[pyman]

Pirating a book and selling it on claude.ai is stealing, both legally and morally.

Pirating 7 million books, remixing their content, and using that to make money on Claude.ai is like counterfeiting 7 million branded products and selling them on your Shopify website. The original creators don't get payment, and someone's profiting off their work.

Try doing that yourself and you'd get a knock on the door real quick.

[Paradigma11]

There are tests that determine if a work infringes on the copyright of another. That is well established law. Just use that test and show that this work is infringing on that work. If you cant it doesn't.

[KoolKat23]

Properly remixing the content so that it can be considered distinct would be fair use. You can't copyright a style, concept or idea.

Also mostly this would be a civil lawsuit for "damages".

[pyman]

It might be legal in the US, but not in the rest of the world.

The trial is scheduled for December 2025. That’s when a jury will decide how much Anthropic owes for copying and storing over seven million pirated books

[fuzzfactor]

You make some good points, this really is going to take some careful judgment and chances are it's too complex for an actual courtroom to yield an ideal outcome.

Now places like Flea markets have been known to have a counterfeit DVD or two.

And there is more than one way to compare to non-digital content.

Regular books and periodicals can be sold out and/or out-of-print, but digital versions do not have these same exact limitations.

A great deal of the time though, just the opposite occurs, and a surplus is printed that no one will ever read, and which will eventually be disposed of.

Newspapers are mainly in the extreme category where almost always a significant number of surplus copies are intentionally printed.

It's all part of the same publication, a huge portion of which no one has ever rightfully expected for every copy to earn anything at all, much less a return on every single copy making it back to the original creator.

Which is one reason why so much material is supported by ads. Even if you didn't pay a high enough price to cover the cost of printing, it was all paid for well before it got into your hands.

Digital copies which are going unread are something like that kind of surplus. If you save it from the bin you should be able to do whatever you want with it either way, scan it how you see fit.

You just can't say you wrote it. That's what copyright is supposed to be for.

Like at the flea market, when two different vendors are selling the same items but one has legitimately purchased them wholesale and the other vendor obtained theirs as the spoils of a stolen 18-wheeler.

How do you know which ones are the pirated items?

You can tell because the original owners of the pirated cargo suffered a definite loss, and have none of it remaining any more.

OTOH, with things like fake Nikes at the flea market, you can be confident they are counterfeit whether they were stolen from anybody in any way or not.

[bumby]

>If you save it from the bin you should be able to do whatever you want with it either way, scan it how you see fit.

Don’t we already have laws covering this? For example, sometimes excess books can be thrown in the bin. Often, they have the covers removed. Some will say something to the effect that “if you’ve received this without a cover it is a copyright violation.” I think one of the points of the lawsuit is it gives copyright holders discretion as to how their works are used/sold etc. The idea that “if you saved it from the bin you can do with it whatever you want” strips them of that right.

[fuzzfactor]

Another good point, and it's a fine point as well.

You could split hairs over whether saving an item from the bin occurred after a procedure to remove covers and it was already dumped, or before any contemplation was made about if or when dumping would take place.

Saving either way would be preserving what would otherwise be lost, even if it was well premeditated in advance of any imminent risk.

What if it was the last remaining copy?

Or even the only copy ever in existence of an original manuscript?

It's just not a concept suitable for a black & white judgment.

That's a very good sign that probably an entire book of regulations needs to be thrown out instead, and a new law written to replace it with something more sensible.

[bumby]

>What if it was the last remaining copy?

Or even the only copy ever in existence of an original manuscript?

I think these still remove the copyright of the author. As it stands, I have the right to write the best novel about the human condition ever conceived and also the right (if copyrighted) to not allow anyone to read it. I can light it on fire if I wish. I am not obligated to sell it to anyone. In the context of the above, I can stipulate that nobody can distribute excess copies even if they would be otherwise destroyed. You may think that’s wasteful or irrational but we have all kinds of rights that protect our ability to do irrational things with our own property.

>That's a very good sign that probably an entire book of regulations needs to be thrown out instead, and a new law written to replace it with something more sensible.

This sentiment implies that you do not think the owner has those rights. That’s fine, but there are plenty of people (myself included) who think those are reasonable rights. Intellectual property clause is in the first article of the US Constitution for a good reason, although I do think it can be abused.

[CaptainFever]

Actually, "the rest of the world" has already legalised AI training in the form of Text and Data Mining Exemption laws.

[ungreased0675]

There seems to be an unwritten rule for VC-backed tech companies, that if a law is broken at massive scale and very quickly, it’s ok. It’s the fait accompli strategy many of the large tech companies used to get where they are.

Don’t have legal access to training data? Simply steal it, but move fast enough to keep ahead of the law. By the time lawsuits hit the company is worth billions and the product is embedded in everyday life.