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Big Tech scored a major victory this week in the battle over using copyrighted materials to train AI models. Anthropic won a partial judgment on Tuesday in a case brought by three authors who alleged the company violated their copyright by storing their works in a library used to train its Claude AI model. Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Anthropics use of copyrighted material for training was fair use. His decision carries weight. “Authors cannot rightly exclude anyone from using their works for training or learning as such,” Alsup wrote. “Everyone reads texts, too, then writes new texts. They may need to pay for getting their hands on a text in the first instance. But to make anyone pay specifically for the use of a book each time they read it, each time they recall it from memory, each time they later draw upon it when writing new things in new ways would be unthinkable.” Alsup called training Claude “exceedingly transformative,” comparing the model to “any reader aspiring to be a writer.” That language helps explain why tech lobbyists were quick to call it a major win. Experts agreed. “It’s a pretty big win actually for the future of AI training,” says Andres Guadamuz, an intellectual property expert at the University of Sussex who has closely followed AI copyright cases. But he adds: “It could be bad for Anthropic specifically, depending on authors winning the piracy issue, but that’s still very far away.” In other words, its not as simple as tech companies might wish. “The fair use ruling looks bad for creators on its surface, but this is far from the final word on the matter,” says Ed Newton-Rex, a former AI executive-turned-copyright campaigner and founder of Fairly Trained, a nonprofit certifying companies that respect creators rights. The case is expected to be appealedand even at this stage, Newton-Rex sees weaknesses in the rulings reasoning. “The judge makes assertions about training, not de-incentivizing creation, and about AI learning like humans do, that feel easy to rebut,” he says. “This is, on balance, a bad day for creators, but its just the opening move in what will be a long game.” While the judge approved training AI models on copyrighted works, other elements of the case werent so favorable for Anthropic. Guadamuz says Alsups decision hinges on a “solid fair use argument on the transformative nature of AI training.” The judge thoroughly applied the four-factor test for fair use, Guadamuz noted, and the ruling could reshape broader copyright approaches. “We may start seeing the beginnings of rules for the new world, [where] having legitimate access to a work would work strongly in proving fair use, while using shadow libraries would not,” he says. And thats the catch: This wasnt an unvarnished win for Anthropic. Like other tech companies, Anthropic allegedly sourced training materials from piracy sites for easea fact that clearly troubled the court. “This order doubts that any accused infringer could ever meet its burden of explaining why downloading source copies from pirate sites that it could have purchased or otherwise accessed lawfully was itself reasonably necessary to any subsequent fair use,” Alsup wrote, referring to Anthropics alleged pirating of more than 7 million books. That alone could carry billions in liability, with statutory damages starting at $750 per booka trial on that issue is still to come. So while tech companies may still claim victory (with some justification, given the fair use precedent), the same ruling also implies that companies will need to pay substantial sums to legally obtain training materials. OpenAI, for its part, has in the past argued that licensing all the copyrighted material needed to train its models would be practically impossible. Joanna Bryson, a professor of AI ethics at the Hertie School in Berlin, says the ruling is “absolutely not” a blanket win for tech companies. “First of all, it’s not the Supreme Court. Secondly, it’s only one jurisdiction: The U.S.,” she says. “I think they dont entirely have purchase over this thing about whether or not it was transformative in the sense of changing Claudes output.”
