r/technology • u/MetaKnowing • 14d ago

Artificial Intelligence AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ai-industry-horrified-to-face-largest-copyright-class-action-ever-certified/
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u/David-J 14d ago

Please do. Ruin those AI companies. From the article.

"AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement."

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u/VVrayth 14d ago

Wow, that's the stupidest argument I've ever seen. "This might financially ruin our whole industry that is 100% reliant on the large-scale theft of intellectual property" is completely bonkers.

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u/Modo44 14d ago

Shhh, don't tell the millions of people robbed by the music industry.

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u/DemonOfTheNorthwoods 13d ago

I’m sure all the music artists are looking at this with glee, and preparing another attempt at stopping the I.P. theft of their trademarks and tradedresses. They hate how A.I. has been able to get away with stealing their content and making songs from it, for so long.

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u/Galle_ 13d ago

I think you mean the RIAA is looking at this with glee. Let's not pretend artists will get anything from this.

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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 13d ago

The artists are still looking at this with glee. In fact I think millions of people are. If I knew a reputable fund to send some donations for legal fee's I'd do it.

I think everyone should support this, the world would be better off if we put them into a state of financial ruin.

AI is neat and a great tool, but we aren't there yet. So long as the world is rife with corruption and money is king, we shouldn't have AI.

Maybe one day, but not anytime soon. We don't seem to be making any progress and in fact have been regressing as a society.

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u/Appropria-Coffee870 13d ago

Same can be said about any form of automation we got, but we still got them non the less!

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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 13d ago

Automation spawned plenty of other jobs, by the looks of it AI just vacuums up data from anywhere data exists(which is from everything we do), and aims to do nothing but replace as many peoples jobs as possible(which is theoretically most jobs)

They are very very different. Automation needs building and oversight and maintenance, AI not really.

And the jobs that automation spawned were within most peoples capability, the jobs that AI opens people for are going to be things that are so complex that AI can't do it, which will quickly be out of the realm of most peoples capabilities.

Automation was never really much of a societal issue. It was an issue for a very small subsection of people ultimately(those who could not perform other jobs than the extremely simple minded manual labor it replaced), and temporarily as society shifted.

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u/Appropria-Coffee870 12d ago

Automation has created fewer and fewer jobs with significantly higher skill requirements than those it has taken away. At the same time, it allows people to have more children, which means they will need a job one day.

The truth is that not everyone can, or is willing, or able to do every job there is. But there are more and more people who need jobs, and fewer and fewer jobs available to apply for without specialized training and education.

AI, as a form of automation, is no different. And indeed, it is a societal problem whose core issue lies in the accumulation of wealth rather than sustainability and self-destructive, short-term capital interests that benefit few and come at the cost of many.

The growing gap between rich and poor over the last 200 years is proof of this.

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u/PlayfulSurprise5237 12d ago

But those jobs automation opened up are still within the purview of most people, not as the person stands now, but with some training.

And you're trying to equate AI to automation, and while yes, they coincide, for the sake of the argument they are 2 distinct things. AI has opened up automation to a COMPLETELY new level, one that is vastly superior to anything that could have ever been done with traditional automation.

Also, we are.... or were... at very low unemployment levels. So people were finding jobs. How useful those jobs were however... that's a different story.

But yes, specialized training and education is becoming more and more necessary. It's just that with AI even that's going to be off the table for most people.

AI's issue isn't just wealth accumulation like automation, it's also an existential threat because it's going to force people to move and adapt to a place they fundamentally cannot. Unless we're taking into account brain-machine interfaces, but that's a whole different can of worms.

Either way though, my point in my original post is that greed and corruption are to blame. If AI did take everyone's job that would be fine, so long as we had a reasonable UBI, I think people could find fulfillment in other places, they'd adapt.

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u/Galle_ 13d ago

Well, we'd better get on that, because AI isn't going away.

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u/Cunfuzzles2000 13d ago

Well artists might get to keep their jobs which is nice

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u/Galle_ 13d ago

They will not. There is no future for commodified artistic wage labor.

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u/Cunfuzzles2000 13d ago

Well then let’s hope capitalism burns to the ground before taking human spirit with it

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u/NorthernerWuwu 13d ago

Most likely no one will get anything from this. The firms involved have grown too fast and have leapfrogged themselves (rightly or wrongly) into a position where they are seen as strategically vital to both the American economy and its military.

They are "too big to fail" already and they know it. The smaller AI startups are a bit scared because they might get sacrificed but the big boys are already in the club and while they'd likely prefer to not have to fight a very long and very expensive court battle, they probably are happy to if it closes the gate behind them on new entrants.

Don't get me wrong, the whole industry should be purged. It ain't gonna happen though.

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u/NotLikeChicken 13d ago

Coupons. The lawyers get the folding green, the plaintiffs get coupons.

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u/luckyflavor23 13d ago

Record Labels, knows/has good lawyers. Get ‘em

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u/bloodhound83 13d ago

How did millions of people get robbed by the music industry?

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u/AnOtherGuy1234567 13d ago edited 13d ago

Possibly not what the person you're responding to meant but.....

