Federal judge says Anthropic training on published books is "fair use"

There are two issues in this case:
1. Is training on a published book “fair use”
2. Did Anthropic violate the law in how they obtained the books

For #1, the judge said yes it was fair use.

For #2, the judge said that will be decided in trial

Evidently, the accusation is Anthropic initially downloaded from a pirate site, but then went out and purchased legitimate copies. My understanding of this ruling (assuming it holds) is that an AI company can purchase a book and train on it within the “fair use” doctrine.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/24/a-federal-judge-sides-with-anthropic-in-lawsuit-over-training-ai-on-books-without-authors-permission/