Piracy of otherwise available copies is inherently, irredeemably infringing
24 June 2025 (Understanding AI). US federal judge William Alsup in California, ruling in June 2025 on the authors' class-action copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, rejected the argument that pirating books for training was fair use.
The first copyright ruling on generative AI training is a win for AI labs
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Who else?
What it refers to: Anthropic's downloading of millions of pirated books from Books3, LibGen and the Pirate Library Mirror, which it argued was fair use for training Claude.
Other voices
- “This is a drop in the bucket for them, but that book was fundamental to making my career” Craig Cipolla,
- “The models learn, as we all do, from what has come before” OpenAI lawyers,
- “Copyright is not a shield from disruptive technology” Kevin Kelly,
- “More unsettled than I've ever been about whether training is fair use” James Grimmelmann,
- “Without books, there is no AI” Statement by Korean Publishers Association,