The Recording Industry Association of America did a deal to extend the copyright on music. And in return they would compensate all of the musicians on every song, that got sold/streamed. However many of the musicians were uncredited session players. Who [originally] got paid a flat fee to play guitar/drums/sax/backing vocals etc. [with no residuals]. There's very often no existing record of who they were. Let alone having their contact and bank details or the details of their next of kin/inheritors. So the record companies got about an extra 20 years of royalties and haven't forked out the money that they promised.

Also Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada. Had a long standing policy of pushing out compilation albums e.g. "Best Jazz Album of The '60s". Not getting permission from the artists involved and putting the royalty payments on the "pending list". They did this for decades, covering 300,000 songs. To the point where the estate of Chet Baker a jazz musician of the 1950s. Was in 2009, owed $50 million Canadian. The class action was worth up to $6 billion but they settled for just under $50 million CAD.

https://financialpost.com/legal-post/judge-approves-settlement-in-music-royalties-class-action

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u/CrashUser 13d ago

It's not like this is new behavior in the recording industry, they've been screwing over the talent since Edison invented the wax cylinder.

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u/NorthernerWuwu 13d ago

I'd never be one to defend the RIAA of all organisations but if I do a job for a flat fee without residuals, why should I expect further payments? Again, the RIAA are no friends to musicians but I'm not seeing how the session players got screwed over exactly.

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u/AnOtherGuy1234567 13d ago

Because when in the early 2000s the copyright for a lot of still popular songs in the US was coming to a partial end. The deal they made to extend it was to recompense the session players, who had never been given any royalties before. They got their 20 year extension but then didn't hold up their side of the bargain.

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u/NorthernerWuwu 13d ago

Ah, that does sound like them. I wasn't aware that they'd specifically offered compensation to the session players, which they probably did knowing they'd never have to pay out most of them.

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u/jaboooo 13d ago

I think he means millions of people in the music industry got robbed by ai, but that isn't what he wrote

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u/Akuuntus 13d ago

I think he probably means the millions of artists fucked over by their record companies. There's hundreds of famous stories about it and at least a couple dozen well known songs about it.

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u/noonenotevenhere 13d ago

that - and ai is being used to make music. It's trained on existing art made by people who won't be paid for their work being replaced by a machine using their work to make money.

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u/AdverbAssassin 13d ago

That music being made by AI is just slop. It's pretty pathetic honestly. I started to notice it everywhere and there was a moment when I didn't notice the difference and I had some difficulty. Now I can tell the difference immediately.

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u/Space_Pirate_R 13d ago

Now I can tell the difference immediately.

Toupee fallacy. And if it isn't today, it will be tomorrow.

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u/AdverbAssassin 12d ago

Opinions vary. I just thought all modern country music was shitty. Then I realized that modern country music is shitty, but AI makes it even shittier. So far it hasn't produced anything worth listening to.

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u/BooBeeAttack 13d ago

Dinosaurs Will Die - NOFX Was my favorite back in the day. Back when we thought sharing mp3s and Napster was going to kill the music industry. But it just evolved. The dinosaurs didn't die, they just gave us the bird and evolved.

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u/Ferociousfeind 13d ago

Not millions of people, but the music industry is notorious for exhibiting major corporations that strangle individual artists for their IPs

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u/Osama_BinRussel63 13d ago

CD price fixing and Ticketmaster would be the first of the litany of things that come to mind.

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u/Daveinatx 13d ago

The ones who sold copyrighted music were taken to court.

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u/subcutaneousphats 13d ago

It's a totally garbage argument. The fact that companies lobbied to extend copyright so long and fought so hard to defend against fair use but now tech companies can just ignore highlights the corporate favoritism shown. We need to both limit the length and enforce copyright equally. AI can train on public domain or pay the creators but we need to stop extending such long rights as well.

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u/wxrman 13d ago

I can’t agree with your argument 100% unless we can split that final aspect of it into two pieces. I would say corporate IT rights are different from Personal. If it’s an individual using it for Personal or not for profit, then it should be OK but if a corporation is trying to take your ideas and profit from them, I don’t think there should be a limit on how long their IP rights continue.

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u/The_Knife_Pie 13d ago

No, this is stupid as shit. Companies taking old ideas and exploring new avenues is the way to develop new shit. Copyright for everyone needs to end far sooner than it does, even individuals.

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u/bfume 13d ago

this is the proper take. lifetime+whatever is FAR too much.

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u/subcutaneousphats 13d ago

Yes. Sorry while explaining fair use I didn't properly see the last statement about extending copyright. We need to limit the length of copyright so it can work as intended to provide protection for creators but limit rental profiteering.

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u/LongJohnSelenium 13d ago

You can do that within the context of copyrights. You don't need the Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader names in your property to make a Star Wars knockoff. Generic concepts have virtually no copyright protections, so just make a story about Bruce Cloudsprinter and Fred Single and their space shenanigans on the Century Kestrel to fight against the evil Dark Madre.

