Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion copyright settlement to authors, publishers

https://www.courthousenews.com/anthropic-to-pay-1-5-billion-copyright-settlement-to-authors-publishers/

287 points · 27 comments · view on lemmy.world

27 Comments

gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works · 115 pts · 30d (7 replies)

Wow, so uh, that’s gonna come out to fractions of a cent on the dollar, in terms of actual revenue generated from flagrant copyright violations.

It is deeply infuriating how fundamentally our society is designed to protect of people and organizations that are already blindingly wealthy.

username_1@discuss.tchncs.de · 79 pts · 30d (2 replies)

Authors will receive next to nothing too :) Only publishers.

state_electrician@discuss.tchncs.de · 29 pts · 30d

Just like God intended.

woelkchen@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 29d

That's the point of publishing deals, though. Authors don't need to pay upfront costs, in return the publishers get to keep the revenues. Not really related to AI.

XLE@piefed.social · 11 pts · 30d

Fifty-four known class members and over 500,000 potential class members will each receive an estimated $3,100 per work, from approximately 482,000 works.

Still too low IMO but a big upgrade

JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz · 10 pts · 30d

Still, paying even just the $3000 for a single book from this lawsuit is going to be quite hard when you are making zero profit whatsoever. LLM AI was unprofitable when the training data was free, they are even more so if they have to pay even a cent per item. And I really doubt it's going to stop with this one batch and payment and they can just go back to pirating the stuff for free.

Trilogy3452@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 29d

Will this perhaps set a precedent for future models where authors will be able to price their work differently?

richardisaguy@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 30d
piskertariot@lemmy.world · 87 pts · 30d

$1.5B, and they get to keep the knowledge, which will be distilled by future models for generations.

You will own nothing. Not even your own art.

OrganicMustard@lemmy.world · 42 pts · 30d (2 replies)

Why is a single payment for an arbitrary amount of money still enforced to the authors?

Anthropic should have all their models deleted so they start from the beginning following copyright laws.

frongt@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 30d (1 reply)

The claimants have deemed it acceptable.

UltraBlack@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 29d

And it's probably a fine line between something and the entire deal being deemed excessive

itrealgood@mander.xyz · 22 pts · 30d (3 replies)
[ removed ]
Pyotr@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 30d (2 replies)

Well in this case its lump sum or percentage of negative profit, so lump sum might be the better path here... Still not remotely enough compensation to the actual craters of the content they've stolen though.

JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz · 15 pts · 30d (1 reply)

That's why fines should always be out of revenue, like the GDPR fines, and never profit. Just because the business you did illegally was bad business shouldn't mean you don't have to pay fines for it.

Pyotr@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 30d

No, that's entirely fair, and I agree should be the SOP. I was just thinking of the recent articles about how AI companies in general are hiding massive amounts of debt a-la Enron style, thus likely even their revenue figures are made up.

errer@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 30d (1 reply)

Check if Anthropic owes you $3100 here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

Scotty_Trees@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 29d

Good link, but I don't think that's going to apply to any of us here 🤷‍♀️️

kescusay@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 30d

I wonder how the venture capital firms that fund Anthropic's money-burning operation feel about this. "Oh look, now I know how that particular funding round's money was actually spent. Fantastic."

ranzispa@mander.xyz · 6 pts · 29d

I know this has nothing to do with that, but the word publishers always reminds me of a thing.

FUCK YOU ELSEVIER

fubarx@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 30d (1 reply)

Just forwarded the search link to a friend. He coauthored a long out-of-date book on podcasting, and it's on their list. A lot of these authors will get a nice bonus.

sanitation@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 30d

my company gonna sue them too

scottmeme@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 30d

How much does this affect their bankruptcy estimate?

ReluctantZen@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 30d (2 replies)

But this means there's still no precedence, no?

FatCrab@slrpnk.net · 3 pts · 30d

Thia is to settle their infringement from when they literally torrented giant chunks of their training corpus. It has nothing to do with any sort of infringement theory based on encoding learning from material but just old fashioned liability for flagrant piracy.

frongt@lemmy.zip · 0 pts · 30d

Yes. A settlement means there was no finding, and no admission of guilt.

melfie@lemmy.zip · 1 pts · 30d
[ removed ]
ryannathans@aussie.zone · 0 pts · 29d (1 reply)

Interesting to see Lemmy users who are normally "information should be free" supporters suddenly support the copyright system

tb_@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 29d

Information between you and me? Yes.

Information a trillion dollar company really wants to get their greedy hands on? Fuck you, play by the rules of the society you have shaped.