In a way their future labor was? If i recorded you 24/7, then went to your employer and told them I had masterfully trained a chimpanzee to perform your jpb, and it was good enough your employer considered getting rid of you. Would you consider me recording/copying whart you did theft in some way?
I work in infosec and I would give up everything I own and die happy if infosec became a solved problem and the profession died forever.
It's hard for me to imagine a profession that should exist in a utopian society. People should just be able to explore and build cool shit. People should have instant access to food when they're hungry and housing when the weather gets bad, and we could live in a society that does all that without having rent extraction baked into everything.
I assume they mean that it is all already automated in the utopian society. And I would kinda agree that that would be utopian. But sadly we live in the real world where greed rules pretty much everything, meaning that it will remain an unobtainable dream for (most likely) ever.
There's unfortunately a huge contingent of people who would strongly oppose a utopia where we all could live as equals in comfortable, luxurious lifestyles, where robotics, replicators, AI, and automation took care of everyone's needs and wants.
Do we normally consider recorded music to be theft from musicians who would have been paid to play music live if we never allowed (or invented) recorded music?
Normally this isn't the case for any technology except for the time it first comes around. AI is only different to use for two reasons. First, it is in our time. Second, it seems to be faster than any of the options before, so the shock is harder.
But in general, this is a website of people writing code. How many on here study how a person solves a problem and then trains the ultimate chimpanzee to do (at least part of) their job? Is building computer programs that automate what others did manually theft?
Consider the origin of the word "computer" itself, a mass theft of jobs that would have employed the whole world many many times over.
> Normally this isn't the case for any technology except for the time it first comes around.
Well, sure, there's no one left to fight once everyone already lost their job and moved to another career. But, that's sort of a "might makes right" resolution. The workers don't have the political sway needed to get the government to intervene.
Businesses succeed in getting that sort of market intervention all the time. Most of the modern changes to copyright law are driven by business lobbying.
> Musicians are paid to record music. If they were not, as is the case for ai data, we would indeed consider it theft.
I remember reading literature from the 1930s, and there were quite a few folks who thought that the musicians-doing-recordings were stealing from the old-timers who played for live audiences.
History does not exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes
The few who get paid to record are replacing far more who would have otherwise been paid to play if that was the only way to listen to any music. Is it okay if one musician replaces another but not if a non-musician does so? The person getting replaced didn't get paid either way.
Going back to the previous example, say I pay a different coworker $50 for the data to train the chimpanzee and then use it to replace the first person. In either case they lost their jobs while receiving nothing for it. In either case, what happened to them is the same, so how would they be stolen from in one case and not in another?
> For the print library copies that Anthropic purchased and then converted into digital library copies, Anthropic already enjoyed entitlement to keep the copies in its library. The purpose of the copying was to keep them in its library but with more favorable storage and searchability properties. Copying the entire work was exactly what this purpose required. There was no surplus copying. The source copy was destroyed.
> The third fair use factor favors fair use for the purchased library copies converted from print to digital.
...
> This order grants summary judgment for Anthropic that the training use was a fair use. And, it grants that the print-to-digital format change was a fair use for a different reason. But it denies summary judgment for Anthropic that the pirated library copies must be treated as training copies.
In a way their future labor was? If i recorded you 24/7, then went to your employer and told them I had masterfully trained a chimpanzee to perform your jpb, and it was good enough your employer considered getting rid of you. Would you consider me recording/copying whart you did theft in some way?
Even better question: would you be willing to train the AI-driven robot which will end your profession altogether?
I work in infosec and I would give up everything I own and die happy if infosec became a solved problem and the profession died forever.
It's hard for me to imagine a profession that should exist in a utopian society. People should just be able to explore and build cool shit. People should have instant access to food when they're hungry and housing when the weather gets bad, and we could live in a society that does all that without having rent extraction baked into everything.
I'm not sure how to square
> It's hard for me to imagine a profession that should exist in a utopian society
with
> People should have instant access to food when they're hungry and housing when the weather gets bad
You don't think that farming, baking, and building are professions?