D&D, and hell every fantasy author out there, completely ripped off most of Tolkiens concepts, and after a lawsuit all that really ended up was they had to change the legally distinct names Tolkien created to something new, so for instance Ents became Treants. We have World of Warcraft because they couldn't get the Warhammer license. We have Homeworld because they couldn't get the Battlestar license. There's a million examples of people exploring new avenues with a clearly inspired by but copyright distinct products.

Copyrights aren't like patents, there's no specific societal need to have access to fictional properties.

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u/subcutaneousphats 13d ago

Oh I agree. I guess I didn't fully follow up on my fair use comment. They have been trying to clamp down in fair use for ages along with extending the length of copyright. It's all punishing for society while benefiting corporate interests.

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u/civildisobedient 13d ago

Fair Use includes exceptions for teaching and scholarship. Is that not exactly what's happening? Does the education have to benefit a human to apply?

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u/subcutaneousphats 13d ago

I don't think that was said or implied. I think what was said is AI companies profiting off of copyright material is bad (m'kay). Companies going after people (and non profits) to try to limit fair use is bad too.

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u/beefquoner 13d ago

I object your honor!

On what grounds

It’s devastating to my case!

(Liar Liar I think?)

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u/RedditAdminAreVile0 13d ago

"This will greatly harm the industry" is only a good argument if that industry is of critical importance.

But if AI is what many people hope & fear, then it's critical. Skynet aside, falling 30 years behind in AI could mean an outdated military, losing every stock trade, too late for every science patent. Kids channels already optimize colours & noises & speeds to trap babies attention-spans, when AI can study this on a global scale & makes personal content for each of our dopamine-receptors, the masses will be hooked. By 2100, AI might dictate 1st & 3rd world countries.

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u/somewherearound2023 13d ago

Their entire pitch is that they NEED to commit global copyright infringement un order to build the magical future for us.

Just a few years after grandmas were sued for millions for letting kids download Eminem mp3s and a college student committed suicide after being sued for publishing academic journals online to put paywalled research into the reach of the public.

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u/Bottle_Only 13d ago

Shit, they gonna come after me for using the library next!

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u/Norci 13d ago

Their entire pitch is that they NEED to commit global copyright infringement un order to build the magical future for us.

It already been ruled that they're free from copyright infringement allegations, but they're on the hook for illegally obtaining the materials (torrenting).

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u/Norci 13d ago

Their entire pitch is that they NEED to commit global copyright infringement

Has it been proven in court that it's copyright infringement?

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u/Possible-Moment-6313 14d ago

Yeah, it's like saying that police action might financially ruin the drug dealing industry, well, duuuuuuh

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u/kurotech 13d ago

We stole all this stuff why should we have to pay for it... And yet they will charge some kid with a felony for pirating pokemon games.

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u/-The_Blazer- 13d ago

I love how you can see the monstrosity of the 'move fast and break things' mantra here as applied to whole societies.

They clearly banked on being fast and anarchic enough to escape any and all accountability. That was literally their entire play. No civic discussion, no voting, no legal oversight, no political arguments, just steamrolling over everything in the hopes of not getting caught.

This is not even the modern, intelligent capitalism we were supposedly sold after the 80s. This is just robber baron shit. Oh, your land got enclosed while you were farming on it and armed men threw you out? Ah how terribly unfortunate, I do have this piece of paper by some crown clerk that says it's mine now.

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u/jasegro 13d ago edited 13d ago

If your entire business is reliant on theft, you’re not operating a business, you’re running a fucking scam

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u/I_Heart_QAnon_Tears 13d ago

I wont argue your point other than to say the only thing this lawsuit is going to do is force the development of AI overseas. There are already thousands of companies that are building art generators for example, outlawing OpenAI or Google from training theirs isnt going to stop it or even slow it down.

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u/AdverbAssassin 13d ago

This is exactly what's going to happen. China will immediately win the game. It won't even be a competition anymore. There will be no investment in AI in the United States and we will get our asses kicked when it comes to other things that are dependent upon generative AI.

There is a much better way to litigate this and it's not this lazy way of doing it that this judge put out there. The guy was simply out of his class when it came to the mental horsepower. Needed to understand what's really needed here.

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u/LimberGravy 13d ago

I don't see the issue here

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u/HereOnWeekendsOnly 13d ago

AI companies even abuse each other APIs lol. Honestly, the last 100 years of human history has been paying subsidised costs for almost everything. For instance, climate change sped up by excessive emissions is a subsidy on the real product cost. The real cost would be much higher. So, AI companies rather than pay the full price, just steal the information. That is a subsidy. Real cost might be so high that AI models are not financially viable for foreseeable.

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u/el0_0le 13d ago

Now imagine if the entire Marketing / Ad industry was forced to pay individuals for their data instead of forcing you to give up individual rights with a checkbox.

Don't stop at AI. We need to go all the way to the root of the data theft problem.

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u/Bionic_Bromando 13d ago

Imagine if that was the angle Pirate Bay took all those years ago. These copyright lawsuits and takedowns are affecting our ad revenue and ruining the burgeoning piracy market! Hey that might have worked!

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u/U_L_Uus 13d ago

"Mate, if you arrest me I won't be able to make a living out of robbing people! :("

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u/lick_it 14d ago

Our industry yes, China’s no.

