"[T]he test requires that we contemplate the likely result were the
conduct to be condoned as a fair use — namely to steal a work you could otherwise buy (a book, millions of books) so long as you at least loosely intend to make further copies for a purportedly transformative use (writing a book review with excerpts, training LLMs, etc.), without any accountability."
See also p. 31:
"The downloaded pirated copies used to build a central library were not justified by a fair use. Every factor points against fair use. Anthropic employees said copies of works (pirated ones, too) would be retained 'forever' for 'general purpose' even after Anthropic determined they would never be used for training LLMs. A separate justification was required for each use. None is even offered here except for Anthropic’s pocketbook and convenience."
Despite this consideration, the court still found for Anthropic on the question of fair use.
I don't read how that opposes what I said, that's part of the "training on pirated data is not fair use." That said, I am not a lawyer. From those pages:
> The copies used to train specific LLMs were justified as a fair use.
This is (in my understanding) because those were not the pirated copies.
> The copies used to convert purchased print library copies into digital library copies were justified, too, though for a different fair use.
Buying a book and then digitizing it for purposes of training is fair use.
> The downloaded pirated copies used to build a central library were not justified by a fair use.
Piracy is not fair use, you quoted this part as well.
In the conclusions section a the end of 31:
> This order grants summary judgment for Anthropic that the training use was a fair use. And, it grants that the print-to-digital format change was a fair use for a different reason. But it denies summary judgment for Anthropic that the pirated library copies must be treated as training copies.
Training is fair use. Pirating is not fair use, and therefore, you can't train on that either.
I think that's a reasonable way to interpret the court's order, but unfortunately the judge didn't really articulate the consequences of training on pirated copies "not fair use" as clearly as I would have liked. Does that mean they're simply liable for infringement of those works, or does it mean that they'd be enjoined from using them altogether to train the model? The genie was out of the bottle; how could it be put back in?
Anthropic settled the case with the publishers just a few months later, leaving the question mostly unsettled still.
"[T]he test requires that we contemplate the likely result were the conduct to be condoned as a fair use — namely to steal a work you could otherwise buy (a book, millions of books) so long as you at least loosely intend to make further copies for a purportedly transformative use (writing a book review with excerpts, training LLMs, etc.), without any accountability."
See also p. 31:
"The downloaded pirated copies used to build a central library were not justified by a fair use. Every factor points against fair use. Anthropic employees said copies of works (pirated ones, too) would be retained 'forever' for 'general purpose' even after Anthropic determined they would never be used for training LLMs. A separate justification was required for each use. None is even offered here except for Anthropic’s pocketbook and convenience."
Despite this consideration, the court still found for Anthropic on the question of fair use.