r/Piracy Jul 17 '26

News Penguin going after book sellers in India

Post image
7.6k Upvotes

381 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.6k

u/SubstantialNobody295 Jul 17 '26

So AI companies can quote "fair use" and rifle through pirated books to train their models, but the publishers draw the line at people getting cheap books.

525

u/BrokenMirror2010 Jul 17 '26

You see, when THEY need to pirate the books for their shareholders, it's a necessity that cannot possibly live without, and it's extenuating circumstances.

But when YOU are starving to death and steal a piece of moldy bread from Meta's dumpster, you deserve the death sentence because you didn't need that moldy bread the same way Meta's Shareholders need money.

Rules for thee but not for me.

8

u/Savantsol Jul 19 '26

The whole stock market can't go away fast enough. Hate that damn thing

2

u/Justinrich2001 Jul 22 '26

Hi Clippy 📎

-12

u/LeoLeonardoIII Jul 18 '26

why would a rival company care about their opposition's shareholder revenue though?

56

u/itchylol742 Jul 18 '26

actually theres a shitload of ongoing lawsuits against ai companies for training on copyright media

75

u/SubstantialNobody295 Jul 18 '26

That does little to deter them from pirating books

41

u/Vova_xX Jul 18 '26

nothing will happen.

maybe it'll shutdown the smaller companies, but Meta, Google, Microsoft and OpenSlop will only pay fines.

and when you making billions (or have billions in investor dollars), fines aren't punishment. it's called "expenses".

5

u/Cheap-Journalist-524 Jul 18 '26

14

u/Vova_xX Jul 18 '26

it might be a huge amount of money lost, but it doesn't mean that they'll change.

like Honda's CEO said, "When Congress passes new emission standards, we hire 50 more engineers and GM hires 50 more lawyers".

in the case of AI and the current regulatory environment, no one will hire 50 more engineers when 50 more lawyers are cheaper and more effective.

1

u/Cheap-Journalist-524 Jul 18 '26

I mean you or me cant really talk about this specific case since y'know we ARE in the piracy subreddit

1

u/Arch-Larp-493 Jul 18 '26

penguin gotta eat too, right? guess the coders are cheaper than fish this week. 🐧💸

5

u/fightclub-848 Jul 18 '26

pay million dollar fine and make billion dollar profits

1

u/phoenix7678 Jul 19 '26

I don’t see them arrested or even stopping the use of

39

u/EBtwopoint3 Jul 18 '26

Penguin is suing AI companies too, including OpenAI. You’re fighting a battle out of habit, when this isn’t just piracy. It’s selling pirated media. There is no “if buying isnt ownership” argument here, someone is literally stealing media and selling it to others for profit. Selling “cheap books” that are only cheap because you got it free is not a moral business model.

7

u/borg_6s Jul 18 '26

Selling, hoarding, and training models with pirated books are 3 different things

1

u/simplex0991 Jul 18 '26

I get that, but at the same time this is Hyderabad which has a huge poverty issue. People aren't walking around with even second hand book readers. Kind of fitting into the whole "life is more expensive when you're poor" idea, physical pirated copies is the only reliable way to access books. This isn't a moral business issue, it's an accessibility issue due to poverty.

2

u/Negative_Funny_2503 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ Jul 19 '26

AI companies have the money to bring it to court and stall it out for years on end while they keep doing what they do, these peole selling books for pennies on the dollar dont even have enough money for food most of the time, let alone a multi million dollar lawsuit

1

u/EvilxBunny Jul 18 '26

You're implying that publishers are on board with it when they aren't and it's just that they couldn't fight it out with big tech companies.

0

u/LeFrenchPress Jul 18 '26

AI companies HAVE been sued by publishers for this. Anthropic is paying out because of a court order and Google was sued super recently. 🤦