As Anthropic argued, it now “faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months” based on a class certification rushed at “warp speed” that involves “up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history,” each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.
So you knew what stealing the copyrighted works could result in, and your defense is that you stole too much? That’s not how that works.
The purpose of copyright is to drive works into the public domain. Works are only supposed to remain exclusive to the artist for a very limited time, not a “century of publishing history”.
The copyright industry should lose this battle. Copyright exclusivity should be shorter than patent exclusivity.
Copyright owners winning the case maintains the status quo.
The AI companies winning the case means anything leaked on the internet or even just hosted by a company can be used by anyone, including private photos and communication.
This is the real concern. Copyright abuse has been rampant for a long time, and the only reason things like the Internet Archive are allowed to exist is because the copyright holders don’t want to pick a fight they could potentially lose and lessen their hold on the IPs they’re hoarding. The AI case is the perfect thing for them, because it’s a very clear violation with a good amount of public support on their side, and winning will allow them to crack down even harder on all the things like the Internet Archive that should be fair use. AI is bad, but this fight won’t benefit the public either way.
So you knew what stealing the copyrighted works could result in, and your defense is that you stole too much? That’s not how that works.
Actually that usually is how it works. Unfortunately.
*Too big to fail" was probably made up by the big ones.
The purpose of copyright is to drive works into the public domain. Works are only supposed to remain exclusive to the artist for a very limited time, not a “century of publishing history”.
The copyright industry should lose this battle. Copyright exclusivity should be shorter than patent exclusivity.
Copyright companies losing the case wouldn’t make copyright any shorter.
Their winning of the case reinforces a harmful precedent.
At the very least, the claims of those members of the class that are based on >20-year copyrights should be summarily rejected.
Copyright owners winning the case maintains the status quo.
The AI companies winning the case means anything leaked on the internet or even just hosted by a company can be used by anyone, including private photos and communication.
If scraping is illegal, so is the Internet Archive, and that would be an immense loss for the world.
This is the real concern. Copyright abuse has been rampant for a long time, and the only reason things like the Internet Archive are allowed to exist is because the copyright holders don’t want to pick a fight they could potentially lose and lessen their hold on the IPs they’re hoarding. The AI case is the perfect thing for them, because it’s a very clear violation with a good amount of public support on their side, and winning will allow them to crack down even harder on all the things like the Internet Archive that should be fair use. AI is bad, but this fight won’t benefit the public either way.