Comment by pyman
6 months ago
Anthropic's cofounder, Ben Mann, downloaded million copies of books from Library Genesis in 2021, fully aware that the material was pirated.
Stealing is stealing. Let's stop with the double standards.
6 months ago
Anthropic's cofounder, Ben Mann, downloaded million copies of books from Library Genesis in 2021, fully aware that the material was pirated.
Stealing is stealing. Let's stop with the double standards.
At least most pirates just consume for personal use. Profiting from piracy is a whole other level beyond just pirating a book.
Someone on Twitter said: "Oh well, P2P mp3 downloads, although illegal, made contributions to the music industry"
That's not what's happening here. People weren't downloading music illegally and reselling it on Claude.ai. And while P2P networks led to some great tech, there's no solid proof they actually improved the music industry.
I really feel as if Youtube is the best sort of convenience for music videos where most people watch ads whereas some people can use an ad blocker.
I use an adblocker and tbh I think so many people on HN are okay with ad blocking and not piracy when basically both just block the end user from earning money.
I kind of believe that if you really like a software, you really like something. Just ask them what their favourite charity is and donate their or join their patreon/a direct way to support them.
8 replies →
Let's not forget Spotify ;)
https://gizmodo.com/early-spotify-was-built-on-pirated-mp3-f...
1 reply →
I feel like profit was always a central motive of pirates. At least from the historical documents known as, "The Pirates of the Caribbean".
This isn't really profiting from piracy. They don't make money off the raw input data. It's no different to consuming for personal use.
They make money off the model weights, which is fair use (as confirmed by recent case law).
This is absurd. Remove all of the content from the training data that was pirated and what is the quality of the end product now?
17 replies →
> At least most pirates just consume for personal use.
Easy for the pirate to say. Artists might argue their intent was to trade compensation for one's personal enjoyment of the work.
The gut punch of being a photographer selling your work on display, someone walks by and lines up their phone to take a perfect picture of your photograph, and then exclaims to you "Your work is beautiful! I can't wait to print this out and put it on my wall!"
[flagged]
3 replies →
stealing with the intent to gain a unfair marked advantage so that you can effectively kill any ethically legally correctly acting company in a way which is very likely going to hurt many authors through the products you create is far worse then just stealing for personal use
that isn't "just" stealing, it's organized crime
> Stealing is stealing. Let's stop with the double standards.
I get the sentiment, but that statement as is, is absurdly reductive. Details matter. Even if someone takes merchandise from a store without paying, their sentence will vary depending on the details.
Let's get actual definitions of 'theft' before we leap into double standards.
Copyright infringement is not stealing.
It's very similar to theft of service.
There's so many texts, and they're so sparse that if I could copyright a work and never publish it, the restriction would be irrelevant. The probability that you would accidentally come upon something close enough that copyright was relevant is almost infinitesimal.
Because of this copyright is an incredibly weak restriction, and that it is as weak as it is shows clearly that any use of a copyrighted work is due to the convenience that it is available.
That is, it's about making use of the work somebody else has done, not about that restricting you somehow.
Therefore copyright is much more legitimate than ordinary property. Ordinary property, especially ownership of land, can actually limit other people. But since copyright is so sparse infringing on it is like going to world with near-infinite space and picking the precise place where somebody has planted a field and deciding to harvest from that particular field.
Consequently I think copyright infringement might actually be worse than stealing.
you've created a very obvious category mistake in your final summary by confusing intellectual property--which can be copied at no penalty to an owner (except nebulous 'alternate universe' theories)--with actual property, and a farmer and his land, with a crop that cannot be enjoyed twice.
you're saying copying a book is worse than robbing a farmer of his food and/or livelihood, which cannot be replaced to duplicated. Meanwhile, someone who copies a book does not deprive the author of selling the book again (or a tasty proceedings from harvest).
I can't say I agree, for obvious reasons.
5 replies →
> Consequently I think copyright infringement might actually be worse than stealing.
I remember when piracy wasn't theft, and information wanted to be free.
1 reply →
actually, the Only time it's a (ethical) crime is when a corporation does it at scale for profit.
property infringement isn't either?
If you infringe by destroying property, then yes, it's not stealing
[flagged]
Making a copy differs from taking an existing object in all aspects: literally, technically, legally and ethically. Piracy is making a copy you have no legal right to. Stealing is taking a physical object that you have no legal right to. While the "no legal right to" seems the same superficially, in practice the laws differ quite a bit because the literal, technical and ethical aspects differ.
Where can I download Harry Potter on claude.ai pls?
1 reply →
They are not selling it on claude.ai. If you can prove that they are you will be rich.
Who got robbed? Just because I'd pay for AI it doesn't mean I'd buy these books.
5 replies →
[flagged]
oh well, the product has a cute name and will make someone a billionaire, let's just give it the green light. who cares about copyright in the age of AI?
Information wants to be free.
Then why does Claude cost money?
Because regurgitated information is not the same