Comment by freejazz
6 months ago
> and that kind of efficiency loss is the sort of thing fair use exists to prevent.
No it's not. And you ever heard of a publishing house? They don't need to negotiate with every single author individually. That's preposterous.
>They don't need to negotiate with every single author individually.
Yeah they do. What do you think the employees of a publishing house do? They make deals, work with authors, and accept/reject pitches. They 100% need to make sure every work is under a negotiated contract.
The publishers could license the works in bulk, without the need for Anthropic to deal with the individual authors. Both sides pointed this out.
It kind of is though?
It's not the only reason fair use exists, but it's the thing that allows e.g. search engines to exist, and that seems pretty important.
> And you ever heard of a publishing house? They don't need to negotiate with every single author individually. That's preposterous.
There are thousands of publishing houses and millions of self-published authors on top of that. Many books are also out of print or have unclear rights ownership.
>It kind of is though?
No, it kinda isn't. Show me anything that supports this idea beyond your own immediate conjecture right now.
>It's not the only reason fair use exists, but it's the thing that allows e.g. search engines to exist, and that seems pretty important.
No, that's the transformative element of what a search engine provides. Search engines are not legal because they can't contact each licensor, they are legal because they are considered hugely transformative features.
>There are thousands of publishing houses and millions of self-published authors on top of that. Many books are also out of print or have unclear rights ownership.
Okay, and? How many customers does Microsoft bill on a monthly basis?
> Show me anything that supports this idea beyond your own immediate conjecture right now
It's inherent in the nature of the test. The most important fair use factor is the effect on the market for the work, so if the use would be uneconomical without fair use then the effect on the market is negligible because the alternative would be that the use doesn't happen rather than that the author gets paid for it.
> No, that's the transformative element of what a search engine provides. Search engines are not legal because they can't contact each licensor, they are legal because they are considered hugely transformative features.
To make a search engine you have to do two things. One is to download a copy of the whole internet, the other is to create a search index. I'm talking about the first one, you're talking about the second one.
> Okay, and? How many customers does Microsoft bill on a monthly basis?
Microsoft does this with an automated system. There is no single automated system where you can get every book ever written, and separately interfacing with all of the many systems needed in order to do it is the source of the overhead.
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