Authors Guild rejects training fair-use holding
Authors GuildAuthors' advocacy organization
The Guild rejects the training fair-use holding, arguing it undervalues authors' licensing and other markets.
Responding to
The book-training uses at issue in Bartz, which drew on pirated and scanned books, do not qualify as fair use.
“we disagree with the decision that using pirated or scanned books for training LLMs is fair use.”
Official statement
Where this statement fits
Authors Guild disputes fair-use ruling on Anthropic's book training
Judge William Alsup's June 23, 2025 order in Bartz v. Anthropic held that Anthropic's use of books to train its AI models was fair use, and that scanning print books it had bought to replace them with digital copies was also fair use. It held that downloading pirated books to build a permanent central library was not fair use. Anthropic says the training ruling remains the law. The Authors Guild disputes it, arguing that the court gave too little weight to authors' licensing markets. Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín gave final approval on July 20, 2026 to a $1.5 billion class settlement covering books Anthropic downloaded from pirate sites. That approval is separate from the earlier fair-use analysis.
Source and context
Official statement
About this source
The Guild rejects the training holding while welcoming the separate piracy result. Its trial prediction predates settlement.
Archived copy (opens in a new tab)Before the quotation
In its June 25, 2025 assessment of Judge Alsup's June 23 order, the Guild first said it was relieved that the court had treated Anthropic's downloading of pirated books as infringement.
After the quotation
The Guild said the decision misread precedent and gave too little weight to authors' licensing markets, and predicted reversal on appeal. The parties later settled, and the court dismissed the case when it approved the settlement in July 2026.
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
The Guild directly criticizes the training use and its fair-use justification, even while welcoming another part of the order.
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More from this case
Read the full caseAnthropic says training fair-use ruling remains the law
Anthropic
“We reached this settlement in 2025, after the court’s landmark ruling that training AI on books is fair use under copyright law — which remains the law today”Read statement
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The Dispute Index. "Authors Guild rejects training fair-use holding". First published: 2026-10-15. Last updated: 2026-10-15. https://disputeindex.com/events/5766-the-guild-rejects-the-training-fair-use-holding