SFWA and the Anti-AI Training Lawsuit
Aug. 13th, 2025 09:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seawaspThe SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) has announced that they are participating in a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic AI, which used an absolute metric shitton of authors' books to train its AI. While it's been ruled in one case that these actions don't, technically, constitute copying the book (because the training doesn't leave actual copies of the trained books, only of the responses to having been trained on it, in short), it HAS been ruled that just grabbing copyrighted material and using it for a commercial purpose (such as training your commercial AI) is not a fair use.
Anthropic AI is currently valued at around 150-160 billion dollars, just as a note. This is not a small company.
From my point of view, it's absolutely open and shut: did they make use of copyrighted works to make a commercial product? Yes. Did they know they were doing so? Yes. Did they know they SHOULD pay for the rights to make use of those works? Yes. They simply concluded that it would be expensive, so they grabbed archives of pirated copies.
The penalties for this should be substantial. This isn't like someone just downloading a book to read, in which case the most you could argue is that they owe you the purchase price for the copy they made. This is taking people's copyrighted work to use to make a commercial product that you intend to profit from. Conceptually this is no different than making a movie or other derivative work from the copyrighted material. The movie may differ drastically from the book -- it may in the worst case have little but names to show the connection. Even so, the moviemaker HAS to have paid the author for the rights to make the movie using their book.
Note that there is no argument in this case that Anthropic did not, in fact, make use of these works. It's admitted that they did.
But if "not retaining a copy, just the impressions" is good enough, then why can't I go and publish a Lord of the Rings fanfic? If I put the book away and don't look at it while writing, I'm just using my own impressions from the book to write the fanfic. Better yet, there's a lot of books I've only read once; if Anthropic's allowed this argument, then I should be able to freely use anything I remember from any book I've ever read.
To an extent, of course, we DO do that -- we're influenced by everything we read, inspired or angered by it. But we also are expected to make a conscious effort to not merely TAKE the intellectual property. Since current AIs are incapable of "conscious effort", and by their nature literally do not RECALL the sources of their training (part of Anthropic and others' defense against accusations of 'copying'), the responsibility for such conscious effort devolves upon Anthropic and their personnel.
Thus, it would be my contention that Anthropic currently owes every author whose work was used for this training, first a licensing fee -- negotiated appropriately for current and anticipated valuation of their business -- and second, a penalty fee for having DELIBERATELY chosen to try to avoid doing the legally obvious and required licensing.
I would think that a minimum for that would be a thousand dollars per book infringed for licensing, and five hundred for being deliberately sneaky about it. That's a lowball figure -- note that even an OPTION to use someone's book for a movie -- not even an actual rights assignment -- is usually in the thousand-plus range. In this case it's not just an option -- they DID use the intellectual property.
The other reason it has to be a significant number is that everyone is aware that the various IP industries are very much interested in eventually using AI to supplement or even replace human creators. If that's the goal, well, those of us who'll be being used to TEACH our replacements deserve a hell of a salary, so to speak.
I hope this suit goes forward well.
Anthropic AI is currently valued at around 150-160 billion dollars, just as a note. This is not a small company.
From my point of view, it's absolutely open and shut: did they make use of copyrighted works to make a commercial product? Yes. Did they know they were doing so? Yes. Did they know they SHOULD pay for the rights to make use of those works? Yes. They simply concluded that it would be expensive, so they grabbed archives of pirated copies.
The penalties for this should be substantial. This isn't like someone just downloading a book to read, in which case the most you could argue is that they owe you the purchase price for the copy they made. This is taking people's copyrighted work to use to make a commercial product that you intend to profit from. Conceptually this is no different than making a movie or other derivative work from the copyrighted material. The movie may differ drastically from the book -- it may in the worst case have little but names to show the connection. Even so, the moviemaker HAS to have paid the author for the rights to make the movie using their book.
Note that there is no argument in this case that Anthropic did not, in fact, make use of these works. It's admitted that they did.
But if "not retaining a copy, just the impressions" is good enough, then why can't I go and publish a Lord of the Rings fanfic? If I put the book away and don't look at it while writing, I'm just using my own impressions from the book to write the fanfic. Better yet, there's a lot of books I've only read once; if Anthropic's allowed this argument, then I should be able to freely use anything I remember from any book I've ever read.
To an extent, of course, we DO do that -- we're influenced by everything we read, inspired or angered by it. But we also are expected to make a conscious effort to not merely TAKE the intellectual property. Since current AIs are incapable of "conscious effort", and by their nature literally do not RECALL the sources of their training (part of Anthropic and others' defense against accusations of 'copying'), the responsibility for such conscious effort devolves upon Anthropic and their personnel.
Thus, it would be my contention that Anthropic currently owes every author whose work was used for this training, first a licensing fee -- negotiated appropriately for current and anticipated valuation of their business -- and second, a penalty fee for having DELIBERATELY chosen to try to avoid doing the legally obvious and required licensing.
I would think that a minimum for that would be a thousand dollars per book infringed for licensing, and five hundred for being deliberately sneaky about it. That's a lowball figure -- note that even an OPTION to use someone's book for a movie -- not even an actual rights assignment -- is usually in the thousand-plus range. In this case it's not just an option -- they DID use the intellectual property.
The other reason it has to be a significant number is that everyone is aware that the various IP industries are very much interested in eventually using AI to supplement or even replace human creators. If that's the goal, well, those of us who'll be being used to TEACH our replacements deserve a hell of a salary, so to speak.
I hope this suit goes forward well.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-13 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-13 11:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-14 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-14 12:49 am (UTC)If this suit and cases like it force Anthropic et.al., into bankruptcy? That's the price they pay for not paying and thinking they could get away with it.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-14 07:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-15 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-15 05:01 pm (UTC)(being honest, actually, I'd expect like 10 bucks per book; that'd be a big enough fine to look really impressive in the papers and still just a slap on the wrist for them)
And sure, it'd be a one-time hit on their revenue. Sell 3 billion worth of your stock. Well, 5 billion since it'll drop some. Unless of course your "value" is all built on the idea that you can steal other's work all along and as soon as you have to pay for it your value goes away. But how likely is THAT?
I note that one of the articles on this mentioned that the millions of authors cover "nearly a century of publishing". One possible unintended consequence of this lawsuit being won? Sudden pressure to REDUCE, rather than extend, copyright durations. You can use public domain stuff all you like. Shame how the public domain's been getting so thin on the ground...
no subject
Date: 2025-08-15 05:22 pm (UTC)That is their business model, isn't it? :)
> Sudden pressure to REDUCE, rather than extend, copyright durations.
... added to my list of reasons why I want the AI tech bros to lose, and to lose hard.
no subject
Date: 2025-08-15 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-17 03:01 pm (UTC)Pity the UK government is already pushing through that legislation here, and trumpeting how it is a triumph for the British economy and leap into the future. :-(