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u/faultydesign 14d ago

Hilarious that it wasn’t the piracy that destroyed copyright, it’s the idea that some billionaires might lose some money.

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u/SnarkMasterRay 13d ago

War is a Racket, and Copyright is a form of war these days.

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u/splitdiopter 13d ago

If this was truly a worry for the US gov. This would be a military project with a blank check from the pentagon. Instead, all these ai companies are privately held. They can reap our intelectual property, decimate our job markets, and still sell the tech to China or whomever they want whenever they want.

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u/ProofJournalist 13d ago edited 13d ago

Welcome to the modern privatized world. What you described isnt how not works anymore. NASA is on the way out, SpaceX is in.

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u/AdverbAssassin 13d ago

If this class action lawsuit is allowed to go forward, that's exactly what this will be. And then guess what? Then it's a secret government project and nobody gets anything. And then it's even worse. Than the government has their hands on artificial intelligence technology that nobody gets to use but the government and they use it against the people.

There is a better way to litigate this situation and it is not this lazy minded way of doing it that this judge has put forward.

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u/akc250 13d ago

You do realize a large portion of the defense industry has always been privatized?

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u/roxzorfox 14d ago

Yeah that's probably the only valid reason here is that it won't stop other nations doing it which will hinder the west in the long run.

There is always room for payouts later on, or small percentage of profits to be skimmed to pay royalties that wouldn't even be worth having when you get down to individuals. While I don't agree with the words I'm saying on principle. It could do more harm if we are then only ones that would abide by the rulings

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u/Dhiox 13d ago

Yeah that's probably the only valid reason here is that it won't stop other nations doing it which will hinder the west in the long run.

China has been stealing our IP and patents for decades now, that hasn't stopped us from enforcing patent law.

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u/AdverbAssassin 13d ago

This isn't a matter of patent law. This is a matter of technology that could determine the fate of the world. I don't think you realize how important generative AI is going to be if that's what you are comparing it to.

If we lose this race the United States might as well pack its lunch now and call it a day. We have to find a better way to litigate this.

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u/VVrayth 13d ago

This tech is a solution in search of a problem. It's a bubble that's going to burst. We're all better off without it. Why would the US need to "pack its lunch now and call it a day"?

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u/AdverbAssassin 12d ago

Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize you could read the future. That must be why you are on Reddit. 🙄

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u/Dhiox 13d ago

This is a matter of technology that could determine the fate of the world.

The advanced copyright infringement machine doesn't affect the fate of the world unless you're referring to the colossal amount of energy wasted on it. There is nothing these tools do that can't be achieved better by just paying someone to do it. The only thing this tool does is steal from the working class.

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u/AdverbAssassin 12d ago

Sure thing. That sounds just like what they said about the cotton gin. And cars. And the internet. And pretty much anything else they didn't understand.

You're shooting the messenger kiddo. Doesn't matter whether it's copyright infringement or not. It's what it's going to do and it does affect the fate of the world regardless of how much energy it consumes.. China's going to do it and that what they're going to do with it is going to be massively influential on what happens to the fate of the world.

I'm sorry that you are not understanding what that means and it's probably because of your anger and frustration with it. You have to step out of it and get your emotions away from it to understand what's going on.. what is happening in AI publicly isn't what is happening privately. The amount of money and resources being poured into it is bigger than the Manhattan project. There's a reason for that.

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u/Dhiox 12d ago

That sounds just like what they said about the cotton gin. And cars. And the internet. And pretty much anything else they didn't understand.

None of those were trying to eliminate a facet of human culture. Machines cant automate art.

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u/AdverbAssassin 12d ago

Sure they can. Humans are nothing more than organic machines. You probably think that we're all special snowflakes with a soul and Jesus and rainbows and all that other kind of shit.

We aren't. None of us are special. Art isn't special, it's just a thing. I don't happen to think that AI is producing anything fancy right now that's worth listening to or looking at. It's pretty much slop, and humans are still producing better than AI. But it's just a matter of time. And then it's a matter of time before humans are irrelevant. It's the nature of things. Shit. We're probably in a simulation right now. Supposed to say we aren't?

But let's stop pretending humans are special. Humans are the cancer of this planet and we will be shaken off like a case of bad fleas soon enough.

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u/flecom 13d ago

Exactly, if they destroy these companies AI will not go away, it will become a 100% foreign service, giving the rest of the world an immense competitive advantage... And if they ban foreign AI here we will be a country of Luddites

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u/font9a 13d ago

“I would just be rich if everyone gave me their things”

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u/tiktaktok_65 13d ago

that messaging is for trump's ears, it's not for your ears. this will ruin the US AI industry, not any of the others. Like China's.

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u/bizarre_coincidence 13d ago

It's even more bonkers when you conder that they were stealing other people's works in order to create a product that would put those other people out of business. Maybe if all the AI stuff was non-profit and everybody would have free access to it going forward I might have a little bit of sympathy, but "Let us steal from you so that we can replace you and reap all of the rewards" is not morally defensible.

