Even if they had bought all the books, wouldn’t people still be mad they trained an AI with it? I doubt it would quell the “It can emulate an Author’s style” complaints.
It depends on what’s being pirated and why. Someone who can’t afford a 200 euro textbook, or can’t buy it where they live, is in a different position from a company that downloads 200k books to build a commercial product. Individual piracy is a gray area. Doing it at scale for profit, with a legal team on standby and then deleting the evidence “due to all this litigation”, is much harder to defend. The ethics change a lot when the person doing it could easily have paid.
In my experience, real pirates have a strong code of ethics. I've never seen a pirate site that didn't at least say "buy it if you like it". Leechers are a different story, but to be fair most of them just don't have the money to buy the stuff they download.
To cut a long story short, I'd personally say pirating is bad if you have the money to buy it and you don't just pirate to try first, whereas if you don't have the money it's okay (permissible) and doesn't take away any sales.
That doesn't accord with my experience. I've been involved in academic book piracy since the early millennium, and there definitely was no "buy it if you like it" ideal. Virtually no one will spend the 100-400€ that a typical scholarly book costs except libraries. And since this was a community that reads heavily outside their research as well, once works of fiction started to be more heavily hosted on these servers, it came to seem a waste to ever actually spend money on media if you could just read it all for free -- nevermind that a lot of users were in the former USSR or the Third World where media was not available for sale locally even if you wanted to spend the money.
These people tend to outgrow that tho. I def would have pirated books as a youth as it’d save me a trip to the library. Now i’m old and have money, I would never pirate a book as I value both contributing to the author and owning the physical thing. Maybe some exceptions if it’s in some niche tech or something and don’t wanna commit yet..
Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where book piracy is rampant than one where many people just don’t read anything?
I don't think this a youth thing that "people outgrow", lol. For over a decade now adult (and now middle-aged) peers who are heavy readers were asking me to put books on their ebook readers, since they knew I had the hookup, but now since Anna's Archive is so convenient, they are just getting the books themselves. A surprisingly large number of normie bibliophiles knows AA now.
For the majority of literature, buying the book won't contribute to the author because the author is deceased. For that minority were the author is alive, many people won't see a need to make an exception to their policy of not paying. Indeed, your second paragraph gets to the heart of it.
Well, ethics is weaker, when the other is unethical in their own way.
400 euro for a book is hardly ethical. If you must charge that much for a copy you shouldn't have written it because you simply couldn't afford ro write it. Passin your poor business judgement onto others is not ethical.
Look, don't die on a hill for billionaires. I think it's good if someone gets a Hollywood movie or Disney TV show for free. But it's better to support that one author who self-published a useful book.
This is organized crime, because the organization knew (and depended on the fact) that he was doing this, and it is also the intentional destruction of evidence.
The fact that he was seeding a torrent is the thing that least matters here. They weren't making billions from seeding a torrent, they were spending bandwidth to do it. The fact that they downloaded a bunch of copyrighted works illegally in order to create their business is.
Copyright violation is civil, but conspiracy is criminal, and destruction of evidence is criminal. These AI companies are criminal. Everything associated with these enterprises should be seized and either run by the state, or run on behalf of the civilly injured parties.
edit: keep downvoting it, but I will keep posting it. This behavior is just getting by through nerve, bribery, and the fact that the US economy depends on it being successful. It is unambiguously criminal, and anybody aware of it who participated (everybody) is implicated. It is so bizarre how you people think you're better than people smuggling counterfeit designer bags or selling bootleg DVDs. You're worse.
Everyone is arguing about whether piracy is good or bad, but that’s not what this case is about. It’s about whether the rules apply equally. A student who torrents a textbook risks a lawsuit. Meta, reportedly, torrented hundreds of thousands of books, had an employee delete his copy “due to all this litigation,” and is now arguing over which server logs it has to hand over. They could have licensed these books. The likely reason they didn’t is that the cost of getting caught is lower than the licensing fee. A court has already called the training fair use, but how the books were acquired is a separate question, and that’s where this should be decided. If an individual did this at scale, no one would call it a gray area.
> A court has already called the training fair use
isn't dispositive. Another court, a less stupid or corrupt one, could decide differently. SCOTUS could decide differently.
