Judge dismisses authors’ copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training; AP, June 25, 2025

MATT O’BRIEN AND BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP; Judge dismisses authors’ copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training

"Although Meta prevailed in its request to dismiss the case, it could turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. In his 40-page ruling, Chhabria repeatedly indicated reasons to believe that Meta and other AI companies have turned into serial copyright infringers as they train their technology on books and other works created by humans, and seemed to be inviting other authors to bring cases to his court presented in a manner that would allow them to proceed to trial.

The judge scoffed at arguments that requiring AI companies to adhere to decades-old copyright laws would slow down advances in a crucial technology at a pivotal time. “These products are expected to generate billions, even trillions of dollars for the companies that are developing them. If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders for it.”

Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors' copyright lawsuit; Reuters, June 24, 2025

 Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors' copyright lawsuit

 "A federal judge in San Francisco ruled late on Monday that Anthropic's use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law.

Siding with tech companies on a pivotal question for the AI industry, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthropic made "fair use" of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train its Claude large language model.

Alsup also said, however, that Anthropic's copying and storage of more than 7 million pirated books in a "central library" infringed the authors' copyrights and was not fair use. The judge has ordered a trial in December to determine how much Anthropic owes for the infringement."

The U.S. Copyright Office used to be fairly low-drama. Not anymore; NPR, June 6, 2025

 Andrew Limbong, NPR ; The U.S. Copyright Office used to be fairly low-drama. Not anymore

"The U.S. Copyright Office is normally a quiet place. It mostly exists to register materials for copyright and advise members of Congress on copyright issues. Experts and insiders used words like "stable" and "sleepy" to describe the agency. Not anymore...

Inside the AI report

That big bombshell report on generative AI and copyright can be summed up like this – in some instances, using copyrighted material to train AI models could count as fair use. In other cases, it wouldn't.

The conclusion of the report says this: "Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market."

"It's very even keeled," said Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, a group that represents artists and publishers pushing for stronger copyright laws.

Kupferschmid said the report avoids generalizations and takes arguments on a case-by-case basis.

"Perlmutter was beloved, no matter whether you agreed with her or not, because she did the hard work," Kupferschmid said. "She always was very thoughtful and considered all these different viewpoints."

It remains to be seen how the report will be used in the dozens of legal cases over copyright and AI usage."

Mike Kelley vs. Trump: The Photo That Could Spark a Presidential Copyright War; Fstoppers, June 1, 2025

 Patrick Hall, Fstoppers; Mike Kelley vs. Trump: The Photo That Could Spark a Presidential Copyright War

"Your Thoughts?

What do you think will happen to this case when it is filed? Obviously something like this will take years to make its way through the courts, and perhaps Trump will not even be president by the time it makes it to the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where it will most likely reside. Do you think Mike has a strong enough case for Willful Infringement under statutory infringement or because this is a meme that perhaps originated somewhere else on the internet, could it be viewed as unwilling? Do you think Trump would ever succeed at claiming his posts on Truth Social fall under official acts of a sitting president?"

Author sides with students in revolt over book passage used in AP exam; The Washington Post, May 24, 2025

 Kim Bellware, The Washington Post; Author sides with students in revolt over book passage used in AP exam

"Serpell, herself a longtime critic of standardized tests, said the College Board, the billion-dollar standardized-testing juggernaut that administers them, did not ask permission to use her work and distorted her writing.

“Stranger Faces,” a collection of essays on the pleasure people take in unusual faces in works of art, was geared toward professional scholars, not high school readers, Serpell said, and she insists that the complexity of her writing can only be understood in fuller context. The exam excerpt, she said, omitted critical writing that would have made her arguments and rhetorical effects clearer.

As Serpell deals with the fallout — which, in some cases, she said, included death threats — she is siding with the students, taking up their arguments with the College Board and touching off a heated online debate over academic ethics."

