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Comment by stingraycharles | Hacker News Reader

Wasn’t the trigger for all this what happened with Maduro earlier this year? From what I understood, Anthropic wasn’t very happy how their systems were being used by the DoW through Palentir which caused this whole feud.

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Reportedly, Anthropic didn't know about Claude's role in capturing Maduro until they saw it on the headlines.

And why would they have an objection to that? They sold a product to a customer. They should have no business in how that customer uses their software.

Licensing is a thing. See requirements that, for example, GPL3 places on customers.

I'd hate to break it to you, but companies do have a right to determine how their products are used. You were subject to that when you wrote that comment. Did you not notice that?

No, I do not think they do. If a buy a car a run somebody over on purpose, the manufacturer has no right to come take my car away. Even if it were to be written in a contract.

It's different with services. If you close a mobile phone contract and use it for spamming, the supplier can cancel your contract.

You're confusing physical goods transactions with subscription access to a service.

One of the many reasons every company has tried to shift their business model to the latter: greater control over users.

The GGP did not make that distinction, they made a statement about all companies and all products.

If you tell the car dealership that your plan is to run someone over with the car you are buying, they 100% have the right to refuse selling the car to you.

If you tell a gun dealer you're going to kill someone when you walk out of the shop, they have a right and an obligation to refuse the sale.

Please feel free to tell me how these analogies are incorrect.

So firearms dealers should be fine with their customers going on mass murder sprees?

Is this a rethoric question?

Is your original question rhetoric? Because it ain't very... smart

It’s a bit more complex than that, but to be fair I don’t know what they were expecting after they integrated a purpose-built model with Palantir to be deployed in high-security networks to carry out classified tasks.

TBH I don’t know what they were expecting when closing that $200 million DoD contract last year.

> And why would they have an objection to that? They sold a product to a customer. They should have no business in how that customer uses their software.

They sold a service to a customer, contractually subject to terms they both agreed upon. How do people keep missing this? The government changed their mind after agreeing to the restrictions and tried to alter the deal with Anthropic ex-post-facto.

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