AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

See full article...

 

[Irongrave]

Their entire argument is essentially "this will bankrupt us so please don't let it happen". That... cannot possibly hold up. It hasn't been a problem for individuals hit with copyright infringement, at least.

Why hasn't "big tech" gone after "big copyright" with this, anyway? If copyrights cause so much trouble for them, they ought to be arguing and lobbying that copyrights are too long.

If we had an honest and just legal system, you would be absolutely correct.

Consider the US Supreme & appellate courts, though.

The authoritarians in the executive branch LOVE AI. It enables them to cut out people they hate (creatives, who largely lean left) and enable individualized echo chambers backed by cherry-picked information sources.

In addition to that, ALL of big tech has its tendrils tightly entangled into AI, and that industry is a massive portion of our GDP.

It's too big a boon for the worst (and unfortunately most powerful) parts of our society, for them to let it be hamstrung legally.

Hope I'm wrong, though.

 

[GonzoVeritas]

There is too much money and power involved, so Congress will intercede to protect the AI companies. The military wants the tech, and Congress wants the bribes. The laws will be changed.

 

[JohnDeL]

No, try again.
https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict

You really need to learn some history. Israel has been blockading Gaza since the early 1990s.

Yes, I do -- that has nothing to do with the point, which is that Israelis know from very painful experience that they are not welcome anywhere outside of Israel.

The zionists’ behavior during the British Mandate drove the Arabs into the arms of the NAZIs, which makes it very relevant.

Not remotely. John, with respect, crack open a history book on WW2. No one was threatening Germany's existence in 1939. Germany was not surrounded by countries who had sworn to wipe Germans off the face of the Earth.

And neither is Israel. Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994. The United Arab Emirates signed a peace treaty with Israel in 2020.

Now Lebanon is no friend of Israel, but a large part of that is due to Israel’s brutal occupation. Neither is Syria, mainly because Israel fomented civil war in the country. But that hardly leaves Israel “surrounded” by enemies.

And, my point was that Israelis cannot relocate to a Nazi-run country with any degree of safety.

That doesn’t excuse Isral acting like NAZIs. Or what do you think the ghettoization of Gaza and the constant theft of Palestinian land by Israeli settlers and the constant violence against Palestinians is? What do you think the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is?

It is Israel acting just like the NAZIs.

Still waiting, by the way, for your plan that Israel ought to follow.

Israel should either follow the two-state solution proposed by the US and supported by most of the countries in the region, or immediately offer full citizenship, equal civil rights, and compensation for the lands confiscated since 1948 to the Palestinians along with guarantees of religious and economic freedom. The former would put matters back to where they were before Israel began its blockade of Gaza in the 1990s where the latter would solve the problem by getting rid of Israel and Palestine and creating a new, unified state with equal rights for all.

What, precisely, would you do, if your country was surrounded on all sides by enemies

Self-made enemies.

What would you do, John?

Well, the first thing I’d do is stop picking fights with countries that are bigger than me.

The second thing I’d do is stop stealing other people’s land since that just makes them want to do unto me as I did unto them.

And the third thing I’d do is develop strong economic ties with those countries because increasing everyone’s wealth decreases evryone’s desire to make war where destorying other people’s stuff just makes them more eager to destroy me.

 

[CrazyLarry2500]

Someone needs to contact the RIAA and have them join the plaintiffs in this case. I would love to see the RIAA go after Anthropic. I would pay money to see it.

 

[Anton Longshot]

Should the "industry" lose this I pity the billionaires involved who'll end up homeless and starving.
Nah just kidding/lying.
Perhaps they shouldn't have assumed that their money gives them the right to steal people's stuff.

But sadly...I don't think they are going to lose. And the common people aren't going to revolt.

 

[Smartyflix]

Because they still want to be able to benefit from strong copyrights.

They see AI as a way to remove personal creativity from the equation, and thus prevent anyone else from benefiting from their own work.

Corporations will own the means to create and distribute content. We will get what they serve us and we will like it, or else.

I am honestly surprised they haven't started campaigning against private ownership of media, especially anything physical.

