Cost of the book + maybe a civil penalty?

Does no one remember the days of Napster and the multiples over retail cost that people caught pirating were charged?

And technically piracy is a federal crime, so there could even be criminal charges.

A “nothing burger”?

Let’s see…oh my, what’s this? 504.c.2

In a case where the copyright owner sustains the burden of proving, and the court finds, that infringement was committed willfully, the court in its discretion may increase the award of statutory damages to a sum of not more than $150,000.

That’s per work infringed.

Nothing burger indeed.

OpenAI is on the other end of over two decades of fearmongering and lobbying to enact laws with ridiculous penalties for piracy in the digital age.

As for how we know where they got the information, that’s what subpoenas are for in a legal proceeding. Even if training information is not publicly disclosed, whether they did or didn’t pirate content is going to come out privately in court.

The AI doesn’t need to reproduce the book for OpenAI to have infringed in illegally sourcing the copyrightable material they used in training.