"it fits a tech industry playbook to grow a business first and later pay a relatively small fine...for breaking the rules... Anthropic (is valued) at $183 billion."
It's what I suspected: Anthropic did the maths on how many authors have registered copyright (only 500k out of the 7M titles stolen, $3k not $150k). Better than $750 per title(statue min)but...
It's a fine for "rule breaking" not "you stole books, erase your model and start over with non-stolen goods"
Not entirely clear, but it also appears to be a set fine? So authors in the pool get to fight over the total? Rather than "you will pay each author X amount" — it says $3000 but that assumes 500k authors file claims. Could be less. Anthropic doesn't care, they'll pay their fine and be free to steal.
I'm really mixed on this but part of me is like "well at least creative folks will get a pittance out of this bonfire of VC funds before it all goes horribly broke."
But I think the judged boxed them in by saying it was only copyright registered works and at that point, there was no way to make them pay *enough* to bankrupt.
IDK I wasn't privy but it makes me RAGE regardless.
@dalias I honestly don't think opting out of the class helps anything... this case is settled, I'd rather see them pay as much of that settlement money as possible.
There's always other class actions that can be filed. There are *so many* companies that have stolen these books. So the question will be... what will happen with those? IDK but opting out of the class would change nothing. Might as well get authors some money.
And the judge *really* screwed authors by saying it was "fair use".
The only real remedy would have been to take it to trial and try to bankrupt Anthropic and IDK why they didn't but probably registration # s did it.
I think the judge boxed them (the suing authors) in with that. They're just not inclined to actually *make the company pay* for stealing, not when it's Silicon Valley I guess
If you don't accept being in the class you still have grounds (whether you use it or not) to make a case against them yourself, and even if not, you don't grant that their wrongdoing against you has been compensated and is a closed deal.
If the amount were going to be substantial, I guess it's a matter of how much of a difference it makes to an individual author's life and whether that's worth it. But as expected it's really low.
My understanding (not a lawyer) is that the *particular suit* being ruined by the "fair use" thing is reason to opt out of the class and have another chance at it. With a lawyer who's actually been told to prioritize making the case that it's not fair use, and given leads to expert witnesses (e.g. mathematicians who actually understand what the model is) qualified to convince a court of that.
Is it possible to be in the class collecting damages from the piracy that took place downloading corpus from libgen, without that putting you in a class where it's been ruled that the incorporation of all your books into their model was non-infringing? These seem like two separate allegations of infringement.
I'm not a lawyer and I don't know. I hope someone who is a lawyer can help advise on this, tho.
@dalias it's a fair question and I don't actually know the answer.
I would say I'll have a better idea when I can see the form I have to actually sign when I join the class action (I have 91 titles in the pirated database).
I need to look at the other suits that are already ongoing too — and I have smart friends I expect will be weighing in on this 😀
"Judge Alsup certified the class only for piracy, not the act of AI training, and as such the fair use ruling on training applies only with respect to the three named plaintiffs, not the certified class authors and publishers. "
Today, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle claims that it downloaded pirated books to train its AI systems—the largest U.S. copyright settlement in history.
@Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 Isn't it neat how when AI companies do it, it's "training" with a $ slap on the wrist by a class action brough by individuals, but when average ppl do it with Napster or Limewire it's "piracy" and the literal govt comes to seize their property? 🙃🤡🤖 God I can't wait for this AI bubbble to bbburst and bbbankrupt some robbber bbbarons.
@growfediverse the only real remedy would have been to take them to trial and make them pay for every one of those 7M instances at $150k and just bankrupt the company.
As soon as I saw that they settled, I knew it was just a slap on the wrist.
Today, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle claims that it downloaded pirated books to train its AI systems—the largest U.S. copyright settlement in history.
With read speeds up to 900MB/s and write speeds up to 600MB/s, level up your handheld gaming experience with next-gen Lexar Play PRO 1TB microSD Express Card.
A group called Return to the Land has established two "whites-only communities" in Arkansas, with plans for four more sites in the Ozarks and Appalachia. The creation of white ‘ethnostates’ is the ultimate goal of some white nationalists, a scholar of right-wing extremism explains: buff.ly/R8loWop
If you have a spare buck, throw it towards @Sbarry8520 whos been working to build a house for his family in The Gambia. He is probably the first person to fund building an entire house from fediverse donations which is pretty damn cool if you ask me. mstdn.social/@Sbarry8520/11515…
#MatrixDown: So, is the main issue of #Matrix too many users using the main instance, a condition actively pushed by #Vector, creating half-centralized ecosystem?