But using illegally obtained material as the foundation of your business and destroying it for fear of litigation, both of those things are clearly criminal.
Most people can. But you can be sued in Canada just like anywhere else; it isn't legal. According to a search, the damages per offense may be capped at $5K CAD, though, which is great compared to the US.
Well, they got me to google what at first seemed like a far fetched conspiracy theory, but actually seems to have some truth to it.
For those similarly unaware, I guess in 2017 Myanmar's military launched a campaign of mass killings, sexual violence, and destruction of Rohingya, and 700 hundred thousand fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN, and amnesty international, but a 150B USD lawsuit against meta by the survivors was thrown out because of section 230 of the CDA makes them immune, and the dismissal was upheld by the 9th circuit. The court did not determine that meta's behavior was harmless, just that the case was barred. At issue was poor moderation, and algorithmic amplification of genocidal messaging on the platform. Apparently facebook was repeatedly warned for years that they were contributing to enthnic hatred and voilence by amplifying false narratives and took no action.
Modus ponens is a valid "If A happens, B happens in consequence. A happens. Then B also happens". A "modus ponens fail", also called "affirm the consequence" is the invalid "If A happens, B happens in consequence. B is observed. Then A happened".
Valid: if someone is hit by a train, he dies. Someone was hit by a train, then he is dead.
Invalid: if someone is hit by a train, he dies. Someone is found death, thus he must have been hit by a train.
https://torrentfreak.com/meta-pirated-adult-film-downloads-w...
To cut a long story short, I'd personally say pirating is bad if you have the money to buy it and you don't just pirate to try first, whereas if you don't have the money it's okay (permissible) and doesn't take away any sales.
Wouldn’t you rather live in a world where book piracy is rampant than one where many people just don’t read anything?
For the majority of literature, buying the book won't contribute to the author because the author is deceased. For that minority were the author is alive, many people won't see a need to make an exception to their policy of not paying. Indeed, your second paragraph gets to the heart of it.
400 euro for a book is hardly ethical. If you must charge that much for a copy you shouldn't have written it because you simply couldn't afford ro write it. Passin your poor business judgement onto others is not ethical.
Only I got the impression the Code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules
If I could, I would.
And it would be incredibly immoral to demand excessive profits for your downloadable if distribution was free.
The music industry's monopoly is luckily being eroded these days. Now they can try to work on market terms.
The fact that he was seeding a torrent is the thing that least matters here. They weren't making billions from seeding a torrent, they were spending bandwidth to do it. The fact that they downloaded a bunch of copyrighted works illegally in order to create their business is.
Copyright violation is civil, but conspiracy is criminal, and destruction of evidence is criminal. These AI companies are criminal. Everything associated with these enterprises should be seized and either run by the state, or run on behalf of the civilly injured parties.
edit: keep downvoting it, but I will keep posting it. This behavior is just getting by through nerve, bribery, and the fact that the US economy depends on it being successful. It is unambiguously criminal, and anybody aware of it who participated (everybody) is implicated. It is so bizarre how you people think you're better than people smuggling counterfeit designer bags or selling bootleg DVDs. You're worse.
> A court has already called the training fair use
isn't dispositive. Another court, a less stupid or corrupt one, could decide differently. SCOTUS could decide differently.
But using illegally obtained material as the foundation of your business and destroying it for fear of litigation, both of those things are clearly criminal.
For those similarly unaware, I guess in 2017 Myanmar's military launched a campaign of mass killings, sexual violence, and destruction of Rohingya, and 700 hundred thousand fled to neighboring countries, according to the UN, and amnesty international, but a 150B USD lawsuit against meta by the survivors was thrown out because of section 230 of the CDA makes them immune, and the dismissal was upheld by the 9th circuit. The court did not determine that meta's behavior was harmless, just that the case was barred. At issue was poor moderation, and algorithmic amplification of genocidal messaging on the platform. Apparently facebook was repeatedly warned for years that they were contributing to enthnic hatred and voilence by amplifying false narratives and took no action.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_ponens
Valid: if someone is hit by a train, he dies. Someone was hit by a train, then he is dead.
Invalid: if someone is hit by a train, he dies. Someone is found death, thus he must have been hit by a train.