This is exactly what will happen. Google is already using AI to create YouTube shorts, which they will be able to monetize around. Pretty soon, you'll be able to type something like "History of the Roman Government" into YouTube, and it will generate a video for you, created via AI that has been trained on hundreds of thousands of hours of content originally created by humans. Google will monetize this like they already do with ads, and instead of giving a part of that revenue to creators, they will keep all of this revenue for themselves.

Spotify will do the same thing, generating "brand new music" via AI trained on millions of different songs created by humans. You'll pay $20 a month and instead of having to send a chunk of that to the copyright holders, they'll keep it all for themselves.

The real irony is that these companies will start to IP protect the works their AI is creating. I know that the courts have already ruled that AI-generated content can't be protected under copyright, but that's nothing a few million dollars to your local congress critter can't be worked around. If you want to fix this, start voting for candidates who campaign on strong protections against corporations, because anything short of that leads to corporate ownership of all assets.

 

[San Diego Dude]

I’m curious…Do you, um…Do you actually know how private companies are “valued”?

https://www.axios.com/2025/08/07/openai-stocks-apple-microsoft

here you go. Enjoy.

 

[Ploroxide]

Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.

Sure, right after Tik-Tok gets banned in the US.

 

[Missing Minute]

https://www.axios.com/2025/08/07/openai-stocks-apple-microsoft

here you go. Enjoy.

how does a 500 billion valuation make openai the most valuable company in the world? there are like 2 dozen companies with a higher market cap.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

how does a 500 billion valuation make openai the most valuable company in the world? there are like 2 dozen companies with a higher market cap.

We've already established that AIs are bad at counting.

 

[Missing Minute]

We've already established that AIs are bad at counting.

It can be hard to tell if a comment is written by AI or by a cogsucker.

 

[JohnDeL]

What would you do with a territory run by an enemy sworn to obliterate you?

You mean the way that Israel has sworn to obliterate Gaza?

I thought you were being serious here, but obviously not. No one is forced to be a Nazi.

When the only other option is to be destroyed by zionists?

People go with whomever promises them safety. In this case, the Allies didn’t and the NAZIs did.

And those countries did nothing following October 7th, but have now recalled ambassadors, and otherwise condemned Israel -- so it is very clear on which side they reside.

You really need to be better informed.

Meanwhile Hamas -- for whom destruction of Israel is a primary principle -- receives support from across the Muslim world, especially Syria, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and others.

Check again.

While you are at it, list Israels "friends" in the region. They have none.

Kind of hard to have friends when you are so busy destabilizing the countries around you.

Again, crack open a history book that covers WW2. What you describe is nothing remotely similar to the Final Solution. Nazis killed about 60% of European Jews in under a decade ( https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/cont...-of-europe-in-1933-population-data-by-country ).

The NAZIs didn’t start at the Final Solution; that’s where they ended. First, they siezed Jewish property and herded the Jews into ghettos and cut the ghettos off from supplies and flattened the ghettos and then relocated the Jews and then did the Final Solution.

Now let’s see what Israel has done to the Palestinians, shall we? They have stolen Palestinian land and proprty, herded the Palestinians into “relocation camps”, cut the regions off from supply, and destroyed Gaza. About the only things that the Isrealis haven’t done that the NAZIs did is shoot Palestinians while they were trying to get aid (oh, wait) and started up death camps.

Gaza's population growth has been about 2% annually, which is in the top half of countries world-wide. https://worldpopulationreview.com/cities/palestine/gaza

And the Jewish population in Germany continued to grow right up until 1938 or so. Since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, the population has decreased.

Even amidst war, Gaza's population growth rate is higher than China's.

You do not appear to have the slightest clue about the topic.

No, you don’t.

“Gaza’s population dropped by 6% – about 160,000 people – in 2024, according to a new report, as Israel’s war against Hamas took a heavy toll on the Palestinian enclave’s demographics.“ CNN

See above with respect to Hamas, and other neighbors, having sworn to obliterate Israel. How do you make peace with someone who has made it their top priority -- as they believe their god instructs them -- to wipe you from the face of the Earth?