Is it the issue that #Matrix servers are a overly complex and resource hungry systems, which are hard to administrate and even harder to troubleshoot? 🤔
No - running your own server is not really hard. I started using Matrix just a few days ago and from day two on I had my own server as soon as I found element-hq.github.io/synapse/l…
You can either use Docker or run it native in Debian/Ubuntu. Using PostgreSQL instead of SQLite is recommened. Migrating after the initial setup is also possible but maybe a bit tricky.
I decided against Conduit as it is still beta and I did not want to deal with beta issues before even knowing how it should be with a stable server. Maybe I will give it try later. The server here has 32 GB RAM and 6 cores, so the additional load by Synapse is not a big deal so far.
Looks like it's good we're having different systems to test and use.
I'm testing @delta now and apart from privacy concerns I heard about in the past, it looks like a good, pretty much decentralized option to me, with low hosting and Admin efforts which also seems important to me for wide adoption.
Also try XMPP, that's very low effort, reliable, has been around for a while and is an IETF standard for instant messaging communication. Clients like Conversations by @daniel are simple and reliable and @dino works really well.
It even is a protocol exactly for that use-case. It's technology that makes me happy, as it just works well.
Well, I used #XMPP for 2 years or so, with #Jabber and #Dino on Windows. Very often messages were not delivered or not e2e encrypted, especially with the Dino clients.
It was hosted by a friend for a few people. The troubleshooting caused a lot of work for him. So we stopped it and moved to #Deltachat.
“There’s a reason you separate the military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
-William Adama, Battlestar Galactica (2004)
With Trump sending the military into more and more cities, the line feels more relevant than ever. So I turned it into a sticker. If you’d like the design, it’s free to use. As a subtle nod to Battlestar Galactica, I recommend clipping the corners.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Here’s a scarlet tanager (Piranga olivacea)—female, I believe. I captured this image years ago while she lingered in an oak tree just beyond my fence. It was the first time I’d photographed one, and I remember thinking: maybe I’ll see a male someday. Who knows.
If you’re captivated by indigo buntings and other members of the Cardinalidae family—better known as the cardinal family—step into my photo gallery for a visual feast. Come take a look:
What if the real flouride conspiracy is that Alex Jones is trying to give people that listen to his show cavities and most people should increase flouride intake and brush their teeth with flouride toothoaste more often and only a small percent would have better health if they reduced intake
But flouride water can still pose health problems for infants because it is easier for them to accidentally have too much flourude
anecdotal refutation: I have not used fluoridated toothpaste for over 20 years. I have had zero tooth cavities. My mouth feels healthy and teeth are strong.
Tooth health is mostly due to diet, not what you brush your teeth with.
Angela Rayner, already disgraced and forced to resign, is now being lined up for a payout funded by the very taxpayers she betrayed. The TaxPayers’ Alliance has called her out for what she is: a complete hypocrite.
Ordinary Britons are being hammered with record taxes, mortgages, and bills. Families are counting pennies, pensioners are choosing between heating and eating, and veterans are sleeping on the streets. Yet somehow, when it comes to failed politicians, there’s always money to spare. Always a cushy parachute. Always one rule for them, another for us.
Rayner’s scandals should have ended her career. Instead, she might walk away with a reward, paid out of the pockets of people who have been crushed by the very government she was part of. That’s not just wrong, it’s insulting.
If Labour cared about integrity, they’d block this payout immediately. If Keir Starmer had a backbone, he’d demand she refuse a penny. But we all know how this goes, excuses, spin, and silence while the public is fleeced yet again.
🇬🇧 Enough is enough. No golden handshakes for hypocrites. No taxpayer bailouts for failed politicians. Sack them, strip them, and make them live by the same rules as the rest of us.
Angela Rayner has been branded a "complete hypocrite" by William Yarwood as he demanded that the ex-Deputy Prime Minister does not receive a Government payout, following her resignation.
On a rainy day in 2025, I found poetry in a single drop. Where water meets life, stillness becomes wonder. This piece is my tribute to the beauty of the ordinary — to the quiet moments that speak louder than words. linktr.ee/M.ALK
Discover the world through my lens and brush: from wild primates in deep contemplation to delicate watercolor cacti kissed by dew. Original art for nature lovers. Prints available.
I must say I'm surprised at how closely my own developed opinion and vision for solarpunk is to @eruditelijah
There's only one thing I would like to emphasize just because I think it's really important, and that is that solarpunk is, or at least should be, activist fiction. The writing of it is activist, the choices of topic are activist, the characters have activist tendencies that offer us role models. This aspect of solarpunk fiction is what makes it valuable in the now, imo
@amici @eruditelijah I wrote a piece on nonbinariness awhile back for @solarpunkgnome 's excellent series on Solarpunk & Spirituality. Applies here (imho) re: solarpunk writing have overt activism. Yes! And we need more!
