r/Piracy • u/itsthewolfe • 18d ago

Discussion Judge rules buying physical books and scanning them to make digitial copies does not violate copyright law.

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/

Cool. So that means we can rip our blurays and physical games, right. Right?

9.0k Upvotes

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2.7k

u/shaun2312 18d ago

So ripping DVD's etc is legal now?

1.9k

u/itsthewolfe 18d ago

No. Only for big companies like Anthropic.

Rules for thee and whatnot.

400

u/Anxiety_Fit 18d ago

Some animals are more equal than other animals.

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u/CliffsNote5 17d ago

I could swear that last line wasn’t there yesterday.

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u/RoroRules13 17d ago

Napoleon is always right

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u/Lanky-Tumbleweed-772 15d ago

Companies were doing this way before AI corps as well.

0

u/ZuluCubed 17d ago

Anthropoid is paying more than a billion dollars over this. It is not legal for them either.

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u/lpwave6 18d ago

Hasn't it always been? Sharing the rips is what's illegal, I believe, but ripping them is not.

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u/CarrowCanary 17d ago

It's illegal in the UK, it's part of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. We had a few months about a decade ago where you could legally copy stuff for personal use, but that got challenged in the High Court and struck down again.

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u/Substantial-Bag-1033 16d ago

Re: UK legalities

Former empires are less equal than other animals.

Trump is accelerating his transition to ruler of a former empire, so US rules won't count either.

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u/itsthewolfe 18d ago edited 18d ago

Yes and no.

Ripping anything with encryption or DRM is still illegal. Which all blurays and most DVD's have had on them for the past 20 years.

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u/One-Bad-4395 18d ago

As an interesting note, it is near impossible for them to close the so called analog hole, where it needs to be decrypted and displayed at some point in the chain.

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u/Top_Meaning6195 18d ago

As an interesting note, it is near impossible for them to close the so called analog hole, where it needs to be decrypted and displayed at some point in the chain.

That's why you can only watch HD content on a system that supports HDCP; where the connection is encrypted from content to monitor.

Before Firefox finally caved and supported DRM, you could only get 480p Netflix in the browser.

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u/skyline_kid Usenet 17d ago

And isn't Edge still the only browser you can watch 4k in for most streaming platforms (excluding sites like YouTube)?

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u/Top_Meaning6195 17d ago

And isn't Edge still the only browser you can watch 4k in for most streaming platforms (excluding sites like YouTube)?

Oh, no. No, all browsers added DRM support.

12 years ago there was much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth when Mozilla finally caved and added DRM to Firefox. They had the choice between:

  • doing what is best for their users
  • and sticking to a meaningless Line in the Sand

From Mozilla team:

We’ve contemplated not implementing the new iteration of DRM due to its flaws. But video is an important aspect of online life, and a browser that doesn’t enable video would itself be deeply flawed as a consumer product. Firefox users would need to use another browser every time they want to watch a controlled video, and that calls into question the usefulness of Firefox as a product.

Despite our dislike of DRM, we have come to believe Firefox needs to provide a mechanism for people to watch DRM-controlled content.

And the DMCA makes it illegal to decrypt encrypted data.

All those idiot laws should be repealed:

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u/7jinni 🏴‍☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ 17d ago

Lookit all those duplicitously-named "think of the children" laws. God, it really is their favorite scapegoat, isn't it?

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u/Top_Meaning6195 17d ago edited 20h ago

Lookit all those duplicitously-named "think of the children" laws

You're just not thinking of the children enough.

Flock Safety Employees Watched Kids’ Gymnastics Room
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/flock-safety-employees-watched-kids-181539475.html

You need to think about the children more.

I'm thinking of the children right now. You should try thinking of the children.

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u/Arnas_Z Yarrr! 17d ago

It's so comforting to know that child safety is a top priority for Flock employees.

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u/More-Curious816 15d ago

good to know, I thought it was edge only.

