A judge making on a ruling based on his opinion of how transformative a technology will be doesn't inspire confidence. There's an equivocation on the word "transformative" here -- not just transformative in the fair use sense, but transformative as in world-changing, impactful, revolutionary. The latter shouldn't matter in a case like this.
> Companies and individuals who willfully infringe on copyright can face significantly higher damages — up to $150,000 per work
Settling for 2% is a steal.
> In June, the District Court issued a landmark ruling on A.I. development and copyright law, finding that Anthropic’s approach to training A.I. models constitutes fair use,” Aparna Sridhar, Anthropic’s deputy general counsel, said in a statement.
This is the highest-order bit, not the $1.5B in settlement. Anthropic's guilty of pirating.