We also need the aspirational writing that gets us to dream bigger and seeds inspiration. So we need the present, the far future, and ways to get there. We need it all in the generative engine of #solarpunk. @SolarpunkPrompts has some great ideas about missing pieces.
Personally I don't like the far-future, it gets escapist very quickly because it requires too much of a leap of imagination to get there. It becomes sort-of like a nice dream, but not an actionable dream.
However, if we can find a path to get there that works in writing, all the better.
Maybe a version of the saga-format could work? Sagas, a literally style from my own country of Norway and developed in the viking age, tackle generational events.
For instance, Snorre's King Sagas, written after the viking age, outlines the biographies of every king of Norway across hundreds of years
Instead of kings, you can have community sagas, biographies of communities with the focus on a few representative characters, detailing their contributions to community change from birth to old age. Over several books you have the full evolution of a community from, for instance, early 21st century to 23rd century
@amici I actually really like that saga idea! I enjoy far future stuff too, but I do think most solarpunk does focus on near future or even alt history.
I've been thinking about creating a story of sorts that focuses on how the world can change from today on into the far future, so I may check out that story you suggested to get an idea on how to go about that.
Focusing on community rather than a few 'main characters' is the key to this I think too.
@eruditelijah I must admit I just mentioned Snorre's King Sagas because I'm a history buff, it's more like an early work of history writing and has a very simple style, though it does focuses on changes in the Kingdom through time, but for an example of modern saga you have "Sagaen om Isfolket", transl. to English as "The Legend of the Ice People" en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Le…, a friend of mine really likes that series.
@eruditelijah One might take inspiration from the historical style to make a history of the future, but one could also simply just write a series of texts, where in each text you follow some community members as their community changes from a young age until they're old, then in the next text, you shift focus to new young characters in the community while the previous ones are old people and background characters. This way there's a slight bit of chronological overlap of texts.
@eruditelijah I'm not a solarpunk novel writer because I'm already committed to my own fantasy book series, so anyone please take this idea and try to realize it, otherwise it might just be forgotten
@eruditelijah @amici actually, the mosaic novel (linked story collection) that I'm pitching works something like this as it spirals through about 200 years to the future I've dreamed.
@amici Yes I think that activism piece is a huge and important part! Sad I didn't mention that explicitly, but I felt it was implied via the ideas of punk itself.
However it's becoming more apparent to me that some people don't realize the inherent activist stance of punk as a genre across art forms.
That's so interesting to read. Thanks for posting!
From where i am sitting in Europe/Denmark it feels like a lot of the critical confusion is very US culture centric. #Solarpunk began in South America and southern Europe, and I think that matters to its valence.
In Europe, I experience renewable energy, inc. community green energy, as normal and large scale, getting community benefits from corporate renewable energy is normal (although massively problematic) etc.
I just wrote a definition of #solarpunk for an academic glossary of terms, but I refused to define it, instead wrote a solarounk short story... because, for me, solarpunk is something you _do_. It's more verb than noun...
@laurawatts This jibes with a solarpunk narrative arc I've been offering. Each point on the spiral (not linear) is purposely a verb. "How to solarpunk." Susan, that's also how you titled one of your mini zines, yes?
@laurawatts Your writing and contribution to solarpunk is wonderful! Quoting you: "...solarpunk is known for its age-of-sail aesthetic, for its science-fiction-as-activism, for its sunlit exuberance, and for kicking over the anthills (Flynn 2019). Solarpunk is not for defining. Writing a theoretical definition of solarpunk in a typical passive, academic writing style would not be solarpunk. You have to do it. Solarpunk is more verb than noun."
I hope Elijah comes to Fediverse, it's "very punk": Strangers making and sharing tech to communicate, with no expected ROI, just human connection. (yeah there's misery profiteers in the wider Fedi, but nowhere near the level of the silo corporate platforms like Bluesky, Tiktok, Meta, etc). Just the idea that there's all these independent admins pro bono running instances for total strangers is hella Solarpunk to me.
I sometimes wonder if ppl misunderstand Solarpunk because people think that the only way to rebel against oppression is fugly physical combat? Totally missing the innumerous times other strategies have succeeded too. The idea that rebellion can ONLY be direct violence seems like a fairy tale oppressive people tell to keep folks from trying other perfectly effective methods. Cuz violent oppressors already intuit how to deal with violent resistence. They don't know how to perceive of the impacts of concepts like malicious compliance, weaponized hope, undaunted kindness, or contageous self respect.
