• by Wendy Davis , 5 hours ago

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic is drawing support from the tech industry, digital rights organizations and others in its effort to reverse a ruling requiring it to face class-action copyright infringement claims.

That ruling "risks creating a template for similar massive copyright classes" against other developers of generative artificial intelligence, the tech industry group NetChoice says in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Thursday with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The organization -- which counts Google, Meta and other large tech companies as members -- adds that a class-action could potentially freeze innovation "in this critical expressive technology while fundamental legal questions remain unresolved."

The ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in the Northern District of California, came in a lawsuit by three authors -- Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson -- who alleged Anthropic infringed copyright by training its chatbot Claude on their books.

Anthropic argued that it made fair use of the material.

Alsup partially agreed. He ruled recently that Anthropic's use of purchased books for training was "exceedingly transformative," and therefore protected by fair use principles. But Alsup also ruled that Anthropic did not have a fair use defense to claims that it trained Claude on millions of books downloaded from piracy sites.

Alsup subsequently ruled that the lawsuit could proceed as a class-action on behalf of copyright owners of books in the libraries LibGen and PiLiMi -- which offer pirated copies.

Anthropic has asked Alsup to allow an immediate appeal of the ruling depriving the company of a fair use defense for pirated books.

The company also petitioned the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear a fast appeal of Alsup's decision to certify a class of copyright owners.

Anthropic writes that the order authorizes "possibly the largest copyright class action ever involving up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history" and "could result in "hundreds of billions of dollars in statutory damages."

The company adds that the order fails to account for "the individualized issues that would pervade a fair trial."

On Thursday, outside groups including NetChoice, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge, and others backed Anthropic's request.

"The district court certified a massive class that raises unresolved constitutional questions about the use of copyrighted works to train and operate GenAI systems," NetChoice writes. "Whether those uses are fair and whether they are protected by the First Amendment are still contested questions."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and others add in a separate friend-of-the-court brief that Alsup's decision to allow a class-action "represents a 'death knell' scenario that will mean important issues affecting the rights of millions of authors with respect to AI will never be adequately resolved."

Those groups elaborate that a class-action could expose Anthropic to "tens of billions of dollars" in damages, which would likely force the company to settle.

The authors are expected to respond to the arguments by August 14.