3 Count: 50 Year Anniversary

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1: Judge Orders Meta to Name Employees Who Approved Torrenting Anna’s Archive and LibGen

First off, today, Ernesto Van der Sar at TorrentFreak writes that a judge has ordered Meta to hand over command histories of its servers that were used to download pirated books for AI training, as well as name the employees who approved the downloads.

The lawsuit is one of many filed against Meta alleging copyright infringement during the training of its AI models. A judge has previously ruled that the actual training was protected under fair use. However, companies, most notably Anthropic, have been held liable for using pirated material to train their models.

These recent orders put Meta’s process under the microscope. It includes examining how the books were downloaded, namely whether they were downloaded and seeded on the BitTorrent network, as well as who approved the downloads. The order is part of the discovery process in the case, which is ongoing.

2: Anthropic Sued by Major Canadian News Publishers for Copyright Claims in Ontario Court

Next up today, Anja Karadeglija at the CBC reports that the AI company Anthropic is facing yet another copyright lawsuit, this time from a group of major Canadian news publishers.

The lawsuit was filed by Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press in an Ontario court. They allege that Anthropic committed copyright infringement by using their articles and other content to train its AI systems, most notably Claude.

In addition to the copyright issues, the lawsuit further alleges that Anthropic violated their terms of service and that the company circumvented their copyright protection measures. The publishers filed a similar lawsuit against OpenAI in 2024. That case is still pending.

3: The Copyright Act Turns 50: An Inside View from the Copyright Office

Finally, today, Nora Scheland at the US Copyright Office writes that the Copyright Act of 1976 was signed into law 50 years ago, bringing with it sweeping reforms to United States copyright law.

On September 23, the US Copyright Office held a special event celebrating that anniversary. It featured remarks from the Register of Copyrights, Shira Perlmutter, as well as various panels with legislators, former Registers of Copyrights, and other experts.

The Copyright Act of 1976 was the first major overhaul of copyright law in the US since the Copyright Act of 1909. It implemented a number of changes to the law, many of which would be critical to applying copyright law to new technologies.

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