@growfediverse Totally agree. The write-up was a great read, and it made me realize something: people don’t understand why depicting a better future is itself an act of resistance. The reason is because the capitalists’ most effective method of self-preservation, the whole reason they are winning, is by convincing people that no other desirable system is possible.
One of capitalism’s greatest victories of the 20th century was the use of the Cold War to thoroughly entrench the idea in the West that there are only two possible modern political-economic systems: 1) capitalism and 2) authoritarian single-party centrally-planned “communism” (in quotes since I think it’s not what most communists think the word means, but it’s the only thing that most non-communists think it means).
Capitalists argue that if you don’t want the latter, you have to accept the former, there is no other way.
@growfediverse I’ve never thought of truly hopeful futures as utopian (though cynical bate-and-switch utopias appear all the time in dystopias). The point of hopeful future stories, to me, is to depict something radically different from what we have today that actually works, at least as well as our current system seems to work for many still-comfortable people in it, and most likely at least a little better for the many who are not ok today.
The point is not to just make us feel good about the future, whatever that might bring. And the point is also not to tell a story about some characters who are resisting, like the characters are inspiration for our own resistance (though those stories can be useful too). When stories show specific models of non-capitalist, non-authoritarian political/economic/social systems, the telling of that story is itself the real-world act of resistance.
@growfediverse Those in power weaponized doomerism to convince people that, even if our reality sucks, it’s the only thing possible. They argue that getting rid of any elements of capitalism means no functioning economy whatsoever. Criticize all you want, you still have to live with it.
Showing feasible alternatives is the counter-tactic. Showing what it means for workers to own businesses, for local communities to use other methods of public safety and justice, for representation by e.g. sortition beyond the control of money and influence, for collective decision-making by positive-sum consensus-building, etc.
Get people interested enough to look up the ideas, then they can see these things are already being done, that can be done now. Teaching people how to make the transition is important too. But they have to believe there are alternatives that can actually work. That breaks the stranglehold of the capitalist narrative. Then, people will build them.
"I sometimes wonder if ppl misunderstand #Solarpunk because people think that the only way to rebel against oppression is fugly physical combat? Totally missing the innumerous times other strategies have succeeded too. The idea that rebellion can ONLY be direct violence seems like a fairy tale oppressive people tell to keep folks from trying other perfectly effective methods. Cuz violent oppressors already intuit how to deal with violent resistence. They don't know how to perceive of the impacts of concepts like malicious compliance, weaponized hope, undaunted kindness, or contageous self respect." Exactly, @bluespruce!
*sniffs, tugs at shirt* You know, the true perversity of Evangelion is not the obvious Freudian symbology -- the mother in the robot, the father who abandons, and so on and so on -- but rather how it stages the fundamental deadlock of the otaku subject under late capitalism.
*gestures wildly* Here you have Shinji, the perfect neoliberal subject: he doesn't want to pilot the Eva, he hates it, but he does it anyway! Why? Because of some abstract duty? No! Because he has already internalized the superego injunction to enjoy his own exploitation. "I mustn't run away" - this is not courage, this is the purest ideology!
*touches nose* But the real obscenity -- and here Anno is a true genius, whether he knows it or not -- is how the series presents instrumentalisation itself as traumatic. NERV literally dissolves the boundary between human and machine, mother and weapon, and what do we get? Not liberation but pure anxiety! The EVA units are the perfect metaphor for our digital predicament: we are told these technologies will extend our capabilities, make us posthuman, but instead we discover *laughs darkly* that we were always already instruments!
Gendo's Human Instrumentality Project is just making explicit what capitalism already does: reducing humans to pure exchangeable substance, orange goo, the ultimate liquidity!
*sniff* And the masterstroke is the ending - not the false happy ending of End of Evangelion, but the original episodes 25 and 26, where the budget runs out and we get pure interiority. *waves hands* "Congratulations!" they all say to Shinji. But for what? For accepting his place in the symbolic order? This is the ultimate perversity: the show literally cannot afford to show the apocalypse, so instead it stages the real catastrophe - the subject accepting his own subjection as liberation! The production committee pulls the funding, and Anno turns this material limitation into the perfect metaphor for ideological closure!
*adjusts shirt violently* You know what nobody wants to admit? Evangelion is not about robots or aliens or whatever -- it's about the impossibility of authentic action under capitalism. Every character is trapped in their own repetition compulsion: Misato drinks, Asuka performs superiority, Rei submits to erasure; and the Angels? The Angels are just the return of the repressed, the stupid insistence of the Real that says: your little techno-military complex cannot contain the trauma of existence!
