Nvidia, one of the most valuable companies in the world, is just another damn intellectual property thief

[highplainsdem]

Nvidia is valuable because of its hardware, but they want their own generative AI, and generative AI is nothing without the world's intellectual property, its knowledge and culture.

So Nvidia, supposedly worth trillions, has joined the other AI robber barons in the greatest theft in history.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/nvidia-accused-pirating-books-train-154400469.html

Nvidia is in hot water with a big class-action lawsuit claiming it used pirated books to train its AI models. The lawsuit alleges that the company actively attempted to acquire millions of copyrighted books and academic papers.

-snip-

The updated lawsuit in U.S. District Court claims Nvidia’s top executives greenlit reaching out to Anna’s Archive, a site famous for giving free access to millions of copyrighted books and papers. Emails in the complaint say someone from Nvidia’s data strategy team contacted the archive to see if its library could be used to train large language models.

The suit alleges that “competitive pressures” in the AI world pushed Nvidia to go after pirated datasets. Besides Anna’s Archive, Nvidia reportedly tapped other sources like LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library to grab copyrighted material. Although Anna’s Archive allegedly warned Nvidia about legal risks, they moved ahead, gaining access to around 500 terabytes of data.

The lawsuit also says some of the material Nvidia accessed came through the Internet Archive’s controlled digital lending system, which is already tied up in copyright battles. On top of that, the filing claims Nvidia shared scripts and tools with corporate clients to automatically download datasets packed with pirated books, spreading the alleged copyright violations beyond just internal use.

-snip-

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

[UpInArms]

2. I will believe corporations are people

when you can put them in jail or give them the death penalty

Until then, they are monstrous machines run by thieves who hide behind all the money they rob from everyone

[Kid Berwyn]

3. American as Mom's Apple Pie

Take all you can every time you can as theft is OK if you don’t get caught.

[sakabatou]

4. There's only ONE artificial intelligence I trust

[SheltieLover]

5. Scumbag company

[Initech]

6. Fuck Jensen Huang!

[AZJonnie]

7. Just so it's clear to readers

The article's statement "Anna’s Archive, a site famous for giving free access to millions of copyrighted books and papers" downplays the fact that it is itself effectively an illegal operation in most of the world's jurisdictions. It's basically the infamous "Pirate Bay", but for written works instead of tv shows, movies, and video games. It does not "host" the copyrighted materials exactly, it acts like a search engine for these materials, which may be hosted other by illegal outfits like LibGen, Sci-Hub, and Z-Library, OR they provide links to (also illegal) peer-to-peer sources for said copyrighted materials, such as the many torrent networks.

Thus, it is a certainty that nVidia (though I doubt they're alone in this regard) was well aware that they were illegally acquiring these materials. While the question of whether it's 'legal' to train your models on copyrighted works that you actually purchase a copy of remains a murky one in the current legal environment (and will probably continue to be for some time), it feels like there should be zero question it would be illegal to train your models on copyrighted materials that you did not pay for.

I hope they are successful in their suit!

Also, fuck nVidia!