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> Downloading every torrent of all e-books ever is pretty clearly illegal (or at least it fuckin would be if I did it). Pretty sure like, multiple labs have been popped for that though.

Oh it is, and at least anthropic has paid $1.5 billion and deleted there torrented copies and not released any models derived from them as a consequence.

The thing is it turns out to be not that expensive to just buy a copy of every book legally and scan them. And there's even precedent that this is legal predating LLMs (Google books)

by nubg4 hours ago|

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> and deleted there torrented copies and not released any models derived from them as a consequence.

I have a bridge to sell you

by gpm4 hours ago|

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Great, let's go down to the courthouse and get some sworn testimony as to the ownership, value, condition, and so on and so forth of the bridge. And some document review and discovery run through professional legal firms under the same conditions. And perfectly reasonable and verifiable explanations as to why you own the bridge and are selling it (namely that you bought a copy of literally every book in existence in the meantime).

Facts are in fact knowable, and the US legal system is in fact not terrible at getting to them.

by reinitctxoffset4 hours ago|

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I think you're right to point out that historically the rule of law in the United States has been very robust by the standards of whatever era, it's been a tremendous advantage in attracting business and capital and talent, it's good stuff.

But we've gone through some pretty weird times too. Turn of the last century was pretty tech billionaire edits, reconstruction was uh, not smooth, it's a mixed bag.

And most takes I hear seem to acknowledge that this is one of those weirder times: serious election fraud rhetoric from most everybody from 2016 to the present, very politicized courts (on both sides to be clear), very soft on anti-trust, very soft on adventurous accounting. The Epstein files and like, no consequences (pretty much uniquely for a developed nation with Epstein people). It's weird right now.

And I think I would be hard pressed to think of a weirder part of this weird time than the rule of law meets AI. We can haggle on where laws end and norms begin (stare decis being maybe the midpoint), but in the 90s, the Justice Department got their brass knuckles on for a lot less.

I don't think it's a simple "the law works nothing to see here" story.

by gpm4 hours ago|

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I broadly agree with your take on the state of the US - but this is a case where given the specific facts at hand I'm confident it still got to the truth.

I can understand why as someone who didn't follow it and the more corrupt legal developments closely you wouldn't be confident in that.