Anthropic Bags Key 'Fair Use' Win For AI Platforms, But Faces Trial Over Damages For Millions of Pirated Works (aifray.com)
(Tuesday June 24, 2025 @11:20AM (msmash)
from the setting-precedence dept.)
- Reference: 0178162203
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/06/24/1519209/anthropic-bags-key-fair-use-win-for-ai-platforms-but-faces-trial-over-damages-for-millions-of-pirated-works
- Source link: https://aifray.com/claude-ai-maker-anthropic-bags-key-fair-use-win-for-ai-platforms-but-faces-trial-over-damages-for-millions-of-pirated-works/
A federal judge has ruled that Anthropic's use of copyrighted books to train its Claude AI models constitutes fair use, but [1]rejected the startup's defense for downloading millions of pirated books to build a permanent digital library.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted partial summary judgment to Anthropic in the copyright lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. The court found that training large language models on copyrighted works was "exceedingly transformative" under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. Anthropic downloaded over seven million books from pirate sites, according to court documents. The startup also purchased millions of print books, destroyed the bindings, scanned every page, and stored them digitally.
Both sets of books were used to train various versions of Claude, which generates over $1 billion in annual revenue. While the judge approved using books for AI training purposes, he ruled that downloading pirated copies to create what Anthropic called a "central library of all the books in the world" was not protected fair use. The case will proceed to trial on damages related to the pirated library copies.
[1] https://aifray.com/claude-ai-maker-anthropic-bags-key-fair-use-win-for-ai-platforms-but-faces-trial-over-damages-for-millions-of-pirated-works/
U.S. District Judge William Alsup granted partial summary judgment to Anthropic in the copyright lawsuit filed by authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson. The court found that training large language models on copyrighted works was "exceedingly transformative" under Section 107 of the Copyright Act. Anthropic downloaded over seven million books from pirate sites, according to court documents. The startup also purchased millions of print books, destroyed the bindings, scanned every page, and stored them digitally.
Both sets of books were used to train various versions of Claude, which generates over $1 billion in annual revenue. While the judge approved using books for AI training purposes, he ruled that downloading pirated copies to create what Anthropic called a "central library of all the books in the world" was not protected fair use. The case will proceed to trial on damages related to the pirated library copies.
[1] https://aifray.com/claude-ai-maker-anthropic-bags-key-fair-use-win-for-ai-platforms-but-faces-trial-over-damages-for-millions-of-pirated-works/
Re: (Score:2)
by OrangeTide ( 124937 )
Basically we'll have to keep suing tech companies before the courts will recognize what is going on. And these companies are so loaded with cash that some of them are buying nuclear reactors to power their data centers. So imagine the kind of legal team that kind of money buys.
Scummy (Score:3)
by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *
"I need the content of your book for AI but I won't pay you $14 for a copy."
That's scummy.
Not the ones they bought and scanned.
The law is outdated = tough (Score:2)
by djp2204 ( 713741 )
The law is the law until it is changed. If you dont like the law then lobby to Congress to change it. Companies that break the law should be bankrupted via litigation. Innovation is not an excuse. We all know that wonâ(TM)t happen in the tiered justice system in the USA
Piracy leads innovation (Score:3)
Pretty much all of tech history is piracy groups "going legit" with negotiations and licences, or even being employed by the companies they pirated from. We just have to deal with the fact that data is inherently copyable and all drm gets cracked. It just so happens that instead of just grabbing a few mp3s over p2p we are copying the whole internet now. We seen all the sci-fi coming true and eventually we just to move to new economic realities.