AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

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

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[SixDegrees]

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

<Mr. Burns' voice>: Excellent!

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[SixDegrees]

I'm just going to say that becoming so defensive that you have to point to the US leading a very large coalition against a much smaller belligerent in defence of an even smaller victim as the only great sign of US military hard power since the end of the second world war is not the argument you think it is. I would also note that while the initial Gulf War had less than 300 coalition deaths (plus over 400 from the Kuwaiti military), that led directly to a decade long slog of an occupation that resulted in 4800 military deaths among coalition members.

Then you get into all of the knock-on effects of the American-led occupation and one thing remains true over the last century: with the possible exception of the Korean War, basically every time the US intervenes with its military, it leaves the region (if not the entire world) in a much worse state.

I'm also just gonna mention that the US prevailing against an enemy that's 75 years or more behind the US technologically isn't all that special. Especially when the end result is a massive failure with nothing good to show for the effort. It's every bit as special as Israel slaughtering defenseless Palestinians in pursuit of outright genocide, with a similar mismatch in capabilities.

 

[SixDegrees]

It is not hard to understand, for those not being willfully obtuse.

No other country has liberated -- or conquered -- a country on the other side of the planet, in six weeks, with just a few hundred casualties.

That was and is unprecedented.

That is only one example of US military action since WW2, and the vast majority have been successful from a combat standpoint.

Do you understand now?

The US hasn't done that either. You're forced to gerrymander their "victory" by roping off the dismal failure of the entire enterprise.

And it wasn't six weeks. Pretty much Iraq's entire air force had been slowly decimated over the course of years of no-fly-zoning. Which as part and parcel of the ultimate utter failure of US involvement in Iraq.

And again: see also Israel's ongoing genocide for a similar example of nascent failure just waiting to blossom in Israel's face going forward.

 

[SixDegrees]

Because that area lacks the resources to provide for their survival.

And because those Palestinians could live in perfect safety in any one of dozens of other countries.

You do hopefully recall why Israelis are forced to live in that spot -- because they have no other choice, on the planet.

The world would be better off eliminating that residency altogether.

 

[SixDegrees]

How many aircraft were destroyed pre and post invasion?

Does Iraq control Kuwait today?




You're complaining about me being "forced" into a position, and you're resorting to speculation about what might happen in a completely different conflict?

I hope you can do better.

More gerrymandering. Including a complete redefinition of what the failed conflict was about.

But by all means, enjoy your jingoism. It seems important to you.

 

[SixDegrees]

If we had an honest and just legal system, you would be absolutely correct.

Consider the US Supreme & appellate courts, though.

The authoritarians in the executive branch LOVE AI. It enables them to cut out people they hate (creatives, who largely lean left) and enable individualized echo chambers backed by cherry-picked information sources.

In addition to that, ALL of big tech has its tendrils tightly entangled into AI, and that industry is a massive portion of our GDP.

It's too big a boon for the worst (and unfortunately most powerful) parts of our society, for them to let it be hamstrung legally.

Hope I'm wrong, though.

Tech - ALL of tech - accounts for about 10% of GDP. Significant, but not massive.

And that's without mentioning that so far, AI in its current headline-grabbing form isn't productive at all in terms of money. It's a vast venture capital sink, in search of profits which have not yet been found.

 

[SixDegrees]

That's different, because those are ordinary meatbags

It's also false.

 

[SixDegrees]

I'll actually chime in on this for once.

This is like trying to say the old horse carriage roads should not be allowed with cars or that electricity should only be used for lighting but not for coffee maker.

This is coming people, either adapt or get out of the way.

You can attack or regulate all you want but someone else will work around it and you will go into obsolescence.

The world is changing in one of those very big Gutenbergian shifts

The exact same thing was said about autonomous driving.

20 years ago.

It hasn't happened, and it's increasingly likely it never will.

AI and its attendant hype are VERY reminiscent of early autonomous driving proclamations, and it's looking like the very same sort of failures await it. It's hit the same 80% wall, and there's no way around or over it.

 

[SixDegrees]

Don't those settlements usually include a calculated lump sum that gets divided up at the end of the deadline to the folks that proved they are eligible (minus the gigantic fee to the lawyers)? If that's actually how it works, how would you even calculate a realistic fee. You'd probably end up including a high percentage of authors and dead publishers that wouldn't end up proving eligibility and all that extra cash would go to the lawyers.

Either way, Anthropic would be screwed, but I can see why class actions require some due diligence up front to identify those included in the lawsuit.

This kinda will either screw the authors who can't prove they are eligible, because then they can't sue later. Or if they can sue later, would Anthropic just be paying twice and forever looking over it's shoulders for the next lawsuit?

Proving eligibility, at a first pass anyway, shouldn't involve any more than just producing a record of a copyright filing. Although works are considered "filed" upon creation, IRL doing the actual physical filing grants you considerable additional rights when it comes time to collect for violations. A lot of people don't bother, but in that case you'll likely get pretty much nothing, as proof becomes a LOT more complicate. Filings are by date, of course, so unless you're Methuselah it's likely that any recorded copyright is still valid as long as you're alive. Estate copyright holdings might be a wee bit more complicated, but not much.

Just a reminder for those who create such works: filing for copyright costs money (not much, maybe 50 bucks, but a single filing can be applied to a collection of related works in a lot of cases) and it does give you significant legal protections.

Working out on the backend whether violations occurred on the part of the defendants might get a little trickier, but server and other logs could show if a site containing the work or the work itself was ingested, and I'd think the assumption would be that, if the work was ever online in any form, it was scanned.

 

[SixDegrees]

People like you would cheer for another holocaust if it happened to the right people.

That's what this person is, in fact, doing right here. I mean, Netanyahu has said publicly that he wanted to "establish camps for Palestinians, where they could be concentrated," truly a WTF statement coming from the leader of Israel, of all places. I'm waiting for him to describe his military takeover of Gaza as "the final solution" to the issue. He hasn't said that last bit out loud yet, but some members of the faction shoring him up have tiptoed right up to it more than once, and also openly called explicitly for genocide against the Palestinians.

 

[SixDegrees]

Y'all are being played by a racist piece of shit. He's not listening. Ignore, move on.