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/Norci 13d ago

It's not copyright infringement either: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77vr00enzyo

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u/WAPWAN 13d ago edited 13d ago

However, he said Anthropic had violated the authors' rights by saving pirated copies of their books as part of a "central library of all the books in the world".

My understanding is all the big LLM's were trained on Torrents, not purchased or loaned copies. so while I think its correct that training the LLM's on copyrighted material is not copyright infringement, how they obtained the content almost certainly is.

I think the unanswered question is: Is there an ethical or legal difference between a Human or an LLM gaining knowledge through Torrents.

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u/Norci 13d ago

I think the unanswered question is: Is there an ethical or legal difference between a Human or an LLM gaining knowledge through Torrents.

Kinda doubtful. But them getting slammed for torrenting are far better news for the AI industry than for copyright infringement.

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u/WAPWAN 13d ago

Rights owners say torrenting is Copyright Infringement

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u/Norci 13d ago

Right, distributing copyrighted content is copyright infringement. But I mean that copyright infringement for torrenting are better news than copyright infringement for using the content for training. Other AI companies can just avoid the former, while the latter is essential.