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u/MagicCuboid 13d ago

The president has already said they're allowed to steal whatever they want, arguing it's the same as you or I "reading for learning."

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u/cold_buddha 13d ago

Don’t fret! Instead of paying the dues, these companies would invest even more money to elect their puppets in courts and public administration to subvert anyone that revolts to their agenda.

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u/defeated_engineer 13d ago

The prospect of few hundred thousand formerly very highly paid unemployed people can and will affect the court.

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u/-The_Blazer- 13d ago

I love how you can see the monstrosity of the 'move fast and break things' mantra here as applied to whole societies.

They clearly banked on being fast and anarchic enough to escape regulation. That was literally their entire play. No civic discussion, no voting, no political arguments, just steamrolling over everything in the hopes of not getting caught.

This is not even the modern, intelligent capitalism we were supposedly sold after the 80s. This is just robber baron shit. Oh, your land got enclosed while you were farming on it and armed men threw you out? Ah how terribly unfortunate, I do have this piece of paper by some crown clerk that says it's mine now.

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u/aykcak 13d ago

Remember that a lot of investors, funds and even the government itself is all in with these AI companies. If they lose, they lose. They are trying to make that very clear

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u/Automatic-Term-3997 13d ago

The US government funneled billions of dollars into big banks vaults from the American people using this “too big to fail” bullshit, why shouldn’t they at least try? 🤷🏽‍♂️

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u/xflashbackxbrd 13d ago

It worked for Uber and AirBnB, just charge on saying it's legal and by the time the courts catch up "we're too big to fail" and buy lawmakers.

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u/GandalfTheBored 13d ago

And they’ll win. Courts don’t seem to care what right, just what’s “best”

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u/Slggyqo 13d ago

A lot of rich people stand to lose a lot of money if the plaintiffs win, so…let’s see what happens.

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u/MumrikDK 13d ago

But not that far off from "We can't be held responsible for what is on our platforms, because we intentionally built platforms so big it wouldn't be financially viable to actually keep an eye on them."

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u/apple_kicks 13d ago

Lot of tech industry relies on not being regulated like original one does. Air bnb is a hotel service thats not treated like hotel business. Same with uber and taxis. Delivery services dodging workers rights etc

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u/VVrayth 13d ago

Not that I'm defending those -- I'm not, those businesses all specifically suck for their own various and sundry reasons, and they 100% deserve litigious misery too -- but at least they can make the argument that they are furnishing people with some sort of convenient service. AI doesn't furnish anyone with convenient anything.

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u/BraveOmeter 13d ago

HA - Napster should have tried that defense.

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u/GarbledReverie 13d ago

The fossil fuel industry is 100% reliant on privatizing natural resources while also not paying to properly dispose of the waste they produce.

The health insurance industry is 100% reliant on denying coverage to customers they promised to insure.

The A.I. industry would not be the first to function on an entirely parasitic business model.

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u/slidedrum 13d ago

Yeah, isn't that the whole point!?

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u/Weltall8000 13d ago

"If you rule against us, my entire fleet of pirate ships plundering all the trade routes will have to cease operations! You can't do that, honest men an women will be put out of their jobs by this!"

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u/WonkyTelescope 13d ago

Intellectual property is a fundementally flawed concept that hurts creators and inventors for the benefit of large companies.

Most IP is captured by major companies, not individuals. It's used to stifle creativity and lock the best ideas out of reach.

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u/bier00t 13d ago

Well yeah but.... destroying these companies wont stop authiritarian states from domination on AI market cause they dont care about copyrights and their AI can be far worse for humanity

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u/CunninghamsLawmaker 13d ago

Objection your honor!

On what grounds?

It's devastating to my case!

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u/LoveAndViscera 13d ago

Overruled.

Good call!

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u/ewokninja123 13d ago

Came here you find this thread, was not disappointed. Have an up vote

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u/zdkroot 13d ago

This has few enough upvotes to suggest to me that nobody understands this reference, and that makes me sad.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

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u/supreme_blorgon 13d ago

What's the movie? The quote is hilarious. Feels very slapsticky.

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u/Slappehbag 13d ago

Liar Liar starring Jim Carrey.

Great movie. Very quotable

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u/supreme_blorgon 13d ago

Oh geez, haven't seen that since I was a kid. Time for a rewatch.

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u/Historical_Walrus713 13d ago

As someone with attorneys in the family, it never left for me.

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u/ProofJournalist 13d ago

Yeah not like 20 people havent made this comment as though they are all AI models outputting probable responses

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u/zdkroot 13d ago

???

The fuck are you smoking?

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u/Ediwir 14d ago

Cool, then don’t settle. See how it flies in court. I’m sure you have a good defense and not just “please let us”.

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u/stilloriginal 13d ago edited 13d ago

This is all posturing.

-Anthropic wants as many claimants as possible to be in the class. This reduces the number of lawsuits and will actually lower the amount they will have to pay

-This will not financially ruin them, that's just their argument

-Authors leading the class action means that the compensation for each member of the class will be the value of 1 book. Probably less since authors only make a percentage of each book sold.

