[Varelion]

I sincerely don't understand what the point of these laws are, when the cost of flagrant violations is no more than a slap on the wrist -- these really meager sums that serve as nothing more than something to point at and say "Look, we did something!"

Cover-your-ass strategy, and nothing more. Who, besides the ones at fault, are ever happy with these mean-nothing fines?

The justice system really needs an overhaul with how it tackles "justice" between the wealthy, the connected, the corporations, and the rest. Though I am unsure what that would look like. Minimum net wealth per category of infraction across the board?

Edit: grammar

[Aurornis]

This is a settlement that the authors and Anthropic agreed upon.

They agreed on the amount last year. The judge approved it now.

The lawsuit was for the way the books were acquired. They already ruled that it's not infringement to use the books.

The award was $3,000 per book, which is about 100X higher than it would have cost to buy the books.

It's never going to appease the people who demand companies be sued into collapse, but given that both parties came to an agreement and the damages are 100X higher than what a book costs, it looks reasonable to me.

[nadermx]

This case did at least shed light on the fair use argument.

[ekianjo]

100x the books? Buying a book does not let you redistribute its contents.

If you are selling more than 100 books you are clearly losing out

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

That ISN’T what this settlement is about? Genuinely please just once read past the headline.

[Aurornis]

The judge already ruled that training on the books does not constitute reselling their content.

The authors were only owed money for the piracy.

[pier25]

> This is a settlement that the authors and Anthropic agreed upon.

The authors or the publishers?

I have a hard time believing they agreed with the millions of authors they pirated.

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

There were individual authors in the class. They initiated it. Individual authors were allowed to sign up.

If you’re so interested, go read past the headline. Maybe you’ll find that you’re working about what “authors” will agree to.

[skippyfish]

To sign up for what? The experience of approximately every author on the planet is that they found out that Anthropic did something bad at the same time they were "opted into" the class. The only thing they could do is opt out and litigate on their own against a company with a valuation approaching $1T.

This is a sweet deal for lawyers and for publishers, and nothing else.

[scotty79]

> The award was $3,000 per book, which is about 100X higher than it would have cost to buy the books.

How many of the authors would license their book for endless creation of derivative works for that amount?

[Aurornis]

The judge already ruled that it was fair for Anthropic to use books for training if they acquired them legally.

[protocolture]

I dont see the relevance. If Anthropic had bought the book at the store, shredded the spine, scanned the pages and trained on that data instead, there wouldnt have been an issue.

Authors cant simply license away fair use. If it could be dismissed so easily the right wouldn't exist.

[ollysb]

Creating derivative products you charge for surely can't be considered fair use?

[timmmmmmay]

Of course it is. If I write a movie review and sell it to a magazine or whatever, it's derived from the movie, and it's fair use, and I don't need to ask the movie owner for permission first, or give them a cut of my sales. Even if I use some reasonable number of screenshots and video clips, as long as the resulting work is "transformative" i.e. actually a new work, a movie review instead of a copy of the movie.

Do you want this to work any other way? I constantly see people in the AI debate working themselves into wildly copyright maximalist positions. I actually don't think that we should give every author veto power over a book review!

[protocolture]

>I constantly see people in the AI debate working themselves into wildly copyright maximalist positions

I really dont get this. I know its that conflation fallacy or whatever, but I was under the impression we had sort of gotten over copyright maximalism as a society after Napster etc.

Whats worse is that, meaningful reform in this space has basically been waiting on a multi billion dollar corporation to come along and push it forward. So now that we have an opportunity to expand and globalise fair use, the sudden and quite angry opposition weirds me out to no end.

[pandaman]

IANAL but as an IP creator I have not heard of "derivative products" in the copyright context. There are "derivative works", which are covered by the same copyright as the original. For example, a translation to another language is a derivative work, a novelisation of a movie, a screen adaptation of a book etc. If some author could have proven that any Anthromic model is a derivative work of theirs then they had the copyright on that model and made mad bucks licensing it back to Anthropic.

[gruez]

>Creating derivative products you charge for surely can't be considered fair use?

All US courts so far have ruled yes.

[janderland]

YouTubers monetize fair use all the time. Is that significantly different?

[paulddraper]

Probably few, but irrelevant as the ruling was it was not a derivative work.

