Late Tuesday, Judge Alsup issued another order picking apart gaps and inconsistencies in the Bartz authors’ proposed settlement process. It just shows how meticulous Judge Alsup is in dissecting the proposed settlement process.
Now, the total questions that the parties must address has ballooned to 33 questions. (See below for the first list.)
To me the most interesting part of the order is Judge Alsup’s own description of the facts in the case that he suggested for inclusion in the class notice.
Judge Alsup clarified that Anthropic still could have raised a fair use defense at trial on the library-building issue: “However, he also ruled that downloading millions of books (theirs included) from pirate libraries and assembling them in a central library was not a fair use, at least not on the record at the time. This left the issue to be resolved at trial, potentially in Anthropic’s favor.”
This is a quite helpful clarification because the summary judgment order can be interpreted in different ways. This terse line especially: “Nothing is foreclosed as to any other copies flowing from library copies for uses other than for training LLMs.” What this must mean is that Anthropic could raise fair use on library building again at trial.
Some of the orders from Judge Alsup afterwards suggested that Anthropic could raise a fair use defense at trial, so I was wondering based on what — training or library building?
Judge Alsup also noted that the 9th Circuit could have reversed class certification and that any final judgment in favor of the book authors could be appealed.
DOWNLOAD JUDGE ALSUP’s SECOND LIST OF QUESTIONS
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