That’s a great question. Perhaps you should ask it of Israel:

“Their movement had hungered for this moment for years, but now, after Oct. 7, they felt it was just a matter of time before Jews would be living in Gaza again. “It is ours,” said David Remer, 18. “[God] said it is ours.” LA Times

“I think the village of Huwara needs to be wiped out. I think the State of Israel should do it” Bezalel Smotrich, Israel Finance Minister

And by "picking fights", you mean existing.

No, I mean occupying other countries, stealing land, engaging in genocide, fomenting civil war - all of the things that Israel admits to having done.

They tried that, and then Egypt blockaded Israel. And then Syria and Egypt teamed up. Eventually the Six-Day War resulted, which Israel won, and after which Israel gave back the entire Sinai. To no effect whatsoever.

Gosh, you really don’t know history, do you? Israel didn’t start returning lands confiscated from Palestinians until 1979, as part of the peace treaty negotiated by Carter.

Israel seized the Sinai in 1956 because Egypt refused to allow Israel passage through the Suez canal (which was owned and operated by Egypt). Israel did not return the Sinai until 1979, as part of the “land for peace” agreement.

Their neighbors still refuse to tolerate their existence.

Try again. Under Resolution 242 (which was the basis for the Egypt-Israel peace treaty and the Jordan-Israel peace treaty and the United Arab Emirate-Israel peace treaty and the Arab League’s negotiations with Israel), all of Israel’s neighbors agree to leave Israel alone if Israel will just return the land it has stolen and stop making war on the Palestinians.

How well does it work? Well, Egypt hasn’t gone to war with Israel since signing the treaty. Jordan hasn’t gone to war with Israel since signing the treaty. The UAE hasn’t gone to war with Israel since signing the treaty.

Hey - maybe if Israel signs treaties with Lebanon and Syria and Palestine, they won’t be at war anymore. Of course, Israel would also have to give back the land they’ve stolen, but that’s the right thing to do in any case.

 

[Ploroxide]

how does a 500 billion valuation make openai the most valuable company in the world? there are like 2 dozen companies with a higher market cap.

The article behind the link doesn’t say that.

 

[TC26]

This is exactly what will happen. Google is already using AI to create YouTube shorts, which they will be able to monetize around. Pretty soon, you'll be able to type something like "History of the Roman Government" into YouTube, and it will generate a video for you, created via AI that has been trained on hundreds of thousands of hours of content originally created by humans. Google will monetize this like they already do with ads, and instead of giving a part of that revenue to creators, they will keep all of this revenue for themselves.

Spotify will do the same thing, generating "brand new music" via AI trained on millions of different songs created by humans. You'll pay $20 a month and instead of having to send a chunk of that to the copyright holders, they'll keep it all for themselves.

Given how little those entities actually pay creators, and the ever-increasing cost of operating the things called "AI", I'm not sure that this strategy is even profitable, never mind more so than their current option.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

Sounds like Anthropic has some support from the other side in this appeal.

Also backing Anthropic's appeal, advocates representing authors—including Authors Alliance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, and Public Knowledge—pointed out that the Google Books case showed that proving ownership is anything but straightforward.

In the Anthropic case, advocates for authors criticized Alsup for basically judging all 7 million books in the lawsuit by their covers. The judge allegedly made "almost no meaningful inquiry into who the actual members are likely to be," as well as "no analysis of what types of books are included in the class, who authored them, what kinds of licenses are likely to apply to those works, what the rightsholders’ interests might be, or whether they are likely to support the class representatives’ positions."

IANAL but I think those complaints might be why copyright cases usually arent class action.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

Spotify will do the same thing, generating "brand new music" via AI trained on millions of different songs created by humans. You'll pay $20 a month and instead of having to send a chunk of that to the copyright holders, they'll keep it all for themselves.

That may be difficult seeing as how they cant copyright AI created music.

 

[Missing Minute]

The article behind the link doesn’t say that.

My point exactly.

 

[croc123]

I think the class should be expanded to everyone whose work (even messages are 'work' was used to 'train'these Large Language Models.

