Anthropic cut up millions of used books, and downloaded 7M pirated ones – judge

Here is how individuals are treated for massive copyright infringement:

https://investors.autodesk.com/news-releases/news-release-de...

Peterson was copying and selling pirated software.

Come up with a better comparison.

Anthropic is selling a service that incorporates these pirated works.

That a service incorporating the authors' works exists is not at issue. The plaintiffs' claims are, as summarized by Alsup:

  First, Authors argue that using works to train Claude’s underlying LLMs 
  was like using works to train any person to read and write, so Authors 
  should be able to exclude Anthropic from this use (Opp. 16). 

  Second, to that last point, Authors further argue that the training was 
  intended to memorize their works’ creative elements — not just their 
  works’ non-protectable ones (Opp. 17).

  Third, Authors next argue that computers nonetheless should not be 
  allowed to do what people do. 

https://media.npr.org/assets/artslife/arts/2025/order.pdf

The first paragraph sounds absurd, so I looked into the PDF, and here's the full version I found:

> First, Authors argue that using works to train Claude’s underlying LLMs was like using works to train any person to read and write, so Authors should be able to exclude Anthropic from this use (Opp. 16). But Authors cannot rightly exclude anyone from using their works for training or learning as such. Everyone reads texts, too, then writes new texts. They may need to pay for getting their hands on a text in the first instance. But to 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. For centuries, we have read and re-read books. We have admired, memorized, and internalized their sweeping themes, their substantive points, and their stylistic solutions to recurring writing problems.

Couldn't have put it better myself (though $deity knows I tried many times on HN). Glad to see Judge Alsup continues to be the voice of common sense in legal matters around technology.