I assume they mean that it is all already automated in the utopian society. And I would kinda agree that that would be utopian. But sadly we live in the real world where greed rules pretty much everything, meaning that it will remain an unobtainable dream for (most likely) ever.
There's unfortunately a huge contingent of people who would strongly oppose a utopia where we all could live as equals in comfortable, luxurious lifestyles, where robotics, replicators, AI, and automation took care of everyone's needs and wants.
They oppose the "live as equals" part.
Farming and baking are already very thoroughly automated and their labor force completely proletarianized.
There were the fundaments of communism two centuries ago.
Do we normally consider recorded music to be theft from musicians who would have been paid to play music live if we never allowed (or invented) recorded music?
Normally this isn't the case for any technology except for the time it first comes around. AI is only different to use for two reasons. First, it is in our time. Second, it seems to be faster than any of the options before, so the shock is harder.
But in general, this is a website of people writing code. How many on here study how a person solves a problem and then trains the ultimate chimpanzee to do (at least part of) their job? Is building computer programs that automate what others did manually theft?
Consider the origin of the word "computer" itself, a mass theft of jobs that would have employed the whole world many many times over.
> Normally this isn't the case for any technology except for the time it first comes around.
Well, sure, there's no one left to fight once everyone already lost their job and moved to another career. But, that's sort of a "might makes right" resolution. The workers don't have the political sway needed to get the government to intervene.
Businesses succeed in getting that sort of market intervention all the time. Most of the modern changes to copyright law are driven by business lobbying.
Musicians are paid to record music. If they were not, as is the case for ai data, we would indeed consider it theft.
> Musicians are paid to record music. If they were not, as is the case for ai data, we would indeed consider it theft.
I remember reading literature from the 1930s, and there were quite a few folks who thought that the musicians-doing-recordings were stealing from the old-timers who played for live audiences.
History does not exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes
The few who get paid to record are replacing far more who would have otherwise been paid to play if that was the only way to listen to any music. Is it okay if one musician replaces another but not if a non-musician does so? The person getting replaced didn't get paid either way.
Going back to the previous example, say I pay a different coworker $50 for the data to train the chimpanzee and then use it to replace the first person. In either case they lost their jobs while receiving nothing for it. In either case, what happened to them is the same, so how would they be stolen from in one case and not in another?
Whether it is okay or not has no bearing on it being theft. And no need to create a hypothetical, this is exactly what happened to musicians.
There is broad evidence that labs have used substantial amounts of pirated data, no need to reach for a new definition of theft.
For intellectual property, copying without permission is theft.
Depending on the context, it’s fair use.
As it is, in this case.
It's as fair use as this scenario:
I can use 6 seconds of a movie in a clip as fair use so I cut an entire movie up into 6 second clips and play them all one after another for you.
No, it’s been decided by the courts to be fair use.
I’m not sure why people think they understand IP law better than the courts just because they don’t like the answer
> I’m not sure why people think they understand IP law better than the courts just because they don’t like the answer
Because judges are human beings and can be catastrophically wrong; e.g., see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dred_Scott_v._Sandford
Settled out of court does not mean the court has decided what is fair use in the case.
https://www.goodwinlaw.com/en/insights/publications/2025/06/...
https://admin.bakerlaw.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ECF-23...
> For the print library copies that Anthropic purchased and then converted into digital library copies, Anthropic already enjoyed entitlement to keep the copies in its library. The purpose of the copying was to keep them in its library but with more favorable storage and searchability properties. Copying the entire work was exactly what this purpose required. There was no surplus copying. The source copy was destroyed.
> The third fair use factor favors fair use for the purchased library copies converted from print to digital.
...
> This order grants summary judgment for Anthropic that the training use was a fair use. And, it grants that the print-to-digital format change was a fair use for a different reason. But it denies summary judgment for Anthropic that the pirated library copies must be treated as training copies.
Ah yes because “the courts” have an unblemished historical record of never getting anything wrong
Well, given these companies are trying to sell it back to you - seems like even worse than stealing. ;-)