[embedding-shape]

> 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]

> 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,....

[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.

[dd8601fn]

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]

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.

[embedding-shape]

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-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]

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]

> 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]

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]

> 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 :)

[rpdillon]

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.

[economistbob]

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.

[rpdillon]

This is not backed up by any evidence. Ripping CDs was never illegal. The DMCA made the circumvention of an effective copyright protection mechanism illegal, which made ripping DVDs and Blu-rays a crime. But that's separate from copyright itself. The RIAA sued Napster users not because they were converting files, but because they were obtaining them from others without a license.

[economistbob]

There is a lot of evidence. I lived through it. Every family with children and an internet connection or MP3 player was terrified of getting ruined suddenly via a letter. It was in the news every day about some other grandpa or single mother losing their house.

Ripping CDs was long illegal. Perhaps the Librarian of Congress made an exception. Now they hid everything behind a CCB that is like Arbitration so we will never know because they have hid almost aspects of societal justice about copyright and business labor behind arbitration style secrecy. The most useful courts are secret and now people believe there are no proceedings and they do not understand how much of our society was litigated and debated before.

Here is an article from 2008 Specifically explaining that ripping a CD to format convert for personal use is illegal and the RIAA and Sony BMG saying it merited suit but they had bigger fish to fry.

1. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/17814972

Mr. FISHER: That's right. So then, you have to ask yourself, why is the industry continuing to cling to that notion that there is no such legal right? (1)

"Bigger fish to fry" is not the same as "legal".

People selling software to easily convert VHS to hard drive were also punished. For decades they were very clear that format shifting was outlawed. But now that it supports centralizing power and creating a permanent class of info-priests to rule the society, they allow it for them.

Frankly, making all the justice system secret is why the media had to turn to personality cult nonsense for most reporting. All the great stories of the past were informed via the justice system activities. Since all the court stuff is secret now, all they had to talk about was Donald Trump.

"Discovery" provided the bulk of news facts before they secreted away all the justice system proceedings for liability, labor, negligence, medical care, copyright.

It used to be possible to know stuff about America and there was "evidence" all over the place. Now there is never any evidence for anything anywhere. That's Scalia's legacy thanks to Concepcion, absolutely gutting the ability of the society to use Hawthorne effects to discern legality and behavior.

This country used to have evidence for everything, and now a lack of evidence is so common that it is a trope level popular refrain.

[rpdillon]

You're confused about what was actually illegal and what the industry wanted you to believe was illegal. They didn't want to take anybody to court for actually ripping a CD because they didn't want to lose and have the precedent set like it was in Sony versus Betamax. This isn't "bigger fish to fry". This is "terrified of the precedent".

> The dispute arises from a suit the RIAA filed against a man in Arizona who bought CDs, copied them into his computer as MP3 files, and then put them into a shared folder that other people could access through Kazaa, a computer program for sharing music. He's being sued for that last part.

Then they state what they wish were true:

> But according to Marc Fisher, legal documents and some statements by industry officials make it clear that the industry regards the simple act of copying a CD onto your computer or your iPod as illegal.

But just because they wished it to be did not make it so. Trillion-dollar companies have provided end-users with software to rip CDs (including iTunes), and there's never been a court case over it.

[phire]

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]

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]

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)

[jcelerier]

it was a crime to run your own unregistered taxi service in many places until uber came and the laws changed to adapt

[economistbob]

They did not change the laws. The rich tribe guy ignored them and they let him off just like the Anthropic guy. They did not change the laws. The old businesses just folded and the new ones via unlicensed independent contractors made cottage industries out of small scale fraud and tax evasion.

How many Uber drivers can show their local business license for every town they pick people up in? How many have sales tax accounts for their state? Every uber driver without them should have been charged with the same crime as Al Capone.

Now they are trying to control the knowledge, and the vehicle driving, etc. via AI.

It is frankly a tribe takeover via mass criminal activity.

He should have been charged with tax evasion for every pickup in a place where he lacked a business license, but the tribe would never allow it. Compliance is only for the other guys.

Only the dumb local guy graduating high school trying to earn a living has to worry about legal compliance since the rich guys are too hard to prosecute.

They did not change laws. They refuse to enforce them and we are being taken over by the reincarnated legion of Al Capone as a result.

[jcelerier]

> They did not change the laws.

yes they did?

in Québec: https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/uber-is-officially-a...

in France: loi Thévenoud and Grandguillaume (which were the follow up to negociations between the french gov' and uber), etc.

other countries are the same around the same period, e.g. https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/html/inforce/current/act... etc etc

[rpdillon]

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.