Comment by superfrank
6 months ago
I'm trying to find the quote, but I'm pretty sure the judge specifically said that going and buying the book after the fact won't absolve them of liability. He said that for the books they pirated they broke the law and should stand trial for that and they cannot go back and un-break in by buying a copy now.
Found it: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/federal-judge-rules-c...
> “That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft,” [Judge] Alsup wrote, “but it may affect the extent of statutory damages.”
Is copyright in America different to Britain? There, it is legal to download books you don't own. Only distribution is a crime, which most torrenters break by seeding.
I think it's very similar in both countries, but you have got it wrong. Downloading a book without permission is copyright infringement in both countries, regardless of whether you distribute it.
In the UK it's a criminal offense if you distribute a copyrighted work with the intent to make gain or with the expectation that the owner will make a loss.
Gain and loss are only financial in this context.
Meaning that in both countries the copyright owner can sue you for copyright infringement.
What do you mean by 'it is legal'?
Do you mean:
A) It's not a criminal offence?
B) The copyright owner cannot file a civil suit for damages?
C) Something else?
> Only distribution is a crime
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It's not a crime in the US, either, I believe, but you can certainly be sued in civil court for it.
They also argued that they in no way could ever actually license all the materials they ingested
I love this argument so much. "But judge, there's no way I could ever afford to buy those jewels, so stealing them must be OK."
The argument is more along the lines of, negotiating with millions of individuals each over a single copy of a work would cause the transaction costs to exceed the payments, and that kind of efficiency loss is the sort of thing fair use exists to prevent. It's not socially beneficial for the law to require you to create $2 in deadweight loss in order to transfer $1, and the cost to the author of not selling a single additional copy is not the thing they were really objecting to.
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Did they really steal if they didn't deprive anyone of their copy? I don't think copying is theft.
It's copyright infringement, which is not theft, they're legally distinct in the eyes of the law. This is partly why the "you wouldn't download a car" copyright ads were so widely mocked.
Fun fact, they didn't have the rights to use the font they used for those commercials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43775926
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Agreed, the judge should avoid slang or even commonly accepted synonyms in an official ruling. The charge is not for theft.
Substitute infringement for theft.
They stole from the amount they would have legally paid to buy a copy from the copyright holder.
Think about it like sneaking into a movie theater and watch a movie without paying. The theater was going to play the movie anyway and, assuming it wasn't a packed theatre, I didn't deprive anyone else of their ability to watch. It's still theft because I'm getting something that costs money for free and depriving the theater of the money that they're owed.
It's fine that you think that way. But this is a discusion of the laws of the United States of America and ruling by American courts, not a discussion of your own legal theories.
The GP isn’t talking about some edge case legal dilemma that requires a lawyer or judge to comment. It’s already widely documented that copyright infringement is legally distinct from theft.
"Tell it to the Judge..."
You may not think it is but the law does.
The law says it’s copyright infringement, not theft.