There is big news in the Anthropic AI case. This is the case where, you will remember, in his initial ruling Judge Alsup said that AI’s use of copyright material was “transformative—spectacularly so.”
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Now he has made a decision that is far more potentially advantageous to the writing community. This comes in response to further claims by the three suing authors in relation to the use of pirated books, after that original ruling noted that downloading such books was not fair use.
The ruling—that the three authors can stand in for all copyright beneficiaries—essentially opens the way for a class action. This, as I intimated in an earlier column, means that a very large number of authors could benefit from any damages awards (the numbers I saw mentioned back then ran to several billions of dollars overall).
One Class, Two Libraries
It is not quite straightforward, however, so these are the key points to bear in mind.
- The judge has ruled that a single class will be considered. That class consists of those affected by Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror piracy.
- It does not, therefore, include those whose books were downloaded from other shadow libraries.
- Claimants can only be awarded damages in respect of one act of piracy (so if your book was downloaded from both shadow libraries, you would only get one payment if damages were awarded).
- Only “timely registered copyrights” will be considered. That is probably the most likely to rule out many indie authors whose work appears in a shadow library. As I read it, this means books would only be eligible to be considered if they had been registered with the Copyright Office. For many of us outside the US, that may mean watching from the sidelines.
Eligibility Depends on Registration
The key wording around the class, as laid down by the judge, is: “this class is limited to actual or beneficial owners of timely registered copyrights in ISBN/ASIN-bearing books downloaded by Anthropic from these two pirate libraries.”
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