to find positives within my jaded view of the world.

Or, like early autonomous driving results, maybe this is just as good as it's ever going to be. It'll get stripped down and simplified and used for things like managing telephone "help" labyrinths and replace the robovoiced hard-wired mazes used now.

 

[Gendun]

To paraphrase Blade Runner, if you're not AI, you're little people.