4 ms·

> At least not as far as the courts are concerned. Alsup ruled [0] that feeding a book into an LLM is transformative and counts as fair use. Especially when the

> At least not as far as the courts are concerned. Alsup ruled [0] that feeding a book into an LLM is transformative and counts as fair use. Especially when they purchased a physical copy of the book, scanned it, and destroyed the original. > But if I'm reading the ruling correctly, Anthropic might have been fine even with feeding pirated books into their LLM (as long as they eventually deleted them afterwards) The way I understood it, was that essentially the entire case rested on if Anthropics use was "transformative" or not. And since they literally destroyed the books (not just delete files, which would be copied), that made it transformative. Regardless if they deleted files or not, if nothing existing was transformed, it would have been illegal. But because of the destruction of k̶n̶o̶w̶l̶e̶d̶g̶e̶ physical property, this ended up being legal.

phire 3mo ago
> And since they literally destroyed the books (not just delete files, which would be copied), that made it transformative. You have to be careful, just because the judge points a factor out as notable, doesn't mean that factor was required. The destruction of source books makes Anthropic's fair use argument [2] especially air tight, but it would be a mistake to assume that act was required, or is what made it transformative. In the previous google books case [1] (which this case cites), google borrowed books from libraries, scanned them, then returned them. They were not destroyed, google didn't even keep the physical copy. Yet Google Books was ruled fair use, because it was transformative. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,.... [2] Note... This part of the ruling is still not about LLMs. This was about Anthropic's right to scan books and then keep a digital library of them.
- embedding-shape 3mo ago
  My understanding comes from here, seems pretty clear to me but won't claim to be a lawyer of course: > Ultimately, Judge William Alsup ruled that this destructive scanning operation qualified as fair use—but only because Anthropic had legally purchased the books first, destroyed each print copy after scanning, and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them. The judge compared the process to “conserv[ing] space” through format conversion and found it transformative. Had Anthropic stuck to this approach from the beginning, it might have achieved the first legally sanctioned case of AI fair use. Instead, the company’s earlier piracy undermined its position. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli... Based on that I get the impression it's quite literally the destruction part that makes it transformative, without it, it wouldn't have been tranformative at all.
  - phire 3mo ago
    I've read through the order again. I can't find anywhere where Alsup says the destruction was required. He cites three cases where a conversion from one format to another (without destruction of the previous version) was ruled to be fair use. Including scanning books with the google books case. (And referenced the Napster case, where a similar argument was rejected) Then made the following comparison. "Here, every purchased print copy was copied in order to save storage space and to enable searchability as a digital copy. The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other. And, there is no evidence that the new, digital copy was shown, shared, or sold outside the company. This use was even more clearly transformative than those in Texaco, Google, and Sony Betamax (where the number of copies went up by at least one), and, of course, more transformative than those uses rejected in Napster (where the number went up by “millions” of copies shared for free with others)." So it wasn't transformative because of the destruction. The destruction only made it "even more clearly transformative" than those other cases. Like, how can destruction be required if there were previous cases where it wasn't? The key legal point is not that Anthropic destroyed the books, but the key fact was that Anthropic didn't distribute the scanned copies. Alsup keeps returning to this point: "But what matters most is whether the format change exploits anything the Copyright Act reserves to the copyright owner. Anthropic already had purchased permanent library copies (print ones). It did not create new copies to share or sell outside" "But again, the replacement copy here was kept in the central library, not distributed" The conclusion of that section doesn't even mention the destruction at all. arstechnica isn't exactly wrong, the quote also mentioned "and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them". It just put way too much emphasis on the destruction, and not enough on the lack of distribution. The other thing that arstechnica are missing: Antropic didn't destroy the books because they thought it would strengthen their legal argument. They destroyed the because it's a lot cheaper and faster to scan books by ripping off their bindings and feeding the stacks of loose pages into a document scanner.
    - embedding-shape 3mo ago
      > So it wasn't transformative because of the destruction I mean, the parts of "in order to save storage space" and "The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other." again makes it clear (to me at least) that the destruction is pretty much what sticks out here that makes it "more transformative" (whatever that means) than the previous cited cases. But yeah, agree that also "didn't distribute the scanned copies" seems to have mattered a great deal, as well as the destruction part.
- dd8601fn 3mo ago
  What does that mean to be "transformative", as a defense? I thought that was explicitly disallowed use... like turning someone else's book into an audiobook and selling streaming access to it. Or writing a film adaptation and selling the film. Clearly I was thinking about it all wrong. Those wouldn't be allowed, even if you legally aquire the book from a store or library.
  - phire 3mo ago
    Transformative alone isn't enough for a fair use defence. Nor is it required. It's simply one of the many factors a judge will take into account. But it was an important factor in the google books case. One of the other key factors is how it impacts potential sales of the original work. Turning it into an audiobook might be transformative, but when you sell access to it people will buy your audiobook instead of the original book. So it's almost certainly not fair use. In the google books case, google scanned the books but didn't distribute the content of the books to the user. They only distributed the transformed ability to search books to users. The sales of the books weren't impacted negatively, because the user still had to acquire a copy of the book from somewhere else if they wanted to read the whole work. In fact, google books arguable increases sales of the original work in some circumstances.
rpdillon 3mo ago
You're mistaken. The transformativeness of the use is independent of the destruction of the books. The destruction of the books allowed them to argue that they had not duplicated them, and was instrumental in the argument supporting the legality of scanning them. But that's entirely upstream of the way the data was leveraged, which is what is critical in the argument about the use being transformative.