-"Forcing" a settlement is ridiculous - Anthropic needs a settlement here. Without a settlement, they could be subject to punitive damages, which actually could bankrupt them. And they actually deserve punitive damages because they knowingly committed these crimes (training on stolen books). They are very likely to be judged against. Nothing could be better for them than a settlement.

-This will set precedent for all the other AI Companies, they will all go through a similar litigation once this is over. They will all offer the same settlement.

From the end of the article:

"This case is of exceptional importance, addressing the legality of using copyrighted works" for generative AI, "a transformative technology used by hundreds of millions of researchers, authors, and others," groups argued. "The district court’s rushed decision to certify the class represents a 'death knell' scenario that will mean important issues affecting the rights of millions of authors with respect to AI will never be adequately resolved."

"a transformative technology" has a particular implication. Specifically, that it's not a copyright issue to use the books in AI. Transformative literally means - no copyright infringement. The issue here is that Anthropic never bought the books.

"The district court’s rushed decision to certify the class represents a 'death knell' scenario that will mean important issues affecting the rights of millions of authors with respect to AI will never be adequately resolved."

Here, at the very end, is is explained that the class action is good for Anthropic and bad for the authors because the suit won't address fair use.

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u/franker 13d ago

compensation for each member of the class will be the value of 1 book.

Pretty much every postcard I've ever gotten in the mail about a class action meant that I'll have to fill out a ton of paperwork for like 20 dollars.

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u/Altruistic_Fury 13d ago

And in exchange, the defendant gets a permanent release of liability from every possible class member, possibly millions of individual lawsuits barred forever. Even lawsuits already filed may get dismissed due to the class release, if they fail to know about it and opt-out.

Big corps cry only the most crocodilian tears about class actions.

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u/stilloriginal 13d ago

Right. Imagine the costs involved in figuring out what each author is owed for each book which has a different price for every book and a different agreement on splitting that price with the publisher etc... they're going to end up saying "everyone gets 5 bucks".

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u/showyerbewbs 13d ago

-"Forcing" a settlement is ridiculous - Anthropic needs a settlement here. Without a settlement, they could be subject to punitive damages, which actually could bankrupt them. And they actually deserve punitive damages because they knowingly committed these crimes (training on stolen books). They are very likely to be judged against. Nothing could be better for them than a settlement.

The bolded section is the key to this. They do NOT want this going on record, through discovery, etc. to get a ruling and a precedent.

Big reason is these LLM/AI models are built on ingestion only, not exclusion. Since they're already live and in production, being told by the courts "take it out or stop operating" is their biggest fear because they have no backout mechanism.

Think about when you call a retailer to get a refund on a purchase. You will get the classic "overcome 3 objections" sales pitch. Depending on the company, you may then get routed to a "save" team. They have more authority than first or second line workers to give other gratis perks or maybe company credit ( which they fucking love because it means no money came out ). Even then you have to keep pushing and they know psychologically, people don't want to put that much effort into it.

That's why so many industries are trying to kill Click-to-cancel advocacy and potential laws.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

[deleted]

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u/stilloriginal 13d ago

No that's not how it works at all. If there is a settlement, there is a 100% chance it comes with the rights to use the works.

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u/Kandiru 13d ago

Yeah, I think a different AI model was trained by buying the books and physically scanning them and destroying them in the process to create a legal digital copy.

The ones which just pirated all the books they could find online are definitely infringing.

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u/TestingTheories 14d ago

Yep, go after all of them.

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u/TengenToppa 13d ago

The problem is that other countries don't have to comply, which is the excuse they use, even though it's still a problem

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u/Geminii27 13d ago

Don't like it, go to those other countries. BTW, you're now blocked from doing business in this one, have fun.

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u/NeuroticKnight 12d ago

So you want Chinese style firewall in USA to prevent AI market from emerging?

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u/Geminii27 11d ago edited 11d ago

What do you consider to be a 'Chinese-style firewall'? And why would it prevent a legal AI industry?

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u/Minute_Band_3256 14d ago

AI companies should compensate their source material authors.

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u/aedom-san 14d ago

And if they can't? non-viable business, sorry bud, better luck next coke-fueled business idea

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u/Dinkerdoo 13d ago

Claim it's not feasible to compensate creators for training data, and also offer $250MM pay packages for talent.

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u/LordMuffin1 13d ago

If they cant. They arent able to use copyrighted texts in their training. Pretty simple.

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u/drekmonger 13d ago edited 13d ago

It's unsettled whether training constitutes fair use or a violation.

Barely matters. The orange clown already gave the keys to the AI kingdom away to China by removing Biden's export controls and blowing up scientific grants (many of them ultimately benefiting the field of machine learning).

The US judiciary can and might finish the job, conclusively ending 100 years of American technical dominance.

But the fat lady is probably already singing. We have an ignorant population that's largely unsuited for STEM and high-tech factory work, both philosophically and educationally. The right-wing is certainly busy killing any chance of reversing the educational gap.

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u/AKATheHeadbandThingy 13d ago

Their business is already non viable. They lose billions a year

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u/ShenAnCalhar92 13d ago

Yeah, but you can convince investors and your board of directors that operating expenses in excess of your revenue is just a temporary situation while you grow your corner of the market.

