Many of the copyright lawsuits filed against AI companies in the US hinge on the question of whether or not using copyrighted material without permission to train AI should be given a \u201cfair use\u201d exemption.<\/p>\n
AI companies say yes, copyright owners say no.<\/p>\n
Now, in what appears to be a first in the US legal system, a federal judge in California has ruled on the issue \u2013 and his decision represents a mixed bag for both rightsholders and AI companies.<\/p>\n
In a case brought by book authors against Anthropic<\/strong> (which is also being sued by music publishers<\/a>), Judge William Alsup<\/strong> of the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Anthropic\u2019s use of copyrighted books to train AI, without explicit permission to do so, does indeed count as \u201cfair use.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the bad<\/em> news for rightsholders.<\/p>\n The less <\/em>bad news?<\/p>\n The judge\u2019s rationale for why Anthropic\u2019s use of books counts as fair use might not carry much weight in the cases brought against music publishers against AI companies.<\/p>\n Part of the test that US courts apply when determining \u201cfair use\u201d involves whether or not the use of the works is \u201ctransformative\u201d \u2013 that is, whether the output is significantly different from the copyrighted material that was used.<\/p>\n Judge Alsup called Anthropic\u2019s use of the books in this case \u201cspectacularly\u201d transformative – i.e. the resultant media created by\/on Anthropic’s chatbot, Claude, wasn’t particularly reminiscent of the copyrighted source material.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not the case with the allegations made against Anthropic by music publishers Universal Music Group<\/strong>, Concord<\/strong>, and ABKCO<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In their<\/em> lawsuit<\/a>, these music companies focus on so-called ‘outputs’<\/strong> of Claude. They state that Anthropic\u2019s chatbot is able to \u201cgenerate identical or nearly identical copies of [our] lyrics, in clear violation of publishers\u2019 copyrights.\u201d<\/p>\n Given the right prompt, argue the music publishers, Claude can also produce \u201coriginal\u201d song lyrics that clearly rip off existing copyrighted songs.<\/p>\n It’s a similar case with the closely-watched lawsuits<\/a> against AI music-making platforms Suno<\/strong> and Udio.<\/strong><\/p>\n There, record labels owned by the three majors \u2013 Universal Music Group<\/strong>, Sony Music Entertainment<\/strong>, and Warner Music Group<\/strong> \u2013 allege that the platforms\u2019 AI engines generate songs (i.e. ‘outputs’) that are \u201csoundalikes\u201d to existing copyrighted recordings.<\/p>\n It’s also worth pointing out that Anthropic<\/strong> might not walk away completely<\/em> unscathed from its legal battle against the book authors.<\/p>\n Judge Alsup<\/strong> ruled that Anthropic\u2019s practice of copying and storing books from\u00a0pirate online libraries<\/strong>\u00a0is\u00a0not<\/em> fair use, and the AI company will have to stand trial over that matter in December.<\/p>\n It faces damages of up to $150,000<\/strong> per infringement.<\/p>\n \u201cAnthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library. Creating a permanent, general-purpose library was not itself a fair use excusing Anthropic\u2019s piracy.”<\/p>\n Judge William Alsup<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anthropic<\/strong> spent millions of dollars buying hard copies of books, many of them in used condition, to train its AI. It then digitized those books and then had the hard copies torn up.<\/p>\n That practice was fair game, the judge concluded, because it didn\u2019t create any new copies of the purchased books.<\/p>\n However, Anthropic<\/strong> also downloaded books from online libraries known to provide access to pirated copies of books \u2013 some 7 million<\/strong> of them.<\/p>\n \u201cAnthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library. Creating a permanent, general-purpose library was not itself a fair use excusing Anthropic\u2019s piracy,\u201d the judge wrote in the ruling, which can be read in full here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Notably, the book authors who sued Anthropic \u2013 Andrea Bartz<\/strong>, Charles Graeber<\/strong>, and Kirk Wallace Johnson<\/strong> \u2013 never alleged that Claude ripped off their books \u2013 just that Anthropic used their books to train Claude, without their explicit permission.<\/p>\n \u201cAuthors do not allege that any infringing copy of their works was or would ever be provided to users by the Claude service,\u201d Judge Alsup noted.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, Claude could help less capable writers create works as well-written as authors\u2019 and competing in the same categories. But Claude created no exact copy, nor any substantial knock-off. Nothing traceable to authors\u2019 works.\u201d<\/p>\n The judge rejected some key arguments that music rightsholders have made in arguing that AI companies need to license the material they use \u2013 for example, the argument that it\u2019s fundamentally unfair for tech companies to use copyrighted works so that they can create AI tools that compete with human creators.<\/p>\n \u201cAuthors\u2019 complaint is no different than it would be if they complained that training schoolchildren to write well would result in an explosion of competing works.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge William Alsup<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n \u201cAuthors cannot rightly exclude anyone from using their works for training or learning as such. Everyone reads texts, too, then writes new texts,\u2019 Judge Alsup wrote.<\/p>\n \u201cTo make anyone pay specifically for the use of a book each time they read it, each time they recall it from memory, each time they later draw upon it when writing new things in new ways would be unthinkable.\u201d<\/p>\n The judge added: \u201cAuthors\u2019 complaint is no different than it would be if they complained that training schoolchildren to write well would result in an explosion of competing works.\u201d<\/p>\n The Copyright Act, he noted, \u201cseeks to advance original works of authorship, not to protect authors against competition.\u201d<\/p>\n So what can we expect the impact to be from this ruling?<\/p>\n