10 comments

  • modeless 1 hour ago
    Funny how people are suddenly on Elsevier's side. It's clear to me that AI training is transformative fair use under existing law. Maybe this will be the case to prove it.
    • nadermx 53 minutes ago
      I also find it funny, I said this regarding the other thread and article[0]

      '"They then copied those stolen fruits"

      How are these fruits "stolen" if they still have what was allegedley stolen?

      Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985): The Supreme Court ruled that the unauthorized sale of phonorecords of copyrighted musical compositions does not constitute "stolen, converted or taken by fraud" goods under the National Stolen Property Act

      And even if, arguendo, sure its stolen. The purpose of copyright is to "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries"

      And you would be hard pressed to prove that LLM's haven't advanced the arts and sciences, so at bare minimum transformative, ie fair use.'

      [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48026207#48029072

      • Johnny555 17 minutes ago
        >How are these fruits "stolen" if they still have what was allegedley stolen?

        If you write a book and I take it and embed its knowledge into my product that is so pervasive that no one needs to buy your book any more (and I don't even credit you so no one knows where that knowledge came from), to you really still have what was stolen? And I didn't even buy a copy of your book to copy it.

        • throwawayIche9j 1 minute ago
          Yes. That's not to say that something damaging wasn't done, but nothing was stolen. Stealing/theft requires deprivation of property. It's like receiving a normal nonlethal punch in the face and calling it murder. Murder requires someone dying.

          > Theft [...] is the act of taking another person's property or services without that person's permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stealing

      • 2ndorderthought 30 minutes ago
        Cool cool cool. So all the code and data you send to anthropic and chatgpt should be mass distributable to forward other peoples arts and science? All your meeting notes with ai summarizers, slack chats with bots? Might as well put your entire company and all plans for it on github mit licensed. Ill take a peek, see if there's anything valuable to me in that. Don't worry you can keep it all on your github too. It's still yours afterall. Copilot will be training on it too though btw
        • IAmLiterallyAB 27 minutes ago
          That's a privacy violation, not relevant.
          • 2ndorderthought 20 minutes ago
            No it's not. You exposed that data to an LLM. Should have read the fine print. The laws around that don't make sense to me anymore so therefore I own that stuff now. That's how this works right? You do know chatgpt etc can read everything you write, right?

            Also social media profile pics. Great way to get faces for deep fake ads. Most people are just 1 phone call away from being voice cloned. Our likeness isn't all that important either if you think about it.

            Maybe meta will clone your writing style and sign into your meta account and message your friends telling them about this awesome new product. Meta owns the account and you uploaded data to it.

            • Our_Benefactors 2 minutes ago
              Literally none of these things are defensible positions, so nobody will take you seriously.
    • eloisius 1 hour ago
      I find it grating that so many AI boosters try to frame pushing back against the AI industry as a sudden about-face for everyone that spent the last 20 years pushing back against the copyright industry. I’m also in favor of decriminalizing or legalizing small amounts of pot for personal use. That doesn’t mean I’m behind industrialized narcotic production on such a huge scale that it that it starts to distort the economy, and companies looking for new ways to add methamphetamine to every goddamn product.
      • 2ndorderthought 40 minutes ago
        Speaking of ai and meth, have you seen videos of the palantir CEO Alex karp? Dude looks like he's regularly getting the same meth shots Hitler used to get.

        But I hear you. One of my biggest tells that someone can't be reasoned with is when they resort to whataboutism without any consideration for how 2 situations can actually be different even if there is some commonality. It's a powerful bad faith argument technique. When that style of argument comes up I nod my head and walk away. Some people are just doomed.

        • chungusamongus 32 minutes ago
          Copyright maximalists be malding rn. For real though, I don't think either of you are arguing in good faith.
          • 2ndorderthought 27 minutes ago
            I am not s copyright maximalist, but I would tell you be careful of a world where copyright and IP is meaningless. Might as well let any other country/company one shot your entire industry.
            • chungusamongus 8 minutes ago
              Slippery slope, false dilemma, etc. What other fallacies do you have in your utility belt, batman?
    • conception 1 hour ago
      Illegally obtaining copyrighted materials is usually the issue not the transformation part
      • akerl_ 52 minutes ago
        Looking at the complaint ( https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/2026-05-05... ), that seems like the part that's got the most solid foundation, especially given that while torrenting the books, they were also seeding to other peers.

        The items they call out around training the models (and attempting to claim that each subsequent model generation should count as an additional instance of infringement) seem far less grounded in the current court interpretations of AI training.

    • King-Aaron 54 minutes ago
      Absorb all "our" IP without consent, in doing so remove "our" own source of revenue, and then repackage it as their own product. Not really fair use IMO.
    • stiray 41 minutes ago
      It actually depends on evilness of the company. Elsevier is just less evil that Zuckerberg and Meta, while publishers are even less problematic. I dont think there is anything funny in that.

      Or anything to defend on Meta. If they go out of business, humanity profits.

    • rvz 48 minutes ago
      > It's clear to me that AI training is transformative fair use under existing law. Maybe this will be the case to prove it.

      That is not what this case is about. It is more about the illegal violation and piracy of copyrighted content done by Meta for commercial use and Zuck knew they were doing it.

      Why did Anthropic settle [0] with a multi-billion dollar payout to authors after commercializing their LLMs that was trained off of copyrighted content that was illegally obtained and kept without the authors permission?

      There's a reason why they (Anthropic) did not want it to go to trial. (Anthropic knew they would lose and it would completely bankrupt them in the hundreds of billions.)