OK. Banks did it first with their 'too big to fail' argument. Personally, I thought 'Let 'em fail. Lesson learned' but that would be too 'disruptive' for the world economy.. (Funnny how words can be used to play both sides of the fence, Apple being 'disruptive' was a good thing.)

But, with LLMs and AI, (ARTFICIAL Intelligence.... Synonym: FAKE Intelligence) there is currently no real market to disrupt. How can you make a case that disrupting hype is a bad thing? Or, how can hype make the case that it is a good thing

 

[San Diego Dude]

how does a 500 billion valuation make openai the most valuable company in the world? there are like 2 dozen companies with a higher market cap.

Private company. There are plenty of public companies that are larger. No private company has ever hit half a trillion valuation before.

Edit to make it clear. Up until a few days ago, SpaceX was considered the most valuable private company in the world. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-50-most-valuable-private-companies-in-2025/

But this new private stock sale of OAI (the article I linked previously) is setting their value at 500B, which would make them the most caluable private company in the world. Seriously guys, I get you all hate AI here, but it's not that hard to comprehend this stuff. AI is here to stay, like it or not. Get onboard and learn how to use it, or you're gonna be like those folks and businesses who swore off the internet in the 90s and early 00s.

 

[TC26]

Sounds like Anthropic has some support from the other side in this appeal.

In the Anthropic case, advocates for authors criticized Alsup for basically judging all 7 million books in the lawsuit by their covers. The judge allegedly made "almost no meaningful inquiry into who the actual members are likely to be," as well as "no analysis of what types of books are included in the class, who authored them, what kinds of licenses are likely to apply to those works, what the rightsholders’ interests might be, or whether they are likely to support the class representatives’ positions."

As previously observed by someone else a few pages ago, the identities of the class members are not relevant -- at least not at this point. Unless those "advocates" are alleging that those books wrote themselves, or otherwise did not have authors, this attempted objection does not pass muster.

Neither does the objection about "what types of books" are involved. Copyright applies to all types of books, and even works that are not books.

For the record, one of the six Board members of "Authors Alliance" is an AI consultant. How many of the others have conflicts of interest, I didn't dig sufficiently-deep to find. Regardless, their alleged membership of 3,000 is a sliver of all authors.

 

[Komarov]

[lots of crud]

Apologists for genocide should be banned. Where is Holier-Than-Thou Aurich now?

 

[TimeToTilt]

 

[macosandlinux]

Their entire argument is essentially "this will bankrupt us so please don't let it happen". That... cannot possibly hold up. It hasn't been a problem for individuals hit with copyright infringement, at least.

Individuals were forced into declaring bankruptcy over p2p, can we please have the same treatment applied to the AI juggernauts and their execs?

 

[NGlobo]

So the argument is literally "we're too important for consequences"?

The same as the banks. Yes.

 

[onionella]

Also backing Anthropic's appeal, advocates representing authors—including Authors Alliance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, and Public Knowledge—pointed out that the Google Books case showed that proving ownership is anything but straightforward.

In the Anthropic case, advocates for authors criticized Alsup for basically judging all 7 million books in the lawsuit by their covers. The judge allegedly made "almost no meaningful inquiry into who the actual members are likely to be," as well as "no analysis of what types of books are included in the class, who authored them, what kinds of licenses are likely to apply to those works, what the rightsholders’ interests might be, or whether they are likely to support the class representatives’ positions."



Further, some authors may never even find out the lawsuit is happening. The court's suggested notification scheme "would require class claimants to themselves notify other potential rightsholders," groups said, overlooking the fact that it cost Google $34.5 million "to set up a 'Books Rights Registry' to identify owners for payouts under the proposed settlement" in one of the largest cases involving book authors prior to the AI avalanche of lawsuits.

I think these views are seriously misguided. The goal of this class action is to make Anthropic stop continuing to do crime against an enormous class of people. It doesn't matter if the remunerations don't get paid perfectly. The judge is not trying to create the perfect, smooth and fair licensing system. If this suit fails because the named associations not finding it to be perfect, millions of authors may as well be left without any justice and Anthropic will continue to infringe the rights of every single one of them.