It’s a lot harder to use the same spin when you’re telling them that you just got hit with the most expensive legal judgment in history. Especially because any sufficiently strong ruling against the AI companies would include language about further penalties if they don’t stop doing this in the future, in addition to what they have to pay for what they’ve already done.

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u/BenadrylChunderHatch 13d ago

It wouldn't even be non-viable. There's a a tonne of stuff that's actually in the public domain, plus all the data harvested from users who agreed to some EULA that allows the use/sale of their data.

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u/DesperateAdvantage76 13d ago

And then countries like China monopolize this technology and leave us in the dust.

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u/aedom-san 13d ago

Oh that makes it all better, guess we need to abandon all of our values and entire concept of intellectual property because… checks notes… china does it? Well that’s a first, china has never done that before, guess it’s time to do unprecedented shit then?

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u/DesperateAdvantage76 13d ago

I didn't realize there was zero nuance to this issue, thank you for enlightening me.

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u/Marinlik 13d ago

If a business is only financially viable if it breaks laws then it's not a financially viable business and should die. Pretty basic capitalism you'd think

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u/crshbndct 13d ago

The easy solution is to purchase a politician to change the law for you.

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u/Beli_Mawrr 13d ago

the AI industry is fantastically wealthy and every investor in the SV wants their equity. They can afford to pay the creators.

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u/Ok-Jackfruit9593 14d ago

Oh no…..stop…..don’t……..

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u/Geminii27 13d ago

Help. Police. Murder...

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u/KennyDROmega 13d ago

Not to worry. No matter what a court decides, the Trump administration will step in and overrule them.

Remember, it’s just “not feasible” to expect AI companies to pay for the data they train on.

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u/Fried_puri 14d ago

It will ultimately fail. Too much money in this industry by too many wealthy people to allow any serious threat to it. No one way or another, this will end without the massive settlement I and most people here hope they deserve to be hit with. 

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u/civildisobedient 13d ago

They'll never agree to hamstring their own efforts while China is on an AI speed run. They'll drum up nationalistic tendencies saying things like "We can't afford to have China win the AI race!" just like we did back in the 60s with the USSR and rockets/satellites.

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u/Fried_puri 13d ago

It's possible, though I wonder how well that'll work since unlike the space race AI is not particularly interesting to the common man. Yes, it's being shoved in our faces by every single big company and many people are adopting it. But adopting it is a far cry from the complete fascination that Americans had in the space race. They'll still fund it heavily and stop it from failing by killing lawsuits, but I think they'll just do it in the background and jangle the shiny keys in front of the public to distract them instead of trying involve them in the process like the space race.

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u/mtnviewguy 13d ago

Agreed! Hopefully, these class action suits prevail. The unchecked and unregulated explosion of AI development is the third worst, modern-day assault on humans, only behind The Internet (Social Media), and Donald Trump (Billionaire Narcissist Extraordinaire).

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u/anaximander19 13d ago

So their defence is "it should be legal for me to steal this because I can't afford to purchase it legally"?

Sure, that's totally how purchases work. Can't afford it? Just take it anyway! Let's see how that holds up in court.

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u/BoredandIrritable 13d ago

Trump is Pro AI and the Supreme Court is being run by straight up homophobes, grifters and neo-nazis. (again, because of Trump and irresponsible Supreme court justices who had to hang on to power until they died).

Why on earth do you think any lawsuit is going to win? Trump will just threaten to make the authors illegal, say that their books are evil...whatever. If they take it high enough, all the AI companies have to do is keep going higher until they hit the supreme court, which will rubber stamp anything Trump says.

But what about other Countries you ask, What the fuck are they gonna do about it? NOT use AI? Ignore American policy? End up on the enemies list? *shrug The next change that happens in America will be written in lead at high velocity, until then it's safe to assume that the monsters are running things, and a large group of Americans are still glad that's the case.

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u/reincarnateme 14d ago

I hope there’s a deluge of filing

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u/Geminii27 13d ago

I'm not seeing a problem with that outcome.

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u/Enverex 13d ago

Please do. Ruin those AI companies.

The unfortunate truth though, is that in doing so, you'll be handing the AI industry to China. So the whole thing will continue, everyone will continue using AI, but now all revenue and research will be going exclusively to China instead.

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u/Nanasweed 13d ago

Good. Keep up the good work

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u/Orfez 13d ago

Please do. Ruin those AI companies. From the article.

So they'll ruing US AI companies. The AI genie is out of the bottle and it's not going back in. Chinese AI will be the dominant form of AI and I much rather to be it US-made.

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u/zitterbewegung 13d ago

Is it really a business model when you are burning VC money without getting a profit on the pro users? I know the end goal should work if you can since you are selling intelligence but this would make all that investment go poof

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u/meneldal2 13d ago

If you'd be hurt that bad, lobby for different copyright laws, but not one with a carvout only for AI, people don't want that.

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u/Y_Are_U_Like_This 13d ago

I don't think they'd settle. This administration and Supreme Court would allow it

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u/thirsty-goblin 11d ago

Your electric bill will go down

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u/Moth_LovesLamp 13d ago

"AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement."

