Preferences

The ruling suggests that "pirating a book that could have been bought at a bookstore" for the sake of "writing a book review" "is inherently, irredeemably infringing".

Which suggests that, at least in the judge's opinion, 'fair use rights' do exist in a sense, but it's about when you read the book, not when you publish.

But that's not settled precedent. Meta is currently arguing the opposite in Kadrey v. Meta: they're claiming that they can get away with torrenting training material as long as they only leech (download) and don't seed (upload), because, although the act of downloading (copying) is generally infringement under a Ninth Circuit precedent, they were making a fair use.

As for EULAs, that might be true for e-books, but publishers can't really do anything about Anthropic's new strategy of scanning physical books, because physical books generally don't come with shrinkwrap license agreements. Perhaps publishers could start adding them, but I think that would sit poorly with the public and the courts.

(That's assuming the ruling isn't overturned on appeal, which it easily might be.)


kmeisthax (dead)

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