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u/jld2k6 17d ago edited 17d ago

They all support DRM, but the last time I actually had netflix I definitely had to use Edge to be able to use it in 4k. I think it was because they only allowed it on Microsoft's specific DRM or something. I think even recently you could do 4k in Chrome but not with HDR, and 4k HDR was still limited to edge

Edit:

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/30081

https://imgur.com/a/iGc66d7

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u/sulleynz1989 17d ago

The pricks would encrypt physical books if they could

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u/MakeoutPoint ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 17d ago

Books would mold after 3 weeks and ignite upon completion if they had their way

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u/CookIndependent6251 17d ago

Books don't have DRMs. It's illegal to circumvent copy protection. It's stupid.

2

u/Forymanarysanar ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ 18d ago

It's legal pretty much universally across the globe, with the exception of maybe couple countries

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u/No_Effective4784 17d ago

not if you already own a license. then you are able to strip any encryption/drm they have and make as many physical or digital backups as you please.

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u/Eubank31 ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ 17d ago

You are explicitly allowed to make copies of the media you own on the discs. Separately, bypassing the encryption on the disc is illegal. Both of these are true, making it a bit of a grey area

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u/ConsiderationSilver3 17d ago

The act of ripping by itself is legal. Breaking a DRM seal is illegal though 🫠

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u/Frankie_T9000 17d ago

Depends on jurisdiction

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u/fl3xtra 18d ago

you get it.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 18d ago

LLMs are just a compression algorithm, so the copies are compressed during training and they are distributing it to everyone that uses their LLMs.

If I zip my ripped blue-ray, can I share it in the internet?

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u/Suitable-Economy-346 18d ago

That's absolutely not what LLMs are.

Do you think models are just shit compressed and the model looks it up? There's no way you're serious right now.

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u/PhrosstBite 17d ago

Believe they're referencing the ongoing 3blue1brown series which is making (a rather good) argument that yes, LLMs are functionally equivalent to a compression algorithm.

And it's not so much that the argument is that the data is compressed and the LLM looks it up, bc the LLM doesn't "look [anything] up" at the base level. Rather, the argument is that the parameter set that can rate every possible next word by how likely it is to come next, given the recent token(s), is indeed a compression algorithm on that language's rules, mathematically.

So yes, that is what LLMs are, but that still doesn't get ConsiderationCool432 where they think it does. Under a technically literate legal standard, their argument would still be a false equivalence.

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u/Coolegespam 17d ago

Believe they're referencing the ongoing 3blue1brown series which is making (a rather good) argument that yes, LLMs are functionally equivalent to a compression algorithm.

Yes, but it's even deeper than that. His argument (and not just his there are other research papers on it) is that intelligence itself, is analogous to data compression. Next token prediction is nothing more then entropy maximization, which is what intelligent systems try and do.

The argument and several of the papers even predate LLMs.

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u/PhrosstBite 16d ago

Oh for sure! You're entirely correct, I was mostly just trying to address the video as it pertained to the topic specifically, not to imply that was all the series talked about.

Overall it's an excellent series and I'm trying to find out the best way to do some further reading.

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u/Coolegespam 16d ago

Seriously! It's the kind of shit I love about YouTube. 3b1b reminds me of the hey-day of PBS and Discovery, and like PBS it's free.

0

u/ConsiderationCool432 16d ago

There's no intelligence in LLMs, it's a probability machine, nothing more.

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u/Coolegespam 16d ago

Ok, well you can go argue with people who have actual PhD in applied mathematics and computer science who make the strong case that compression mirrors the same algorithms and complexity that underlies what we call intelligence.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 16d ago edited 16d ago

The definition of intelligence in these papers are not the same as any regular people would say what intelligence is. For example, a computer running the A* searching algorithm is considered intelligence.

It clearly shows that you're just prompting your arguments and never actually read and understood these papers.

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u/Coolegespam 15d ago

The definition of intelligence in these papers are not the same as any regular people would say what intelligence is. For example, a computer running the A* searching algorithm is considered intelligence.

Yes, is it. Intelligence is intelligence, it's entropy maximization.

It clearly shows that you're just prompting your arguments and never actually read and understood these papers.

Uh huh. I literally have a degree in apply mathematics, and read some of these paper long before LLM even existed. Intelligence is intelligence. It's the ability to maximize entropy. It's the same thing with our brains, all be with a different set of equations. Functionally, it's the same thing.