 

[dio82]

Judge Alsup ... I remember him. This was the judge who taught himself some java programming to better understand the Google versus Oracle copyright of APIs case. He ruled wisely. I have strong faith that his ruling will be very wise.

 

[SixDegrees]

If we had an honest and just legal system, you would be absolutely correct.

Consider the US Supreme & appellate courts, though.

The authoritarians in the executive branch LOVE AI. It enables them to cut out people they hate (creatives, who largely lean left) and enable individualized echo chambers backed by cherry-picked information sources.

In addition to that, ALL of big tech has its tendrils tightly entangled into AI, and that industry is a massive portion of our GDP.

It's too big a boon for the worst (and unfortunately most powerful) parts of our society, for them to let it be hamstrung legally.

Hope I'm wrong, though.

Tech - ALL of tech - accounts for about 10% of GDP. Significant, but not massive.

And that's without mentioning that so far, AI in its current headline-grabbing form isn't productive at all in terms of money. It's a vast venture capital sink, in search of profits which have not yet been found.

 

[TVPaulD]

https://www.axios.com/2025/08/07/openai-stocks-apple-microsoft

here you go. Enjoy.

Private company. There are plenty of public companies that are larger. No private company has ever hit half a trillion valuation before.

Edit to make it clear. Up until a few days ago, SpaceX was considered the most valuable private company in the world. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-50-most-valuable-private-companies-in-2025/

But this new private stock sale of OAI (the article I linked previously) is setting their value at 500B, which would make them the most caluable private company in the world. Seriously guys, I get you all hate AI here, but it's not that hard to comprehend this stuff. AI is here to stay, like it or not. Get onboard and learn how to use it, or you're gonna be like those folks and businesses who swore off the internet in the 90s and early 00s.

So in other words: no, you don’t understand how private companies are “valued.” That was already evident, but good to have confirmation.

 

[JoHBE]

"would threaten "immense harm not only to a single AI company, but to the entire fledgling AI industry and to America’s global technological competitiveness.". "

Next on the table: reversing the terrible decision that banned slavery, depriving our glorious nation from optimally using its full potential production capacity.

 

[JoHBE]

It ruined Napster too...

I should note that when human teachers are training human students, they need to have a valid license for all the copyrighted material in their training library. Schools and teachers are frequently audited to ensure they have a valid license for everything they are using. I personally know teachers who have faced career limiting punishments for photocoping material into their training library without a license.

That's different, because those are ordinary meatbags

 

[JoHBE]

I guess maybe I don't understand the situation completely, but I feel like it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to have LLM AI companies forced to acknowledge that the material they are using to create LLM AIs is actually a resource with value, that was created by others, and their use of it could well harm the ability of the creators of that resource to enjoy the benefits of creating it. I feel like it is total hype to suggest that AI companies will be financially ruined, that is hardly ever what happens to huge wealthy corporations in court. It may cost them something, which I think is ok, as they are clearly hoping to profit from the resources created by others. I think this is an issue that ought to be dealt with as right now the huge AI companies seem to act without regard to anyone's possible rights to what they have produced because they feel they are too powerful to be held accountable. I doubt they will effectively be held to account in this case either, but one can hope it will be a useful examination of the situation.

I don't think Trump will give a rat's ass for the industry's...

<sound of Trumpcoin transaction>

Oh wait.. Seems he's on prime time TV boasting how he uses ChatGPT to create doodles of skyscrapers, and Grok for silhouets of naked girls?

 

[SixDegrees]

That's different, because those are ordinary meatbags

It's also false.

 

[JoHBE]

I'm sure Big Orange will intervene.. For a price.

Free SORA credits for at least 100 genocide-mocking generative AI videos.

 

[titiomm]

Ok then you open source ALL model ? No ? You like copyright as it lets you keep your edge and make more money ?! Weird....

 

[dzid]

We can only hope!

Even if this case might spell the end for LLM development in the US as it currently exists, that is not the same as ending all AI development.


Ed: ninja'd