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E-Commerce
Oil prices are dropping further, and U.S. stocks are pulling close to their all-time high Tuesday on hopes that Israels war with Iran will not damage the global flow of crude, even if a tentative truce seemed to fray under fire in the morning. The S&P 500 was 1.2% higher in afternoon trading, following up on even bigger gains for stocks across Europe and Asia, after President Donald Trump said late Monday that Israel and Iran had agreed to a complete and total ceasefire. The main measure of Wall Street’s health is back within 1% of its record set in February after falling roughly 20% below during the spring. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 518 points, or 1.2%, as of 1:56 p.m. ET, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.5% higher. The strongest action was again in the oil market, where a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude fell 5.4%, to $64.82. Brent crude, the international standard, dropped 5.5%, to $66.62. The fear throughout the Israel-Iran conflict has been that it could squeeze the worlds supply of oil, which would pump up prices for gasoline and hurt the global economy. Iran is a major producer of crude, and it could also try to block the Strait of Hormuz off its coast, through which 20% of the worlds daily oil needs passes on ships. Oil prices began falling sharply on Monday after Iran launched what appeared to be a limited retaliatory strike that did not target the production or movement of oil. Prices kept falling even after attacks continued past a deadline to stop hostilities early Tuesday. Trump later said that the ceasefire was in effect. Oil prices have dropped so much in the last two days that theyre below where they were before the fighting began nearly two weeks ago. With the global oil market well supplied and the OPEC+ alliance of producing countries steadily increasing production, oil prices could be headed even lower as long as the ceasefire holds and a lasting peace solution can be found, said Carsten Fritsch, commodities analyst at German-based Commerzbank. Falling oil prices should take some pressure off inflation, and that in turn could give the Federal Reserve more leeway to cut interest rates. Wall Street loves lower rates because they can give the economy a boost by making it cheaper for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money to buy a car or build a factory. But they could also give inflation more fuel. That latter threat is why the Fed has been hesitant to cut rates this year after lowering them through the end of last year. The Fed has said repeatedly that it wants to wait and see how much Trumps tariffs will hurt the economy and raise inflation before committing to its next move. So far, the economy seems to be holding up okay, though a report on confidence among U.S. consumers came in weaker on Tuesday than economists expected, while inflation has remained only a bit above the Fed’s 2% target. Trump, though, has been pushing for more cuts to rates. And two of his appointees to the Fed have said in the last week that they may consider cutting rates as soon as the Feds next meeting next month. Fed Chair Jerome Powell remains more cautious. He said again in testimony delivered to Congress Tuesday that the Fed is well positioned to wait to learn more about the likely course of the economy before considering any adjustments to our policy stance. Asked whether a cut could arrive as soon as July, Powell said: We will get to a place where we cut rates, sooner rather than laterbut I wouldnt want to point to a particular meeting. I dont think we need to be in any rush because the economy is still strong. Such mixed messages had Treasury yields swiveling up and down in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.30%, from 4.34% late Monday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for Fed action, fell to 3.82%, from 3.84%. On Wall Street, cruise operator Carnival steamed 6.7% higher after delivering a much stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Josh Weinstein said it’s seeing strong demand from people booking cruises close to the departure date, and customers are spending strongly once on board. Carnival also raised its forecast for an underlying measure of profit for the full year. Uber Technologies rose 7.8% after it said customers in Atlanta can use its app to ride in Waymo autonomous vehicles. Coinbase Global rallied 11.4% as the cryptocurrency exchange rose with the price of Bitcoin, which jumped back above $105,000. In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied more than 1% everywhere from France to Germany to Japan, following the announcement of the Israel-Iran ceasefire. Hong Kongs jump of 2.1% and South Koreas leap of 3% were two of the strongest moves. By Stan Choe, David McHugh, and Elaine Kurtenbach, AP business writers
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E-Commerce
CareerBuilder + Monster, an online job hunting joint venture, announced on Tuesday it filed for bankruptcy in Delaware. The company initiated the Chapter 11 process to facilitate a sale of its operations, with assets totaling between $50 to $100 million and estimated liabilities of some $100 to $500 million, according to its bankruptcy filing. Fast Company has reached out to the company for comment. The bankruptcy plan calls for the assets to be divided up, selling its jobs board business to JobGet Inc.; selling Monster Media Properties to Valnet Inc. (which includes Military.com and Fastweb.com); and transferring Monster Government Services to Valsoft Corp. However, the asset sale is subject to other, higher offers, according to the press release. “For over 25 years, we have been a proud global leader in helping job seekers and companies connect and empower employment across the globe,” Jeff Furman, CEO of CareerBuilder + Monster, said in a statement. “However, like many others in the industry, our business has been affected by a challenging and uncertain macroeconomic environment. In light of these conditions, we ran a robust sale process and carefully evaluated all available options. We determined that initiating this court-supervised sale process is the best path toward maximizing the value of our businesses and preserving jobs.” Furman added that CareerBuilder + Monster also plans to restructure, which would include a reduction of its current workforce, and the company is in talks with Blue Torch Capital for up to $20 million of debtor-in-possession financing. Monster, which dominated the internet job search industry starting in the 1990s, merged with then-struggling CareerBuilder in 2024, with Dutch multinational human resource consulting firm Randstad NV taking a minority stake in that business. Owned by Apollo Global Management, CareerBuilder saw a decline in subscription renewals after the pandemic, from which it never recovered. Although the merger created one mega job board, sales continued to decline, with CareerBuilder’s revenue falling to $49.2 million in 2024, a 40% drop compared to 2023, according to Moody’s Ratings, as reported by Bloomberg.
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E-Commerce
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