[datakan]

Punishable by fine just means it's legal for a cost. If the fine is less than the profit then they'll pay the fine every time.

[protocolture]

No the "fine" is 3000 bucks per book.

Thats more than it costs to just shred the spine and scan the book in. Which is probably 15 - 20 bucks a piece.

They will be shredding the book not paying the fine.

[zajio1am]

Civil justice is primarily about restoring damages, not about punishing wrongdoing (although common law in US it is more punitive than civil law in european countries). Therefore compensations are based on damages, not on profit from wrongdoings.

[renlo]

the irony is that all of this money will go to rent-seeking publishers who won't pass it on to the artists; basically a dispute between the wealthy you're upset with

[jdlshore]

Default payout is 50/50 author/publisher. If the author and publisher have a contract that states otherwise, then their contract overrides the default.

Source: I’m an author and signed up to be part of the class action, and this was the class action documents said.

[Aurornis]

The lawsuit was a mixed blend of individual authors and publishers.

It was started by a group of authors, not publishers.

[renlo]

For the downvotes, my response is to read: https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/artificial-intelligence/wh...

> If there is a current publisher(s) (which still possesses an exclusive license), the author(s) will split the $3000 with the publisher. Any co-authors will share the author portion and, if there are multiple publishers (e.g., different publishers have exclusive rights to different formats), they will share the publisher portion. Assume that the co-authors and co-publishers will share the portion equally unless their contracts provide otherwise. The standard default split between publishers and authors of noneducational texts is 50/50, as described below. Authors who are the sole rightsholder in a work—such as self-published authors and authors whose rights have reverted or where the contracts have otherwise terminated—will receive the full award amount.

It is split between the publisher and the author, also publishers will have a large catalog of books they will submit, an author typically will only have a few -- the payout will be going to the lawyers and mostly to publishers.

[gruez]

>It is split between the publisher and the author, also publishers will have a large catalog of books they will submit, an author typically will only have a few -- the payout will be going to the lawyers and mostly to publishers.

This is innumerate. If it's split 50% between authors and publishers, then it won't be "mostly to publishers". Mathematically it will be equal between "authors" and "publishers", and because lawyers are taking their cut, neither would be able to get "most" of it. Yes, the average publisher will get a bigger paycheck, but that's because there's less of them, not because "most going to publishers".

[renlo]

> That means that rightsholders can expect at least $3,000 per title (less costs and fees), which will be shared among the rightsholders for that title (if there is more than one rightsholder)

> if there is more than one rightsholder

Again, a publisher will have a whole catalog of books / titles, a non-negligible portion of that the publisher will own the copyright to (no one to split it with). There's all kinds of books outside of novels, there's media tie-ins, IP franchise books (ie Star Wars), childrens books, textbooks / reference materials, etc etc etc. Yes, with novels the author tends to own the copyright, but you're forgetting all of the other kinds of books out there.

[robterrell]

Not true. Individual authors could sign up for the settlement. One of my books was in there under my name.

[scotty79]

What's gonna be your payout and are you satisfied with it?

[bjourne]

> I sincerely don't understand what the point of these laws are, when the cost of flagrant violations is no more than a slap on the wrist -- these really meager sums that serve as nothing more than something to point at and say "Look, we did something!"

To create a moat around wealth generation. After all, that is the main purpose of all legal systems---to keep the wealthy wealthy and the poor poor. In this case, the settlement is chump change for Anthropic, but ensures that no upstart will be able to compete with them since they will get reamed on copyright charges. It's no different from Google Image search. They can make a product out of republishing others' images. You cannot do it.

[PunchyHamster]

To keep users paying for content while companies do whatever they want - and if that's not the reason that's certainly an effect.

> The justice system really needs an overhaul with how it tackles "justice" between the wealthy, the connected, the corporations, and the rest. Though I am unsure what that would look like. Minimum net wealth per category of infraction across the board?

% of annual turnover seems like decent strategy. Caps the amount company can sue mere mortal for copyright infringement while at billion dollar company scale can wipe quite a bit

But main problem is enforcement and lobbying, not the size of the fine

[blackqueeriroh]

So you now believe fair use should not exist?

[Ritewut]

The laws are for you and me not companies like Anthropic and Meta.

[jaitsu]

Because using pirated material is a civil issue, not a criminal offence?