Judge Hints Anthropic’s AI Training on Books Is Fair Use; Bloomberg Law, May 22, 2025

 

Annelise Levy

, Bloomberg Law; Judge Hints Anthropic’s AI Training on Books Is Fair Use

"A California federal judge is leaning toward finding Anthropic PBC violated copyright law when it made initial copies of pirated books, but that its subsequent uses to train their generative AI models qualify as fair use.

“I’m inclined to say they did violate the Copyright Act but the subsequent uses were fair use,” Judge William Alsup said Thursday during a hearing in San Francisco. “That’s kind of the way I’m leaning right now,” he said, but concluded the 90-minute hearing by clarifying that his decision isn’t final. “Sometimes I say that and change my mind."...

The first judge to rule will provide a window into how federal courts interpret the fair use argument for training generative artificial intelligence models with copyrighted materials. A decision against Anthropic could disrupt the billion-dollar business model behind many AI companies, which rely on the belief that training with unlicensed copyrighted content doesn’t violate the law."

We're All Copyright Owners. Why You Need to Care About AI and Copyright; CNET, May 19, 2025

Katelyn Chedraoui , CNET; We're All Copyright Owners. Why You Need to Care About AI and Copyright

"Most of us don't think about copyright very often in our daily lives. But in the age of generative AI, it has quickly become one of the most important issues in the development and outputs of chatbots and image and video generators. It's something that affects all of us because we're all copyright owners and authors...

What does all of this mean for the future?

Copyright owners are in a bit of a holding pattern for now. But beyond the legal and ethical implications, copyright in the age of AI raises important questions about the value of creative work, the cost of innovation and the ways in which we need or ought to have government intervention and protections. 

There are two distinct ways to view the US's intellectual property laws, Mammen said. The first is that these laws were enacted to encourage and reward human flourishing. The other is more economically focused; the things that we're creating have value, and we want our economy to be able to recognize that value accordingly."

US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired; The Register, May 12, 2025

 Simon Sherwood, The Register; US Copyright Office found AI companies sometimes breach copyright. Next day its boss was fired

"The head of the US Copyright Office has reportedly been fired, the day after agency concluded that builders of AI models use of copyrighted material went beyond existing doctrines of fair use.

The office’s opinion on fair use came in a draft of the third part of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The first part considered digital replicas and the second tackled whether it is possible to copyright the output of generative AI.

The office published the draft [PDF] of Part 3, which addresses the use of copyrighted works in the development of generative AI systems, on May 9th.

The draft notes that generative AI systems “draw on massive troves of data, including copyrighted works” and asks: “Do any of the acts involved require the copyright owners’ consent or compensation?”"

Trump fires Copyright Office director after report raises questions about AI training; TechCrunch, May 11, 2025

 Anthony Ha , TechCrunch; Trump fires Copyright Office director after report raises questions about AI training

"As for how this ties into Musk (a Trump ally) and AI, Morelle linked to a pre-publication version of a U.S. Copyright Office report released this week that focuses on copyright and artificial intelligence. (In fact, it’s actually part three of a longer report.)

In it, the Copyright Office says that while it’s “not possible to prejudge” the outcome of individual cases, there are limitations on how much AI companies can count on “fair use” as a defense when they train their models on copyrighted content. For example, the report says research and analysis would probably be allowed.

“But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries,” it continues.

The Copyright Office goes on to suggest that government intervention “would be premature at this time,” but it expresses hope that “licensing markets” where AI companies pay copyright holders for access to their content “should continue to develop,” adding that “alternative approaches such as extended collective licensing should be considered to address any market failure.”

AI companies including OpenAI currently face a number of lawsuits accusing them of copyright infringement, and OpenAI has also called for the U.S. government to codify a copyright strategy that gives AI companies leeway through fair use.

Musk, meanwhile, is both a co-founder of OpenAI and of a competing startup, xAI (which is merging with the former Twitter). He recently expressed support for Square founder Jack Dorsey’s call to “delete all IP law.”"

