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Huge news in AI copyright world. Still reading the opinion, but encouraged that Judge Alsup got it right on training. Act I Scene 1 in a long drama, but a promising start.

Here’s Judge Alsup summing up his holdings:

And this is 90% of the ballgame:

He also agrees that regardless of alleged memorization, the key is that what LLMs use in their output is unprotected, public domain stuff.

Strikingly, in distinguishing Thomson v Ross Intelligence, Alsup’s characterization shows why that opinion was wrong on the merits. Copyright doesn’t recognize “proprietary systems,” and Thomson misused copyright to protect its monopoly. Love to see White v West get a cite, though!

The most remarkable thing in the opinion so far is its conclusion that format shifting is transformative, and it’s the most compelling argument for that proposition I’ve seen (sorry @davehansen.bsky.social and @kylekcourtney.bsky.social!). Zero citation to the Hachette v. Internet Archive case. Hmm.