--- title: Anthropic trained Claude on illegally obtained Stanford... description: A federal judge ruled that Anthropic illegally pirated books from over 10 Stanford professors to train its Claude models. In Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge William... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-trained-claude-on-illegally-obtained-stanford-professors-books-bmvzicof1 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Anthropic trained Claude on illegally obtained Stanford professors' books | daily.dev og:description: A federal judge ruled that Anthropic illegally pirated books from over 10 Stanford professors to train its Claude models. In Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge William... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-trained-claude-on-illegally-obtained-stanford-professors-books-bmvzicof1 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/bMVziCOF1.png og:image:alt: Anthropic trained Claude on illegally obtained Stanford professors' books og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Anthropic trained Claude on illegally obtained Stanford professors' books **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 5 min read · 4 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A federal judge ruled that Anthropic illegally pirated books from over 10 Stanford professors to train its Claude models. In Bartz v. Anthropic, Judge William Alsup allowed AI training on legally acquired books as fair use but barred piracy to build a permanent central library. The case produced a $1.5 billion settlement covering nearly 500,000 registered works, but Tobias Wolff and 27 other authors say it isn't enough. Wolff and Chang-rae Lee opted out and filed a separate suit, Cruz v. Anthropic, seeking up to $150,000 per infringed work versus roughly $3,000 per work in the settlement. Over 70 similar infringement lawsuits have been filed against AI companies by authors, artists, and outlets like The New York Times and Getty Images. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### what did the judge rule in the Anthropic Bartz v. Anthropic copyright case Judge William Alsup ruled that training Claude's large language models on legally acquired books counts as fair use, comparing it to how a human reader internalizes a book's themes and style. However, he ruled that Anthropic illegally pirated books to build a permanent central library, which is not protected. The case resulted in a $1.5 billion settlement covering nearly 500,000 registered works. _Anyone weighing AI copyright risk can follow rulings like this one on daily.dev._ ### how much is Anthropic paying authors in the Bartz settlement versus the Cruz lawsuit The Bartz v. Anthropic settlement pays roughly $3,000 per infringed work across nearly 500,000 registered works, totaling $1.5 billion. Authors Tobias Wolff and Chang-rae Lee opted out and filed a separate suit, Cruz v. Anthropic, seeking a jury trial for full statutory damages of up to $150,000 per infringed work instead. _Developers tracking AI training data liability can follow cases like this on daily.dev._ ### what shadow libraries did Anthropic allegedly use to pirate books for AI training Plaintiffs in the Cruz v. Anthropic lawsuit allege the company illegally downloaded, reproduced, and distributed copyrighted books from shadow libraries including LibGen and PiLiMi, storing the pirated files in a central library used for training Claude. _Those building or auditing training pipelines can follow data-sourcing disputes like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 94 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-27). **TL;DR:** Discussion centers on whether the piracy itself (vs. the underlying AI training) was the real legal violation, with many drawing (and disputing) comparisons to the Aaron Swartz prosecution, while others debate whether copyright should even apply to AI training at all. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 30% mixed · 55% skeptical **The case for** - Some argue the ruling correctly distinguishes legal AI training from illegal acquisition, since buying books and training on them was found to be fair use. - A few see this as a healthy blow against copyright maximalism and gatekeeping of knowledge. **The pushback** - Many feel it's unjust that Anthropic got a civil settlement while Aaron Swartz faced criminal felony charges for a comparatively minor, non-profit act. - Commenters argue Anthropic knowingly used pirated shadow libraries (LibGen) at scale to build a permanent training corpus, which is distinct from ordinary fair use. - Several accuse the company of corporate impunity, arguing wealth and power let it avoid the kind of prosecution an individual would face. - Some dispute that the $3,000-per-work settlement is proportionate given potential statutory damages of $150,000 per work. - Disagreement over whether the original headline framing ('illegally trained' vs 'illegally obtained') is misleading. **By community** - hackernews (heated): A long, contentious thread arguing over legal nuances (CFAA vs. copyright), fairness comparisons to Aaron Swartz, and whether AI training on copyrighted works should be legal at all. **Hottest debate:** Whether Anthropic's piracy-for-training is comparable to Aaron Swartz's prosecution, and whether the disparate legal outcomes reflect a double standard favoring corporations over individuals. **Open questions** - If a permanent injunction is granted, would Anthropic have to retrain its models excluding the infringing