In one of the AI lawsuits faced by Meta, the company stands accused of distributing pirated books. The authors who filed the class-action lawsuit allege that Meta shared books from the shadow library LibGen with third parties via BitTorrent. Meta, however, says that it took precautions to prevent ‘seeding’ content. In addition, the company clarifies that there is nothing ‘independently illegal’ about torrenting.
Anthropic was returning substantial parts of the actual work to users. They were creating additional copies of the work. Creating unauthorized copies is infringement.
You would have to argue that the users who received those substantial parts were also infringing on copyright. My point is made when you acknowledge that those users did not infringe by receiving those substantial parts, even if they specifically requested those substantial parts from Anthropic.
Why does the customer/user matter at all here when they’re not party to the lawsuit? You can have no customers yet and still infringe on copyright by using something for commercial purposes when you’re not licensed to do so. That’s how licenses work.
Of course, that limits the damages since there arguably hasn’t been any harm (which doesn’t make it legal), so lawsuits aren’t usually filed at that point; it’s usually a cease and desist. Also, I don’t have to argue anything. I’m not a lawyer.
I can show whatever movie I want at my house with my friends and that’s legal, but if I charge $10 to show it, that’s not legal. I don’t give a shit, because I pirate everything and show it to whoever I want for free, but that’s the law as written.
This conversation is about the legality of downloading without uploading.
Anthropic is not accused of downloading without uploading. Anthropic is accused of creating copies and distributing those copies to customers. They are being accused of violating copyright by uploading, not downloading.
The Anthropic lawsuit is completely irrelevant to the issue of “downloading only”. Rather than throw out your example entirely, I showed a relationship within your example that actually does relate to the topic under discussion.
Anthropic is accused of creating and distributing unauthorized copies. (Those are partial copies, rather than complete, but they are still copies, and still infringing.)
There are entities in your scenario who are receiving those copies, without creating additional copies, or distributing the copies they received. They are, effectively, “downloading only”.
So, tell me about those customers: When they ask Anthropic’s AI for an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work, and Anthropic provides them an unauthorized copy of a copyrighted work, is the customer infringing on the copyright?
You’re still banging on about Anthropic? I used it as an example to make my point (which is that commercial usage of copyrighted works is illegal, nothing about making/distributing copies or uploading or whatever you think you’re talking about).
But you’re up and down this thread bending over backwards to not have a good faith discussion with people who are not lawyers, so it’s incredibly difficult to take you seriously and at face value.
Got it. From the OP article:
The article and conversation is not about the contract law that would apply with licensing. They aren’t about the fair use exemption which has a commercial usage factors. The article and conversation are talking about simple copyright law: copying and distribution.
Your very first comment in this thread was completely off topic. I apologize that it’s taken me this long to figure out where you’re coming from.