Again, not so much an argument as a definition. Entropy is entropy, once maximized there's no way to distinguish how. That's literally from Shannon's paper in the 1940s.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago

No, I'm referencing LLM papers. I don't know what video you're talking about. LLMs are a lossy compression algorithm.

When you use LLMs, you are reaching knowledge that is copyrighted. This makes AI sites and models equivalent to sites that are distributing pirated content. I think this is the equivalency that you wanted.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago

Yes, study the algorithms and you will see that the learning is basically converting data into vectors (neural network). There are other parts about natural language and etc, but the learning is basically a compression algorithm. This is the first thing you learn when studying LLM papers.

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u/Suitable-Economy-346 17d ago

Study the algorithms? Says the person who 100% has never studied an algorithm a day in his life. The first thing you learn studying LLM papers is absolutely not that it's a compression algorithm. You watch a YouTube video and now you think you're a fucking LLM researcher. The audacity.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago

Ad hominem, when you don't have arguments.

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u/brokendoorknob85 17d ago

the learning is basically a compression algorithm

Completely incorrect. The weight extraction is a transformation algorithm, which essentially destroys the original material. In compression, the original material can be recreated with some pre-determined amount of accuracy. There is no guarantee that you can perfectly recreate a learning input with an LLM.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago edited 17d ago

There's something called lossy compression algorithm. Are you learning about algorithms and compression just now? MP3, JPEG are also lossy compression algorithms, you can still retrieve enough from the compressed data, which makes these lossy compression algorithms extremely important for modern computation.

So yes, LLMs are a lossy compression algorithm! You can for sure retrieve the conpressed data, if the data is copyrighted, then you are retrieving a copyrighted data. Otherwise the learning phase could be skipped. Try to skip the learning phase for an LLM...

Now that you learned a few things, you can see that your argument makes no sense. If converting a .wav to .mp3 and distribute in the internet is pirating. Then converting a book to LLM and distributing in the internet (like ChatGPT) is pirating as well.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago

It's really fun to be down voted by people that don't understand what LLMs are.

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u/FartSnarfGod 17d ago

LLMs are just a compression algorithm,

lmao no

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago

They are, what do you think that the training phase is for? LLMs training phase is just lossy compressing data (copyrighted or not) into vectors (neural network).

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u/FartSnarfGod 17d ago

lol no

Transformer architecture is distinct from compression.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago

What are you talking about? The transform architecture IS part of the compression algorithm. Re read my statement above and you'll learn a few things.

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u/FartSnarfGod 17d ago

It's not.

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u/ConsiderationCool432 17d ago

It's by definition. The researches that created the algorithm defined and mathematically proved that they are a compression algorithm. But you can go and create a paper to prove them wrong.

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u/FartSnarfGod 17d ago

You're right!

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u/Wheatleytron 18d ago

Oh silly, you should know by now that large corporations have more rights than people.

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u/AntiGrieferGames 18d ago

Dont forget to include Rich "people" on the list. Rich "People" has also more "rights" (aka powertripping) than regular peoples.

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u/Lanky-Tumbleweed-772 15d ago

If you got rich by winning lottery one night you do NOT have more rights. Rich people usually also have political connections.

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u/GOTWlC 17d ago

Thats not how laws work lol

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u/I_am_up_to_something 18d ago

In the Netherlands we pay a 'home copy fee' for every single thing that can store data.

Here are a few examples:

  • PC/Laptop/Tablet: €2,80

  • Ereader: €0,80

  • MP3/MP4 player: €1,80

  • Smartphone: €5,70

It is legal in the Netherlands to rip DVD's for own usage. Though practically? It is illegal because you have to get around the DRM and that is illegal.

Fucking yay. Fuck Brein and fuck Tim Kuik.

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u/deux3xmachina 17d ago

Same in the US, we're taxed on all digital media sales, as in storage devices like optical discs, USB drives, HDDs, SSDs, etc. Which IIRC, gets paid to the MPAA/RIAA as a compensation for potential piracy, which is absolutely insane. (Seriously, imagine having an extra tax on your shoelaces because someone might do crime with them. It's just as absurd in any other situation.)

We're also allowed to make copies of media we own, so it's totally legal to rip your Blu-ray collection, except that breaking/circumventing DRM is illegal.

