The Deep View: Anthropic wins key U.S. ruling in authors’ copyright case. Quote: “Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,” Alsup said. But!

Posted on June 25, 2025 by michelleclarke2015
 Anthropic wins key U.S. ruling in authors’ copyright case
Source: Midjourney v7
A federal court just issued the first major decision on how copyright law applies to generative AI. The verdict gave Anthropic a partial victory, affirming that using books to train its Claude model qualifies as fair use. However, it also exposed the company to possible damages regarding how those books were obtained and stored.
What the court found: U.S. District Judge William Alsup ruled that Anthropic’s use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law, marking the first to address it in the context of generative AI.
The judge said Anthropic made “fair use” of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train Claude, describing the process as “quintessentially transformative.””Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s LLMs trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,” Alsup said. Alsup said that Anthropic’s copying and storing more than 7 million pirated books in a “central library” infringed copyrights and was not fair use.
The company will face trial in December, where damages could reach up to $150,000 per work if the infringement is ruled willful. That’s $1.05 trillion for those doing mental gymnastics on 7 million pirated books.
How Anthropic built its dataset: Authors alleged that Anthropic used pirated versions from datasets including Books3, Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror.
In January 2021, Anthropic cofounder Ben Mann “downloaded Books3, an online library of 196,640 books that he knew had been assembled from unauthorized copies,” Alsup found. Mann then downloaded “at least five million copies from LibGen and another two million from PiLiMi“, both known piracy sites.When Anthropic claimed the source was irrelevant to fair use, Alsup disagreed: “This order doubts that any accused infringer could ever meet its burden of explaining why downloading source copies from pirate sites that it could have purchased or otherwise accessed lawfully was itself reasonably necessary.”
Anthropic later bought books in bulk and scanned them, but “That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft,” Alsup said.
The broader impact: This ruling comes as 39 copyright lawsuits against AI companies pile up in federal courts. The New York Times case against OpenAI and Meta’s ongoing litigation suggests this ruling could have wide-reaching implications across the industry.
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About michelleclarke2015

Life event that changes all: Horse riding accident in Zimbabwe in 1993, a fractured skull et al including bipolar anxiety, chronic fatigue …. co-morbidities (Nietzche 'He who has the reason why can deal with any how' details my health history from 1993 to date). 17th 2017 August operation for breast cancer (no indications just an appointment came from BreastCheck through the Post). Trinity College Dublin Business Economics and Social Studies (but no degree) 1997-2003; UCD 1997/1998 night classes) essays, projects, writings. Trinity Horizon Programme 1997/98 (Centre for Women Studies Trinity College Dublin/St. Patrick's Foundation (Professor McKeon) EU Horizon funded: research study of 15 women (I was one of this group and it became the cornerstone of my journey to now 2017) over 9 mth period diagnosed with depression and their reintegration into society, with special emphasis on work, arts, further education; Notes from time at Trinity Horizon Project 1997/98; Articles written for Irishhealth.com 2003/2004; St Patricks Foundation monthly lecture notes for a specific period in time; Selection of Poetry including poems written by people I know; Quotations 1998-2017; other writings mainly with theme of social justice under the heading Citizen Journalism Ireland. Letters written to friends about life in Zimbabwe; Family history including Michael Comyn KC, my grandfather, my grandmother's family, the O'Donnellan ffrench Blake-Forsters; Moral wrong: An acrimonious divorce but the real injustice was the Catholic Church granting an annulment – you can read it and make your own judgment, I have mine. Topics I have written about include annual Brain Awareness week, Mashonaland Irish Associataion in Zimbabwe, Suicide (a life sentence to those left behind); Nostalgia: Tara Hill, Co. Meath.
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