A California federal judge has given three authors the green light to pursue a class action lawsuit against Anthropic, an Amazon-backed AI company behind the chatbot Claude. The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic downloaded millions of books from libraries of pirated works, using a “Napster-style” approach.
The filing claims that Anthropic built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books. This case follows similar lawsuits against Anthropic, including one filed by Reddit and another by Universal Music, which accused the company of widespread copyright infringement.
The judge’s ruling allows the authors’ lawsuit to expand into a class action, representing all US writers whose work was allegedly downloaded from libraries of pirated works. This development highlights the growing trend of media outlets and platforms suing AI companies over copyright infringement or partnering with them for lucrative data deals.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/anthropic/709183/anthropic-class-action-lawsuit-pirated-books-authors-downloads