4 ms·

> 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 becau

by 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.
    - phire 3mo ago
      You have a point... Alsop is saying that the destruction somehow made it "more clearly transformative" (which is not quite the same thing as "more transformative"), so it is something that could potentially impact the outcome. I think what he is saving you can't argue the point of the scanning was to save space if you didn't destroy the original. And he concluded that "the mere conversion of a print book to a digital file to save space and enable searchability was transformative for that reason alone" But my point is that you can't assume Anthropic would have lost if they didn't destroy the books. Alsop didn't rule on that, simply because he didn't need to. Judges hate ruling on things they don't need to. In an alternative history where Antropic put the physical books in a warehouse after scanning, they could have argued the transformation about "minimising storage costs while increasing the easy of access" and IMO they probably would have won with that too.
      - embedding-shape 3mo ago
        > But my point is that you can't assume Anthropic would have lost if they didn't destroy the books. Alsop didn't rule on that, simply because he didn't need to. Judges hate ruling on things they don't need to. Yeah, I agree with you on this :) It's all guesses essentially, and we cannot know what would have happened in slightly different circumstances, as everyone involved here is human and famously unpredictable :)
- economistbob 3mo ago
  Yet countless families, including old folks were ruined during untold numbers of RIAA suits because "converting to save space" is not a permissable use. They used to go around destroying lives by the thousands after Napster was creating because of the invalidity of that argument. It is a crime to make a CD of your MP3s and vice versa, and you cannot convert your VHS to DVD. A billionaire does it at scale, well then saving space via format conversion is a grand, while the peons still can see their lives destroyed but with it hidden via the CCB secret panel. Two tier American Justice on full display. Bankrupty and seizure or worse for thee and billions for he. Format conversion legalized only for oligarchs, and of course, no appeal so it will only be a binding precedent on that one rich guy and nobody else. Tribe on both sides, keeping special rights for themselves that are illegal for everybody else.
  - phire 3mo ago
    I'm not aware of any cases where the RIAA sued people who ripped their own CD/DVDs/VHS for personal use. Their MO was suing owners of internet connections which were seen sharing content on file sharing networks.
    - themaninthedark 3mo ago
      Why is scanning a book transformative(a la Google) but reading data off a CD and putting into a digital format not? How is streaming bits of the music from your computer not transformative?
      - phire 3mo ago
        The RIAA (and the wider copyright industry) were careful to never bring a case that might rule on the issue of "ripping data from CDs and converting to digital". What they did was bring a case against Naspter, which ruled that ripping data off CDs AND THEN sharing it to millions of people over the internet was infringement. Not because of the ripping, but because of the sharing. The RIAA then somehow managed to twist public discourse to interpet the ruling as "ripping CDs is illegal". They were careful, because the Sony Betamax case had already ruled that recording TV of the airwaves was legal, which is already a weaker case than ripping CDs you own. They knew such a case would likely rule against them, and they found the ambiguity to be much more useful. And later cases like the google books case, and this Anthropic one provide even more evidence that the courts would likely rule that ripping CDs was legal if such a case was ever bought. (Though, it really depends on what you do with the digital copy)
- rpdillon 3mo ago
  Nope, that's a little bit of sloppy writing on the part of Ars. I am not a lawyer, but I'll be happy to discuss the technicalities with anybody here. I'm fairly passionate about the technicalities of copyright.
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.

by phire 3mo ago

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.
  - phire 3mo ago
    You have a point... Alsop is saying that the destruction somehow made it "more clearly transformative" (which is not quite the same thing as "more transformative"), so it is something that could potentially impact the outcome. I think what he is saving you can't argue the point of the scanning was to save space if you didn't destroy the original. And he concluded that "the mere conversion of a print book to a digital file to save space and enable searchability was transformative for that reason alone" But my point is that you can't assume Anthropic would have lost if they didn't destroy the books. Alsop didn't rule on that, simply because he didn't need to. Judges hate ruling on things they don't need to. In an alternative history where Antropic put the physical books in a warehouse after scanning, they could have argued the transformation about "minimising storage costs while increasing the easy of access" and IMO they probably would have won with that too.
    - embedding-shape 3mo ago
      > But my point is that you can't assume Anthropic would have lost if they didn't destroy the books. Alsop didn't rule on that, simply because he didn't need to. Judges hate ruling on things they don't need to. Yeah, I agree with you on this :) It's all guesses essentially, and we cannot know what would have happened in slightly different circumstances, as everyone involved here is human and famously unpredictable :)
economistbob 3mo ago
Yet countless families, including old folks were ruined during untold numbers of RIAA suits because "converting to save space" is not a permissable use. They used to go around destroying lives by the thousands after Napster was creating because of the invalidity of that argument. It is a crime to make a CD of your MP3s and vice versa, and you cannot convert your VHS to DVD. A billionaire does it at scale, well then saving space via format conversion is a grand, while the peons still can see their lives destroyed but with it hidden via the CCB secret panel. Two tier American Justice on full display. Bankrupty and seizure or worse for thee and billions for he. Format conversion legalized only for oligarchs, and of course, no appeal so it will only be a binding precedent on that one rich guy and nobody else. Tribe on both sides, keeping special rights for themselves that are illegal for everybody else.
- phire 3mo ago
  I'm not aware of any cases where the RIAA sued people who ripped their own CD/DVDs/VHS for personal use. Their MO was suing owners of internet connections which were seen sharing content on file sharing networks.
  - themaninthedark 3mo ago
    Why is scanning a book transformative(a la Google) but reading data off a CD and putting into a digital format not? How is streaming bits of the music from your computer not transformative?
    - phire 3mo ago
      The RIAA (and the wider copyright industry) were careful to never bring a case that might rule on the issue of "ripping data from CDs and converting to digital". What they did was bring a case against Naspter, which ruled that ripping data off CDs AND THEN sharing it to millions of people over the internet was infringement. Not because of the ripping, but because of the sharing. The RIAA then somehow managed to twist public discourse to interpet the ruling as "ripping CDs is illegal". They were careful, because the Sony Betamax case had already ruled that recording TV of the airwaves was legal, which is already a weaker case than ripping CDs you own. They knew such a case would likely rule against them, and they found the ambiguity to be much more useful. And later cases like the google books case, and this Anthropic one provide even more evidence that the courts would likely rule that ripping CDs was legal if such a case was ever bought. (Though, it really depends on what you do with the digital copy)
rpdillon 3mo ago
Nope, that's a little bit of sloppy writing on the part of Ars. I am not a lawyer, but I'll be happy to discuss the technicalities with anybody here. I'm fairly passionate about the technicalities of copyright.

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.