[AnthonyMouse]

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.

[homebrewer]

I used to order books in English from the US before shipping costs became prohibitive and the cost of shipping the book went to about twice to thrice the cost of the book itself. Is it fair use for me to download books from Anna's Archive now considering that books in English are not available in my region through other means (including the vast majority of ebooks)?

Rhetorical question, we all know that me reading books is not "transformative" so it won't be considered fair use for me to yoink them (transformative as in transforming more damage to the society at large into more money for the already rich).

[HelloImSteven]

In the U.S. at least (obviously not the same everywhere), fair use doesn’t necessarily require your work to be transformative. It’s one of several aspects that gets considered, albeit a fairly significant one in many cases. Downloading books/research articles/pirated works in general wouldn’t be fair use as the purpose of the act (obtaining a book to read) directly impacts the market for the work (selling books). There could still exceptions in some cases, mostly related to teaching I’d imagine.

[bombcar]

What’s more interesting to me is if you can hire someone in the US to buy the book for you, cut the spine off with a bandsaw, and send you the scans and destroy the pages afterwards.

[exe34]

That's right, so I can't individually discuss terms with each and every media creator, so from now on, I can just pirate everything.

[Aeolun]

This is literally why a lot of people pirate content, yes. It’s pretty much always the only way to obtain the content, even if you are otherwise fine with paying for it.

[johnnyanmac]

Yes, and it's technically copyright infringement, even for private use. It's just that damages and enforcement is in feasible.

But if you tried to open a black market selling that media: you'd be hunted down to the ends of the earth. Or to China/North Korea, at least.

[Aeolun]

> But if you tried to open a black market selling that media

Why would you ever do that? Nobody would buy it. They'd just get it in the same place you did.

[bombcar]

You’d be surprised, almost any flea market/swap meet will still have bootleg DVDs and “PlayStation 2s” preloaded with a billion games.

Everyone can out a disk in a DVD player; sailing the high seas is much trickier.

[johnnyanmac]

Undercut the competition, mainly. People will do a lot of things for a decent discount.

[AnthonyMouse]

Needing a copy of one book you're going to spend a week reading has a lot less overhead than needing a copy of every book that you're going to process with a computer in bulk.

[recursive]

I like to glance at the cover art. I can do ten per second when I really get into my flow state. Sometimes I read them also, but that's incidental.

[AnthonyMouse]

If you go to the book store and glance at all the cover art without buying any of them, do you expect to be sued for this?

[freejazz]

If you do that and reproduce the covers or the protected elements thereof, you should absolutely expect to be sued.

[AnthonyMouse]

So for example, if the bookstore has a nice 4k surveillance camera and you have access to it because you work there, sitting at home and using it to look at the cover art on all the books on display is something you'd expect to be sued over?

[johnnyanmac]

They can. That's how any media service from Spotify to Netflix to Audible have to do things.

They simply don't want to and think they can skirt the law while the judges catch up.

[kelnos]

What do you mean by "negotiating"? They can buy the books in paperback form from Amazon. And for e-books available for sale without DRM, they get to skip the cutting and scanning part.

If the book is out of print, then tough luck. That's not a license to infringe on the publisher's copyright. If we're not ok with that, we have legislative means to change that. A judge shouldn't be rewriting law in that manner.

[freejazz]

> 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.

[johnnyanmac]

>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.

[freejazz]

The publishers could license the works in bulk, without the need for Anthropic to deal with the individual authors. Both sides pointed this out.

[AnthonyMouse]

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.

[freejazz]

>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?

[AnthonyMouse]

> 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.

[const_cast]

I think the notion that some sort of god-given right to "scale" can absolve you of laws is preposterous.

If your business model is not economically sustainable in the current legal landscape you operate in, the correct outcome is you go out of business.

There's lots and lots of potential businesses, infinite in fact, that fall into this understanding. They don't exist because they can't because we don't want them to, so you never see them. Which might give the impression of a right to scale, but no, it does not exist.

[freejazz]

>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 not the most important factor. The transformative factor is the most important. Effect on market for the work doesn't even support your argument anyway. Your argument is about the cost of making the end product, which is totally distinct from the market effects on the copyright holder when the infringer makes and releases the infringing product.

>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.

So? That doesn't make you right. Go read the opinions, dude. This isn't something that's actually up for debate. Search engines are fair uses because of their transformative effect, not because they are really expensive otherwise. Your argument doesn't even make sense. By that logic, anything that's expensive becomes a fair use. It's facially ridiculous. Them being expensive is neither sufficient nor necessary for them to be a fair use. Their transformative nature is both sufficient and necessary to be found a fair use. Full stop.

>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.

Okay, and? They don't need to get every single book ever written. The libraries they pirated do not consist of "every single book ever written". It's hard to take this argument in good faith because you're being so ridiculous.

[AnthonyMouse]

> No, that's not the most important factor. The transformative factor is the most important.

It's a four factor test because all of the factors are relevant, but if the use has negligible effect on the market for the work then it's pretty hard to get anywhere with the others. For example, for cases like classroom use, even making verbatim copies of the entire work is often still fair use. Buying a separate copy for each student to use for only a few minutes would make that use uneconomical.

> Effect on market for the work doesn't even support your argument anyway. You're argument is about the cost of making the end product, which is totally distinct from the market effects on the copyright holder when the infringer makes and releases the infringing product.

We're talking about the temporary copies they make during training. Those aren't being distributed to anyone else.

> So? That doesn't make you right.

Making a copy of everything on the internet is a prerequisite to making a search engine. It's something you have to do as a step to making the index, which is the transformative step. Are you suggesting that doing the first step is illegal or what do you propose justifies it?

> By that logic, anything that's expensive becomes a fair use. It's facially ridiculous.

Anything with unreasonably high transaction costs. Why is that ridiculous? It doesn't exempt any of the normal stuff like an individual person buying an individual book.

> They don't need to get every single book ever written.

They need to get as many books as possible, with the platonic ideal being every book. Whether or not the ideal is feasible in practice, the question is whether it's socially beneficial to impose a situation with excessively high transaction costs in order to require something with only trivial benefit to authors (potentially selling one extra copy).

[throwawayffffas]

I don't even think their argument is about the money, I think it's more like we couldn't possibly find all these works in any other practical way.