Meta lawsuit poses first big test of AI copyright battle; Financial Times, May 1, 2025

 Cristina Criddle and Hannah Murphy, Financial Times; Meta lawsuit poses first big test of AI copyright battle

 "The case, which has been brought by about a dozen authors including Ta-Nehisi Coates and Richard Kadrey, is centred on the $1.4tn social media giant’s use of LibGen, a so-called shadow library of millions of books, academic articles and comics, to train its Llama AI models. The ruling will have wide-reaching implications in the fierce copyright battle between artists and AI groups and is one of several lawsuits around the world that allege technology groups are using content without permission."

Meta Faces Copyright Reckoning in Authors’ Generative AI Case; Bloomberg Law, April 30, 2025

Isaiah Poritz, Annelise Levy, Bloomberg Law; Meta Faces Copyright Reckoning in Authors’ Generative AI Case

"The way courts will view the fair use argument for training generative artificial intelligence models with copyrighted materials will be tested Thursday in a San Francisco courtroom, when the first of dozens of such lawsuits reaches summary judgment.

Meta Platforms Inc. and a group of authors including comedian Sarah Silverman will square off before Judge Vince Chhabria, who will decide whether Meta’s use of pirated books to train its AI model Llama qualifies as fair use, or if the issue should be left to a jury."

Creators Are Losing the AI Copyright Battle. We Have to Keep Fighting (Guest Column); The Hollywood Reporter, April 16, 2025

 Ed Newton-Rex ; Creators Are Losing the AI Copyright Battle. We Have to Keep Fighting (Guest Column)

"The struggle between AI companies and creatives around “training data” — or what you and I would refer to as people’s life’s work — may be the defining struggle of this generation for the media industries. AI companies want to exploit creators’ work without paying them, using it to train AI models that compete with those creators; creators and rights holders are doing everything they can to stop them."

The real argument artists should be making against AI; Vox, April 16, 2025

Sigal Samuel, Vox; The real argument artists should be making against AI

[Paywall to access]

Why Musk and Dorsey want to ‘delete all IP law’; The Washington Post, April 15, 2025

 

Analysis by Gerrit De Vynck

 and 

Will Oremus

with research by 

Andrea Jiménez

 , The Washington Post; Why Musk and Dorsey want to ‘delete all IP law’

"Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and CEO of Square, posted a cryptic and drastic demand on Elon Musk’s X over the weekend: “delete all IP law.” The post drew a quick reply from Mr. X himself: “I agree.”

Musk’s laconic response amplified Dorsey’s post to his 220 million followers and sparked a debate that drew in a cast of characters including Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, tech lawyer and former vice presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan, novelist Walter Kirn, evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller and the technologist and early Twitter developer Evan Henshaw-Plath, a.k.a. Rabble, among others...

Serious policy idea or not, the concord between Dorsey and Musk highlights how the debate over AI and copyright law is coming to a head in Silicon Valley.

How it’s resolved will have major ramifications for the tech companies, creative people and their livelihoods and the overall AI race."

Law professors side with authors battling Meta in AI copyright case; TechCrunch, April 11, 2025

 Kyle Wiggers , TechCrunch; Law professors side with authors battling Meta in AI copyright case

"A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on e-books without permission.

The brief, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, calls Meta’s fair use defense “a breathtaking request for greater legal privileges than courts have ever granted human authors.”"

EFF Urges Third Circuit to Join the Legal Chorus: No One Owns the Law; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), March 31, 2025

  CORYNNE MCSHERRY, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); EFF Urges Third Circuit to Join the Legal Chorus: No One Owns the Law

"This case concerns UpCodes, a company that has created a database of building codes—like the National Electrical Code—that includes codes incorporated by reference into law. ASTM, a private organization that coordinated the development of some of those codes, insists that it retains copyright in them even after they have been adopted into law, and therefore has the right to control how the public accesses and shares them. Fortunately, neither the Constitution nor the Copyright Act support that theory. Faced with similar claims, some courts, including the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, have held that the codes lose copyright protection when they are incorporated into law. Others, like the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case EFF defended on behalf of Public.Resource.Org, have held that, whether or not the legal status of the standards changes once they are incorporated into law, making them fully accessible and usable online is a lawful fair use. A federal court in Pennsylvania followed the latter path in this case, finding that UpCodes’ database was a protected fair use."

