Thread

Unsealed Briefs in Authors’ Case v. Microsoft/OpenAI

631 points · 623 comments · papergirl

Skyy93 · 1790497828 · focus · HN ↗
This is a lobby organisation using only the pieces and bits they like to push their own agenda.
"sketchy russian website", how about using some more clear description like: A library for sharing books and articles that should be partly public domain because they were paid for by the public. Only some of the material is copyrighted by authors. However, some of their work is so old that it is not reprinted anyway.
But of course such an explanation would not click.
I also don't see a problem with statements about making people jobless. Imagine if every robotic or automation company advertised like this: Yeah, you'll buy tons of expensive robots and still rely on expensive labor from real people without any efficiency gains.
1. trompetenaccoun · 1790499256 · focus · HN ↗
  It can be a bit confusing due to the terrible style of the article (ironic given the source) but it seems the "sketchy russian website" part is a direct quote by Anthropic's Sam McCandlish. And apparently Dario Amodei referred to it as sketchy as well.
  I find the brazenness of saying this while running what's arguably the largest copyright theft operation in human history astonishing. If libgen is "sketchy", then what is OpenAI?
  1. TeMPOraL · 1790499663 · focus · HN ↗
    They didn't believe it was sketchy. They were just worried that the commentariat on HN will frame it in a dumb, manipulative way like that.
    Judging by how AI threads look like for the past year, they were absolutely right to be worried.
    > largest copyright theft operation in human history
    In fact, you're doing exactly that right here.
    discreteevent · 1790500398 · focus · HN ↗
    > frame it in a dumb, manipulative way like that > In fact, you're doing exactly that right here.
    You're dead fucking right they are doing exactly that. They are saying that what is wrong is wrong.
    Instead you seem to be making out that AI companies are some kind of victim that has to "worry" about "manipulation". Meanwhile authors are out of a job right now and not by accident. What's up with that?
    probably_wrong · 1790500574 · focus · HN ↗
    The comment you're replying to is citing almost verbatim [1] Microsoft’s director of Applied Science, Brent Hecht, who called OpenAI's data collection practices "the largest theft of labor in human history" in an internal memo.
    [1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-exec-called-ai-scraping-the-largest-theft-of-labor-in-human-history-new-unredacted-filings-reveal/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/17/microsoft-exec-called-ai-s...
    qarl · 1790500687 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, one man at Microsoft agrees with you.
    TeMPOraL · 1790500857 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not citing, it's regurgitating, like a stochastic parrot.
    throworangeaway · 1790505071 · focus · HN ↗
    It is citing directly from unsealed court document. For an Opinion Haver training here all day, whose only other contribution to the world was animated Nyan Cat in Emacs status bar, you have poor comprehension skills.
    latexr · 1790500610 · focus · HN ↗
    > They were just worried that the commentariat on HN will frame it in a dumb, manipulative way like that.
    You’re chastising others for a tone you are yourself employing, and are making monumental assumptions based on a few choice quotes. From the quotes alone you can’t tell if OpenAI thought libgen was sketchy or not.
    Also, contrary to what you’re claiming, they were wrong. HN in general seems to approve of libgen when used for its purpose of downloading some books on an individual level. The complaint you’re replying to is about what OpenAI did with the data, it has nothing to do with the website they got it from.
    zaptheimpaler · 1790503124 · focus · HN ↗
    There's no actual argument here, just name-calling. Meta literally pirated 80TB of books off of Anna's Archive. OpenAI pirated off LibGen as well. You could be prosecuted for doing the same thing, because its illegal. Piracy is illegal, piracy at the scale they committed is extremely illegal. This shouldn't be a hard or controversial concept.
    ChickeNES · 1790503356 · focus · HN ↗
    Who cares. IP is a fiction, all copyrights and patents should be abolished.
    zaptheimpaler · 1790503630 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah maybe make a few author friends and tell them that they don't deserve any payment for their work. I'm sure the world will be much better once we even further reduce the incentives to do hard intellectual work and increase the incentives to churn out AI slop tiktok videos instead.
    ChickeNES · 1790504741 · focus · HN ↗
    If a machine can do the same work for nearly free, "but the existing people want to keep getting paid" is not an argument for copyright.
    techpression · 1790508215 · focus · HN ↗
    It can’t, it needs hundreds of thousands (if not multiple millions) of human hours spent making content for it.
    ChickeNES · 1790518432 · focus · HN ↗
    Training data? Luckily we have all of human history and culture to digitize to solve that problem.
    throwaway173738 · 1790514482 · focus · HN ↗
    Which is fine if you like human culture to never change for the next ten thousand years. LLMs can only ever interpolate or extrapolate things they’ve already been trained on.
    ChickeNES · 1790518383 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t accept the premise, it’s hard to take anyone seriously who is parroting the “stochastic parrot” argument in 02026.
    throwaway173738 · 1791011402 · focus · HN ↗
    Your assertion that we’ll somehow get brand new human culture from something that isn’t human might be a little shaky too.

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