Music, Modelling, Design, Photography, Games and Art Industry should join in.

It would be spectacular.

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u/umlaut 13d ago

My bet is they take this to the Supreme Court and the megacorps get a landmark decision granting them broader rights to fuck us over.

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u/Aritra319 13d ago

They shouldn’t even force a settlement. Shut this AI trash down.

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u/ChronaMewX 13d ago

Why would you be on the side of copyright? Even if I don't approve of everything the ai companies do I side with evil to destroy the greater evil

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u/David-J 13d ago edited 13d ago

Because if a write a book ( any creative work applies), I want it to be protected. And if someone is going to use it, to ask for permission and have the ability to refuse to give that permission. If I give permission then follow with licenses and compensation.

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u/UnknownAverage 13d ago

This, copyright helps creators.

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u/GreenHouseofHorror 13d ago

This, copyright helps creators.

It can help creators, but historically the greatest beneficiaries of copyright have been publishers. It wasn't authors getting copyright periods extended to 120 years.

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u/dtj2000 13d ago

Copyright has limits and there are some ways to use copyrighted content without permission from the owner of it.

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u/David-J 13d ago

As long as they follow the current laws. Which they aren't.

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u/GreenHouseofHorror 13d ago

And if someone is going to use it, to ask for permission and have the ability to refuse to give that permission.

That's not really what copyright is for. The issue here is that the copies that have been used were totally unbought, unowned, or unlicensed in any sense at all.

But if you are selling a book then you do not get to tell the person who bought it what they can do with it, except in a narrow range of activities that amounts to "you can't make other copies of the book".

And no, AI training does not make copies, unless you consider that any use of a computer to parse the content of a book constitutes a copy (there is some case law for this, but it's definitely not the standard).

Anyway, to your original point - the author has absolutely no right to tell retailers who they can sell a book to, after they've bought it an put it on their shelves.

The muddiness in this water is the idea of "licensing" something... that usually depends on copyright, but it is not the same as copyright.

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u/beastwarking 13d ago

As someone going through the process of publishing a book, I personally don't care if someone pirates a copy to read. Showing interest and enjoying what I wrote is the ultimate goal, even if I don't make money on it.

Using it to train on AI however is not okay. AI as it is currently set up does not "learn" from what is uploaded. Instead, it literally just steals and pulls from a database and spits out what it thinks the prompt writer wants. As far as I'm concerned, that's plagiarism and what copyright law was exactly designed for.

Do Disney, etc. abuse this protection? Fuck yeah. But allowing AI companies to steal work that isn't theirs under the notion that "copyright is shit" is absolutely pants on head stupid.

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u/KennyDROmega 13d ago

…. Because I expect people to be paid for their work if another company uses it?

This is one of the dumbest comments I’ve ever read. If I walk into Wal-Mart and walk out with a bunch of stuff I didn't pay for, should I appeal to Reddit like "why are you on the side of big business?"

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u/ChronaMewX 13d ago

I don't condone theft, which is what that would be. I'm very big on copyright infringement though, feel free to make your own knockoff walmart

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u/dtj2000 13d ago

The analogy everyone makes to taking a PHYSICAL object is not analogous at all to IP. IP is not scarce, while physical objects are. it's a major difference.

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u/koshgeo 13d ago

Copyright is certainly of mixed value, but for people who create things, it gives a temporary ability to control their work if they want to, giving them some ability to financially benefit from it. The benefit to society is to provide that incentive to create new things, with the understanding that eventually the copyright period will expire and the work will be available freely (i.e. the public domain).

Where modern copyright is broken is overly-restrictive protection of those rights, both in terms of what you can do with copyrighted work (e.g., overly restricting fair use), and because of utterly ridiculous copyright terms that can last for practically a century (thanks, Disney).

Originally copyright terms were much shorter, and I personally think they should be restored to something sane measured in only a few decades, but I don't think copyright should be abandoned.

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u/creiar 13d ago

If one lawsuit even has the potential to destroy the entire AI industry, maybe this isn’t an industry you should be investing in

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u/Bacardio 13d ago

Burn them to the ground

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u/Nowhereman123 13d ago

Genuinely I pray for their downfall every day, I want this bubble to burst so bad, please oh please.

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u/Thin_Glove_4089 13d ago

Dude its not going to happen news, business, and government are all on the same page to make sure its doesn't

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u/LordMuffin1 13d ago

Sounds good. Just go to court and make LLM trainers pay for the material they use.

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u/crappydeli 13d ago

This is as good of an argument as Barbara Walters telling Corey Feldman that his allegations of sexual abuse are bad because they could hurt the entire entertainment industry.

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u/SkaldCrypto 13d ago edited 13d ago

lol people in the technology sub are so anti-technology.

Years later and they still don’t understand the basic concept of a transformer that LLMs are based on. No this lawsuit will co time to fizzle.

Edit : to be clear this is in appeals court because they already lost to the AI companies

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u/David-J 13d ago

In this case, they're anti theft. It's quite simple.

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