Anthropic Settles Major AI Copyright Suit Brought by Authors (bloomberglaw.com)
(Tuesday August 26, 2025 @05:20PM (msmash)
from the setting-precedence dept.)
- Reference: 0178884502
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/26/1848219/anthropic-settles-major-ai-copyright-suit-brought-by-authors
- Source link: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action/anthropic-settles-major-ai-copyright-suit-brought-by-authors
Anthropic [1]reached a settlement with authors in a high-stakes copyright class action that threatened the AI company with potentially billions of dollars in damages. From a report:
> In a Tuesday filing in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, both sides asked the court to pause all proceedings while they finalize the deal. The parties signed a binding term sheet on Aug. 25 outlining the core terms of a proposed class settlement to resolve litigation brought by authors.
>
> "This historic settlement will benefit all class members," said the authors' counsel, Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey LLP. "We look forward to announcing details of the settlement in the coming weeks." The case is one of several copyright actions brought against AI developers in courts around the country. Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California had allowed the class action to proceed for authors whose books were [2]contained in two pirate databases Anthropic downloaded .
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action/anthropic-settles-major-ai-copyright-suit-brought-by-authors
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1548245/judge-allows-nationwide-class-action-against-anthropic-over-alleged-piracy-of-7-million-books-for-ai-training
> In a Tuesday filing in the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, both sides asked the court to pause all proceedings while they finalize the deal. The parties signed a binding term sheet on Aug. 25 outlining the core terms of a proposed class settlement to resolve litigation brought by authors.
>
> "This historic settlement will benefit all class members," said the authors' counsel, Justin Nelson of Susman Godfrey LLP. "We look forward to announcing details of the settlement in the coming weeks." The case is one of several copyright actions brought against AI developers in courts around the country. Judge William Alsup of the US District Court for the Northern District of California had allowed the class action to proceed for authors whose books were [2]contained in two pirate databases Anthropic downloaded .
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/class-action/anthropic-settles-major-ai-copyright-suit-brought-by-authors
[2] https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/07/17/1548245/judge-allows-nationwide-class-action-against-anthropic-over-alleged-piracy-of-7-million-books-for-ai-training
Meanwhile in the ToS (Score:2)
by DeplorableCodeMonkey ( 4828467 )
All of these companies tell you that you can't even use the output to train a competing model.
Re: (Score:3)
by allo ( 1728082 )
And no user cares about that.
It's all disclaimers. Your model went shit? We told you not to train on our output!
They also know that models can be jailbroken and abliterated. But as long as the model by default refuses to write smut, they can blame others when they make the model write smut nevertheless.
In the end, they don't want the people to point their fingers on them when something goes wrong.
Wrongdoing (Score:3)
I'm guessing that part of the settlement lets Anthropic off the hook without having to admit wrongdoing. So Anthropic won. It gets to keep the spoils of its crimes, while paying a mere tiny fraction of what it was on the hook for.
Re: (Score:2)
This outcome was predicted by myself and others right here on Slashdot. And probably everywhere else, too.
There is simply too much interest, and far too much money, behind AI for something as petty as laws or justice to stand in its way.
Remember ye well the golden rule: he who hath the gold, rules.
Re: Wrongdoing (Score:2)
Wasn't this the suit where the finding was anyway that the only copyright violation was pirating the books to be used for training from pirate sites, and that it would all have been fair use if they had actually legally obtained copies of the books? (I'm probably in minority about this, but this is also the way I argue it should beâ"as judge Alsup said, it's hard to think of a more transformative use than training LLMs, and there has never been a generic right to control or profit from every way your c