phire 3mo ago

> And since they literally destroyed the books (not just delete files, which would be copied), that made it transformative. You have to be careful, just because the judge points a factor out as notable, doesn't mean that factor was required. The destruction of source books makes Anthropic's fair use argument [2] especially air tight, but it would be a mistake to assume that act was required, or is what made it transformative. In the previous google books case [1] (which this case cites), google borrowed books from libraries, scanned them, then returned them. They were not destroyed, google didn't even keep the physical copy. Yet Google Books was ruled fair use, because it was transformative. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,.... [2] Note... This part of the ruling is still not about LLMs. This was about Anthropic's right to scan books and then keep a digital library of them.

embedding-shape 3mo ago
My understanding comes from here, seems pretty clear to me but won't claim to be a lawyer of course: > Ultimately, Judge William Alsup ruled that this destructive scanning operation qualified as fair use—but only because Anthropic had legally purchased the books first, destroyed each print copy after scanning, and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them. The judge compared the process to “conserv[ing] space” through format conversion and found it transformative. Had Anthropic stuck to this approach from the beginning, it might have achieved the first legally sanctioned case of AI fair use. Instead, the company’s earlier piracy undermined its position. https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-millions-of-print-books-to-build-its-ai-models/ https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/06/anthropic-destroyed-milli... Based on that I get the impression it's quite literally the destruction part that makes it transformative, without it, it wouldn't have been tranformative at all.
- phire 3mo ago
  I've read through the order again. I can't find anywhere where Alsup says the destruction was required. He cites three cases where a conversion from one format to another (without destruction of the previous version) was ruled to be fair use. Including scanning books with the google books case. (And referenced the Napster case, where a similar argument was rejected) Then made the following comparison. "Here, every purchased print copy was copied in order to save storage space and to enable searchability as a digital copy. The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other. And, there is no evidence that the new, digital copy was shown, shared, or sold outside the company. This use was even more clearly transformative than those in Texaco, Google, and Sony Betamax (where the number of copies went up by at least one), and, of course, more transformative than those uses rejected in Napster (where the number went up by “millions” of copies shared for free with others)." So it wasn't transformative because of the destruction. The destruction only made it "even more clearly transformative" than those other cases. Like, how can destruction be required if there were previous cases where it wasn't? The key legal point is not that Anthropic destroyed the books, but the key fact was that Anthropic didn't distribute the scanned copies. Alsup keeps returning to this point: "But what matters most is whether the format change exploits anything the Copyright Act reserves to the copyright owner. Anthropic already had purchased permanent library copies (print ones). It did not create new copies to share or sell outside" "But again, the replacement copy here was kept in the central library, not distributed" The conclusion of that section doesn't even mention the destruction at all. arstechnica isn't exactly wrong, the quote also mentioned "and kept the digital files internally rather than distributing them". It just put way too much emphasis on the destruction, and not enough on the lack of distribution. The other thing that arstechnica are missing: Antropic didn't destroy the books because they thought it would strengthen their legal argument. They destroyed the because it's a lot cheaper and faster to scan books by ripping off their bindings and feeding the stacks of loose pages into a document scanner.
  - embedding-shape 3mo ago
    > So it wasn't transformative because of the destruction I mean, the parts of "in order to save storage space" and "The print original was destroyed. One replaced the other." again makes it clear (to me at least) that the destruction is pretty much what sticks out here that makes it "more transformative" (whatever that means) than the previous cited cases. But yeah, agree that also "didn't distribute the scanned copies" seems to have mattered a great deal, as well as the destruction part.
dd8601fn 3mo ago
What does that mean to be "transformative", as a defense? I thought that was explicitly disallowed use... like turning someone else's book into an audiobook and selling streaming access to it. Or writing a film adaptation and selling the film. Clearly I was thinking about it all wrong. Those wouldn't be allowed, even if you legally aquire the book from a store or library.
- phire 3mo ago
  Transformative alone isn't enough for a fair use defence. Nor is it required. It's simply one of the many factors a judge will take into account. But it was an important factor in the google books case. One of the other key factors is how it impacts potential sales of the original work. Turning it into an audiobook might be transformative, but when you sell access to it people will buy your audiobook instead of the original book. So it's almost certainly not fair use. In the google books case, google scanned the books but didn't distribute the content of the books to the user. They only distributed the transformed ability to search books to users. The sales of the books weren't impacted negatively, because the user still had to acquire a copy of the book from somewhere else if they wanted to read the whole work. In fact, google books arguable increases sales of the original work in some circumstances.

rpdillon 3mo ago

You're mistaken. The transformativeness of the use is independent of the destruction of the books. The destruction of the books allowed them to argue that they had not duplicated them, and was instrumental in the argument supporting the legality of scanning them. But that's entirely upstream of the way the data was leveraged, which is what is critical in the argument about the use being transformative.