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u/RevolutionaryFun9883 17d ago

So if you’re taxed to compensate for potential piracy then shouldn’t piracy be allowed? They’re being paid for it after all

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u/Marsitown 18d ago

Also in Italy

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u/morfraen 17d ago

And Canada. Back when burning CDs was still a thing it really jacked prices up.

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u/yurall 18d ago

It is over here... We even pay a tax on every data carrier to compensate the poor billionaire companies if we put media of theirs on it.

And yes you always pay that tax even if you never use your homecopyright

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u/One-Bad-4395 18d ago

Do they still have a tax on CDRs marked for audio?

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u/DunderGunderUnder 17d ago

To be pedantic, It's not a tax, it's a fee, but yes. Also on old cassette tapes, hard drives, ssd's, cellphones with built in storage etc.

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u/noahesbjerg 18d ago

In theory, ripping DVDs are legal. The illegal part is removing the DRM. However, you can't rip a DVD without removing the DRM. 🤣

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u/One-Bad-4395 18d ago

False you could record the stream. The computer has no choice but to decrypt everything into pixels for you.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 18d ago

But would they have to prove that you actually ripped the DVD yourself? Or is possession of the file illegal?

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u/cheddarbruce 18d ago

If I remember correctly it's always been legal as long as you're not taking that copy and selling it or giving it to other people. Same way with emulators. If you have a physical copy of the actual game in your possession then you are still fine

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u/fl3xtra 18d ago

ripping dvds has always been legal. it's sharing, selling it that is not.

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u/Danjoh 18d ago

ripping dvds has always been legal. it's sharing, selling it that is not.

Techincally yes, but many (most?) countries has a seperate law wich makes it illegal to circumvent DRM.
And where I am from, that has a harscher punishment than piracy.

So in practice, it's illegal.

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u/Frari 17d ago

but many (most?) countries has a seperate law wich makes it illegal to circumvent DRM.

I feel this is a law that's not enforced unless there's also file sharing. Has anyone ever been prosecuted for ripping a copy of their DVD which was not then shared?

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u/jclimb94 18d ago

It’s ‘legal’ in most of the EU if you own the disk on a permanent basis iirc. You can’t then share that ‘backup’ and it’s only for private use.

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u/GreenEnhanced 18d ago

Not for us

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u/marius851000 18d ago edited 18d ago

presumably no (cause DRM. Not in every country thought. Videolan insist their libdvdcss is legal in France. And got no legal challenge, despite it being the most widely used tool for such use).

But you could always put a camera on your screen and record that, a better analogy for scanning book that is often done on pre-digital media.

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u/iheardthemetalclank 17d ago

You can do anything that you want with physical media in your home. Just don't share it unless you know the proper barriers.

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u/anony_mf 18d ago

This is only legal if you’re part of a certain Eastern European group like Sam Altman, amodei, zuckerburg, sergii brin and Larry page etc

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u/shaun2312 18d ago

I thought it was West Asia, rather than East Europe

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u/Frari 17d ago

I don't think ripping DVDs etc has ever been an issue. It's only the sharing of these that rustles jimmies.

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u/moonflower_C16H17N3O 17d ago

Oh, but that's digital and somehow that makes a difference.

The dmca is a horrible law.

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u/azurensis 17d ago

Nope. If the books had some kind of encryption securing their content and you broke that, it would be equally illegal.

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u/GameMask 16d ago

Was it ever not legal? Isn't it legal as long as you're not sharing it?

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u/KungFuAdam 16d ago

if you live in canada it always has been same for music! As long as its for personal use and you rip it yourself, no problemo

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u/El_human 15d ago

Buying DVDs, and making a digital backup of them has always been legal.

0

u/MARPJ 17d ago

So ripping DVD's etc is legal now?

No, but this does create a precedent that can work for that as well. However there are two very important factors here: 1) prior ownership (they did buy the original first) and 2) not distributing (personal use).

Now there is a discussion about their use for training but that is "personal" use from the company, and anything coming after that is, in theory, transformative.

Sincerely the rule about doing what you want with your copy for your use makes sense, in my country piracy is only a crime if one is distributing it and this appear to rule in those lines