books? - Does training on illegally obtained material, now ruled fair use once legally acquired, effectively legalize laundering pirated content through legitimate purchases afterward? **Highlights** > This violates the RICO statute; the entire organization was aware of and relied on the widespread and organized violation of copyright laws as the basis of their entire business. It is a criminal organization, should be seized, and everyone in the chain of command that was aware of or executed on this plan should be tried criminally. I do not think training an AI model is Fair Use, because LLM "training" is being used as a metaphor for building a matrix with a computer. Only people and animals train and learn; computers run statistical problems over input, which in this case was illegal input acquired by humans. But it does not matter whether training LLMs is Fair Use, "Fair Use" is a strange and arbitrary legal term that can be expanded to include AI if we wish. This was organized crime whether or not LLM training on copyrighted materials is fair use. It was organized crime whether or not they planned to use them for AI at all. AI is irrelevant. They could have trained it on GPL'd or MIT code (as long as they then distributed according to the terms of the licenses), and works in the public domain. They could have gotten what they were doing explicitly declared to be fair use by the Library of Congress, and then purchased the materials, like they are belatedly doing now. It wasn't necessary to violate copyright law to prove the technology. They could have proved the technology, then asked for copyright law to be clarified, and licensed huge volumes of works from the very few publishers we have left. Becoming a criminal organization was an explicit choice they made, and they discussed its illegality, and even the risk that it would be discussed on HN, which might inspire prosecution. The reason they are not being prosecuted is because the rich are beyond the law; prosecutors will not prosecute them. The RICO statute is clear, and explicitly mentions copyright violation. We can sentence the executives harshly, but go easy on the lower level people, because they are intelligent and valuable to advance the technology. The executives aren't necessary for anything. They're currently running finance scams that are extremely dangerous for the economy. They belong in prison to protect the public. This is an option that people (real people, with names) have, and are not taking. When they say that they care about law and order, and are worried about the behavior of these companies, they are lying. Trump could literally nationalize them for what they've done. They're vulnerable to any state's attorney who has any author in their state whose book was downloaded. Libgen/Annas-archive would have been the most important honeypot in history. > — [pessimizer on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263090) > What matters is how you got it. Accepting a watch someone freely offers you is different from breaking into a house to steal it, even if the watch you were given turns out to be stolen. > — [lossolo on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262948) > Why isn't the comparison meaningful? Aaron broke the law and circumvented protections, Anthropic broke the law and circumvented protections. Regardless of if Aaron broke into a network closet or anthropic broke DRM, anthropic took explicit action to receive knowingly stolen goods. > — [malfist on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262770) > Anthropic also claimed that those pirated books had not been used to train their models. They've since bought vast numbers of second hand books and scanned those for training, which appears be legal. > — [simonw on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50262389) > If a permanent injunction is granted in the Wolff case, does that mean Anthropic would have to re-train all of their available models, but explicitly exclude those books from the dataset? > — [ceroxylon on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50263543) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50260814) · 168 points · 94 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Federal judge holds back on Anthropic’s $1.5bn author settlement](https://daily.dev/posts/federal-judge-holds-back-on-anthropic-s-1-5bn-author-settlement-razagb7ke) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Is it legal to train AI models on copyrighted books? It’s complicated](https://daily.dev/posts/is-it-legal-to-train-ai-models-on-copyrighted-books-it-s-complicated-roiafcnyv) · TechCrunch · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#claude](https://daily.dev/tags/claude), [#anthropic](https://daily.dev/tags/anthropic) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-trained-claude-on-illegally-obtained-stanford-professors-books-bmvzicof1) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Anthropic trained Claude on illegally obtained Stanford professors' books","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-trained-claude-on-illegally-obtained-stanford-professors-books-bmvzicof1","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/anthropic-trained-claude-on-illegally-obtained-stanford-professors-books-bmvzicof1"},"datePublished":"2026-10-27T16:30:08.876Z","dateModified":"2026-10-27T18:38:28.090Z","description":"A federal judge ruled that Anthropic illegally pirated books from over 10 Stanford professors to train its Claude models. 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