      AI boosters will do anything to justify the mass piracy and illegal obtainment of copyrighted material for commercial use (not research) which that is not fair use in the US. There is no debate on this. [0]

      [0] https://images.assettype.com/theleaflet/2025-09-27/mnuaifvw/...

    • whattheheckheck 47 minutes ago
      If i could ask for a summary from an llm vs buy a book id go with the summary. That eats into commercial use and the supreme court case sided with Gerald Ford when a newspaper published a small gist of his autobiography because it ate into the sales
      • Larrikin 35 minutes ago
        Every single Wikipedia article of a book or TV show has this summary. Ford should have lost.
      • 2ndorderthought 37 minutes ago
        Yea nope. I like the full book without any loss of information. Even if I don't want to read the entire book. LLMs love to respond even when something is outside of their training set.
    • happytoexplain 35 minutes ago
      "Funny" is how dishonest snipes are framed. It such a common trope of internet quips, it's wearing me out. Can we please try to just format our disagreements without the snideness?
    • stackghost 36 minutes ago
      I'm not on Elsevier's side, but I still think it's bullshit that giant companies are allowed to do things at a scale that I'd go to prison for.
    • nullsanity 17 minutes ago
      [dead]
  • zx8080 1 hour ago
    Can someone explain why are we reading this instead of "Meta was fined for copyright infrigement" news?
    • 2ndorderthought 1 hour ago
      Because meta will delay any case for several years. Then the lawyers will settle for 1/100th to 1/1000th of what they stole quietly. Meta will rebrand and change its name again just like it did after its last major scandal.

      No accountability for rich people has funny patterns like this.

    • tbrownaw 21 minutes ago
      Well the article says this is the start of a lawsuit, so maybe wait for it to work its way through the courts?
    • solid_fuel 1 hour ago
      In 2024, voters signaled that they don't care about corruption when they reelected the most corrupt administration in American history. Since then, there has been a widespread understanding that the rich will not face consequences in this country. For example, take a look at the Trump administration's suppression of the Epstein files. Or the Trump families cryptocurrency schemes. Or the ridiculous ballroom.

      Anyway, the point is - there will be no justice until the citizens of the united states demand it.

      • k33n 1 hour ago
        [flagged]
        • 2ndorderthought 1 hour ago
          This is rage bait and isn't worth spending any oxygen on it.
          • k33n 1 hour ago
            If it elicits rage that has nothing to do with me.
        • solid_fuel 32 minutes ago
          Your username is familiar. Are you the moron who was swearing two months ago that Trump and Co definitely had a plan to deal with Iran? That there wouldn't be a war and even if there was it would be over quickly? That the USA could do whatever they want without consequences?

          Why would anyone take anything you say seriously when you have shown such disastrously poor judgement in the past?

          Oh yeah, here's one example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47687720

          You have repeatedly demonstrated that you are a useful fool and nothing more. There's no further response required here.

          • Larrikin 28 minutes ago
            It is a leap of faith that they are speaking in good faith as a useful idiot.
            • solid_fuel 27 minutes ago
              Granted, it’s far more likely that they don’t believe a single word of the drivel they’ve been spreading across this forum, but regardless of intentionality the result is the same.
        • jkubicek 1 hour ago
          https://www.readtangle.com/the-everything-everywhere-all-at-...

          This article doesn’t even remotely itemize all of Trumps corruption, but it’s long and extremely damning.

          I would hope that anyone still supporting this administration reads this article and does some introspection on why. I’m guessing that ship probably sailed 6 years ago, though.

        • throwaway-11-1 1 hour ago
          probably this, since it was 7 years after he was convicted for prostituting a minor, so its hard to believe any excuse saying they didn't know his background: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/epstein-secret-pic-wild-...

          Also that there are over 2,000 emails with Peter Thiel. Or maybe the part where Sergey Brin was helping Epstein shop for an aircraft carrier (also after conviction). Honestly it was incredibly revealing that none of these people care that he raped kids. I would love to see the Trump files which were withheld but clearly thats never gonna happen.

          Anyway, congrats to everyone involved on the MAGA golden age!

  • gnabgib 3 hours ago
    Discussion (139 points, 85 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48026207
    • nomel 1 hour ago
      Can't access that one with an ad blocker.
  • bawolff 1 hour ago
    Does it matter? The company's liability would (i assume) not change if the ceo authorized it or some other high level figure authorized it.

    The question to answer is, did it happen and if so is this copyright infringement (not covered by fair use), not which company official authorized it.

  • nomel 1 hour ago
    Title was changed. Now it's:

    > Mark Zuckerberg ‘personally authorized’ Meta’s copyright infringement, *publishers allege*

  • UltraSane 46 minutes ago
    Remember when nerds loved saying "information wants to be free"?
  • palata 1 hour ago
    Too rich to care.
    • alex1138 1 hour ago
      Honestly, too rich potentially off fraud

      Consider the case of someone who gets banned but Facebook keeps collecting money on their business account. Or consider the case of Facebook's video metrics scandal, or... whatever. It's a little fuzzy translating how much value equates to how much stock price equates to how much real-world is-this-useful-to-me but it does matter when FB is accused of marketing (Aaron Greenspan, thinkcomp, has brought this up, in his 2019 testimony to UK parliament) advertising to more people in a region or country than actually physically exist

      So fraud builds on itself, you have more fraud money to pay lawyers to try to defend you in fraud cases

  • ghstinda 1 hour ago
    this dude got in over his head with the evil empire, it is interesting how he learned judo and tried to surf, that being said I despise social media and what it did to society
  • Der_Einzige 2 hours ago
    Good.