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Comment by dcre | Hacker News Reader

The article responds to its own headline with “...but not really”:

> While the risk of a billion-dollar-plus jury verdict is real, it’s important to note that judges routinely slash massive statutory damages awards — sometimes by orders of magnitude. Federal judges, in particular, tend to be skeptical of letting jury awards reach levels that would bankrupt a major company.

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This might not be the right way to highlight it but I personally am very interested in the ways in which the proscribed penalties for breaking the law greatly diverge from the actual penalties inflicted, with the variance being directly correlated to the offender's budget for legal defense. Doubly so because giving one appointed official the final say over actual community members kinda feels like an inversion of the way our government claims to work and a backdoor implementation of a different laws for different people.

Would anthropic be considered a "major company"? Paper value is not the same thing as being a Microsoft, Google, or even OpenAI. An example company that would set precedent and get the "major companies" to stop stealing from creators might be allowed. Not saying they'll allow a bankrupting judgement, but I don't think it will be dropped to slap-on-the-wrist level either.

Anthropic is arguing, among other things, that bankrupting the smallest major AI player while all the bigger ones do the same thing should be a reason to reduce the consequences.

Well, I agree with that argument in the sense that their punishment should be relative to their size. But I was just talking about plantiff strategy. A judgement against Anthropic of any magnitude might open the floodgates for class action lawsuits by creators against major tech companies. I also think that's a good thing, because AI models are clearly laundering work done by original authors.

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