Judge allows 'New York Times' copyright case against OpenAI to go forward; NPR, March 27, 2025

 Bobby Allyn, NPR ; Judge allows 'New York Times' copyright case against OpenAI to go forward

"A federal judge on Wednesday rejected OpenAI's request to toss out a copyright lawsuit from The New York Times that alleges that the tech company exploited the newspaper's content without permission or payment.

In an order allowing the lawsuit to go forward, Judge Sidney Stein, of the Southern District of New York, narrowed the scope of the lawsuit but allowed the case's main copyright infringement claims to go forward.

Stein did not immediately release an opinion but promised one would come "expeditiously."

The decision is a victory for the newspaper, which has joined forces with other publishers, including The New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting, to challenge the way that OpenAI collected vast amounts of data from the web to train its popular artificial intelligence service, ChatGPT."

Should AI be treated the same way as people are when it comes to copyright law? ; The Hill, March 24, 2025

  NICHOLAS CREEL, The Hill ; Should AI be treated the same way as people are when it comes to copyright law? 

"The New York Times’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft highlights an uncomfortable contradiction in how we view creativity and learning. While the Times accuses these companies of copyright infringement for training AI on their content, this ignores a fundamental truth: AI systems learn exactly as humans do, by absorbing, synthesizing and transforming existing knowledge into something new."

The AI Copyright Battle: Why OpenAI And Google Are Pushing For Fair Use; Forbes, March 15, 2025

 Virginie Berger , Forbes; The AI Copyright Battle: Why OpenAI And Google Are Pushing For Fair Use

"Furthermore, the ongoing lawsuits against AI firms could serve as a necessary correction to push the industry toward genuinely intelligent machine learning models instead of data-compression-based generators masquerading as intelligence. If legal challenges force AI firms to rethink their reliance on copyrighted content, it could spur innovation toward creating more advanced, ethically sourced AI systems...

Recommendations: Finding a Sustainable Balance

A sustainable solution must reconcile technological innovation with creators' economic interests. Policymakers should develop clear federal standards specifying fair use parameters for AI training, considering solutions such as:

• Licensing and Royalties: Transparent licensing arrangements compensating creators whose work is integral to AI datasets.
• Curated Datasets: Government or industry-managed datasets explicitly approved for AI training, ensuring fair compensation.
• Regulated Exceptions: Clear legal definitions distinguishing transformative use in AI training contexts.

These nuanced policies could encourage innovation without sacrificing creators’ rights.

The lobbying by OpenAI and Google reveals broader tensions between rapid technological growth and ethical accountability. While national security concerns warrant careful consideration, they must not justify irresponsible regulation or ethical compromises. A balanced approach, preserving innovation, protecting creators’ rights, and ensuring sustainable and ethical AI development, is critical for future global competitiveness and societal fairness."

OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use; Ars Technica, March 13, 2025

 ASHLEY BELANGER  , Ars Technica; OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use

"OpenAI is hoping that Donald Trump's AI Action Plan, due out this July, will settle copyright debates by declaring AI training fair use—paving the way for AI companies' unfettered access to training data that OpenAI claims is critical to defeat China in the AI race.

Currently, courts are mulling whether AI training is fair use, as rights holders say that AI models trained on creative works threaten to replace them in markets and water down humanity's creative output overall.

OpenAI is just one AI company fighting with rights holders in several dozen lawsuits, arguing that AI transforms copyrighted works it trains on and alleging that AI outputs aren't substitutes for original works.

So far, one landmark ruling favored rights holders, with a judge declaring AI training is not fair use, as AI outputs clearly threatened to replace Thomson-Reuters' legal research firm Westlaw in the market, Wired reported. But OpenAI now appears to be looking to Trump to avoid a similar outcome in its lawsuits, including a major suit brought by The New York Times."