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
"The 'free lunch' in the saying refers to the formerly common practice in American bars of offering a 'free lunch' in order to entice drinking customers." and by drinking we of course mean alcohol, e.g. drug dealing en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_such_…
This Human Factors International presentation (ppt) references something called a Columbia Obstruction Device:
I couldn’t find any actual references to the Columbia University science experiment they’re referring to, but it certainly seems plausible…
It's hilariously wild to me how much more reach my Pixelfed posts have over Instagram.
I just started a new Instagram (for work, I have Meta, but you need it to reach out to influencers and stuff), and there are three likes on about 40 photos.
I just uploaded two new photos to my Pixelfed, and BAM, likes are FLOODING IN because I use the proper hashtags.
IG is straight-up garbage for creatives and photographers.
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •storage.courtlistener.com/reca…
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Michael Bacon
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Michael Bacon • • •@MichaelTBacon
I *really* wish they'd taken it to trial.
And bankrupted Anthropic.
But I think the judged boxed them in by saying it was only copyright registered works and at that point, there was no way to make them pay *enough* to bankrupt.
IDK I wasn't privy but it makes me RAGE regardless.
Cassandrich
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Cassandrich • • •@dalias I honestly don't think opting out of the class helps anything... this case is settled, I'd rather see them pay as much of that settlement money as possible.
There's always other class actions that can be filed. There are *so many* companies that have stolen these books. So the question will be... what will happen with those? IDK but opting out of the class would change nothing. Might as well get authors some money.
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •@dalias
And the judge *really* screwed authors by saying it was "fair use".
The only real remedy would have been to take it to trial and try to bankrupt Anthropic and IDK why they didn't but probably registration # s did it.
I think the judge boxed them (the suing authors) in with that. They're just not inclined to actually *make the company pay* for stealing, not when it's Silicon Valley I guess
Cassandrich
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •If you don't accept being in the class you still have grounds (whether you use it or not) to make a case against them yourself, and even if not, you don't grant that their wrongdoing against you has been compensated and is a closed deal.
If the amount were going to be substantial, I guess it's a matter of how much of a difference it makes to an individual author's life and whether that's worth it. But as expected it's really low.
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Cassandrich • • •@dalias
well I have 91 works in the pirated dataset and I'm still probably not going to sue
And even if accept being in the class, it only applies to *THIS COMPANY*
if I decide I actually want to sue any of the other 5000 companies that used LibGen, I can do that
And the judge already poisoned this particular suit by ruling it's "fair use"
Cassandrich
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •My understanding (not a lawyer) is that the *particular suit* being ruined by the "fair use" thing is reason to opt out of the class and have another chance at it. With a lawyer who's actually been told to prioritize making the case that it's not fair use, and given leads to expert witnesses (e.g. mathematicians who actually understand what the model is) qualified to convince a court of that.
Is it possible to be in the class collecting damages from the piracy that took place downloading corpus from libgen, without that putting you in a class where it's been ruled that the incorporation of all your books into their model was non-infringing? These seem like two separate allegations of infringement.
I'm not a lawyer and I don't know. I hope someone who is a lawyer can help advise on this, tho.
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Cassandrich • • •@dalias it's a fair question and I don't actually know the answer.
I would say I'll have a better idea when I can see the form I have to actually sign when I join the class action (I have 91 titles in the pirated database).
I need to look at the other suits that are already ongoing too — and I have smart friends I expect will be weighing in on this 😀
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •@dalias
this seems to separate the two
"Judge Alsup certified the class only for piracy, not the act of AI training, and as such the fair use ruling on training applies only with respect to the three named plaintiffs, not the certified class authors and publishers. "
authorsguild.org/news/what-aut…
What Authors Need to Know About the $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement - The Authors Guild
The Authors GuildGLC
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •@dalias
Direct link to the contact information form for the class settlement for interested parties, or potentially interested parties.
anthropiccopyrightsettlement.c…
chocobo13ζ
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Grow Fediverse
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Grow Fediverse • • •@growfediverse the only real remedy would have been to take them to trial and make them pay for every one of those 7M instances at $150k and just bankrupt the company.
As soon as I saw that they settled, I knew it was just a slap on the wrist.
Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •What Authors Need to Know About the $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement - The Authors Guild
The Authors GuildDustin Mitchell
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Patrick Prémartin
in reply to Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱 • • •Sue is Writing Solarpunk 🌞🌱
in reply to Patrick Prémartin • • •@premartinpatrick if it was up to me Anthropic would have to delete all their models or go bankrupt; either one works for me
Same for all the AI companies