A U.S. district court judge has approved class action status for a copyright lawsuit filed against Anthropic by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson.
Judge William Alsup issued this order yesterday, several weeks following Anthropic's limited victory in the intense legal battle. As we reported at the time, the court determined that training Claude on copyrighted books was transformative and therefore qualified as fair use.
Furthermore, the judge stated that purchasing printed books, disassembling them, and digitizing them into a centralized archive did not produce new copies and thus qualified as fair use.
(Could a major technology company legally purchase individual items of physical media, create digital versions for a searchable "research database," and provide employees with access under the pretense of an alleged AI training purpose? Maybe accumulating content without permission could lead to a new benefit for workers—apologies to artists and copyright holders.)
Regardless, the court also stated that Anthropic's large-scale book piracy—"Anthropic thus stole more than seven million copies of books"—was not considered fair use and will move forward with a trial.
Input the first-mentioned class action certification, which may offer important insights regarding copyright violation lawsuits in the music industry directed at artificial intelligence creators.
Leaving aside the detailed legal aspects, the certification specifically applies to books that were supposedly downloaded through two illegal libraries — not a third one or the previously mentioned digitized books.
Now comes the challenging task: the authors' attorney has until early September to present a list detailing the extensive collection of alleged infringing materials.
This critical paragraph states: 'They should exclude from the list any book where the piracy website offered just a blank file.' It also says: 'They have to fix the title of any book taken from the piracy site if the incorrect title was provided in the pirated catalog. While this ruling recognizes a group, it does so with the requirement that the plaintiffs create and submit a detailed, individualized listing and complete this by Midday on September 1, 2025 .”
The responsibility isn't over yet. According to the legal document, "the plaintiffs have to demonstrate that what was copied was indeed a legitimate copyrighted item," and "[t]he group is restricted to books that have an ISBN or ASIN."
Next is the challenging process of informing the class participants. On Anthropic's side, "[t]o help, by" NOON ON AUGUST 1, 2025 Defendant must supply the titles, authors, publishers, ISBNs and/or ASINs details to plaintiff’s attorney regarding the two counterfeit collections, as far as this information about those two pirated sets exists within its control or that of its legal representatives," the document states. "This is a judicially mandated inquiry and must be complied with.
Keeping the schedule in view, it will be beneficial to keep a close eye on the ongoing legal dispute. Naturally, some music industry lawsuits—such as significant publishers potentially resolving their complaints against Anthropic—do not necessitate class action approval.
However, other lawsuits, such as those filed by an independent musician against Suno and Udio, were initiated as class-action cases right from the start. As we explained last month, the proposed class certification would include "independent recording artists and any entities owned or controlled by these independent artists who possess sound recordings available on any online streaming platform at any point since January 1, 2021."
There are numerous artists—and an even greater number of recordings. Taking this argument to its natural end, only time will reveal if settling disputes is better for artificial intelligence firms facing legal battles, particularly considering the ongoing wave of prominent critiques about their data-training methods.
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This narrative first was published on Digital Music News .