US music publishers suing Anthropic make their case against AI 'fair use'; Reuters, March 24, 2026

 Blake Brittain , Reuters; US music publishers suing Anthropic make their case against AI 'fair use'

"Music publishers Universal Music Group , Concord and ABKCO have asked a judge in California to rule that U.S. copyright law does not insulate artificial intelligence startup Anthropic from ​liability for copying their song lyrics to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude.

The publishers' request , filed on Monday ‌in federal court in San Jose, tees up a critical question in the legal battle between creators and tech companies: Does the doctrine of "fair use" apply to the copying of millions of copyrighted works to train AI models?"

Brands Adopt ‘No AI’ Disclaimers to Stand Out Amid the Slop; Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2026

Patrick Coffee, Wall Street Journal; Brands Adopt ‘No AI’ Disclaimers to Stand Out Amid the Slop

Marketers move to get ahead of growing consumer skepticism by labeling content that doesn’t use AI

"As the AI-generated imagery and video colloquially called slop spreads across social media and video feeds, marketers are going out of their way to tell consumers they’re not to blame.

For some, it’s part of a message about authenticity that they want to send to their customers.

“We commit: No AI generated bodies or people,” promised a campaign last month from Aerie, the intimate apparel brand owned by American Eagle Outfitters."

Contentious House USPTO Oversight Hearing Centers on PTAB Reforms, Trump’s Political Influence; IP Watchdog, March 25, 2026

STEVE BRACHMANN, IP Watchdog; Contentious House USPTO Oversight Hearing Centers on PTAB Reforms, Trump’s Political Influence

"Today, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet conducted its first oversight hearing of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) during the second Trump Administration. The harshest lines of questioning for USPTO Director John Squires during the hearing were reserved for the agency’s notice of proposed rulemaking(NPRM) to reform rules of practice at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) as well as President Trump’s political influence at the agency. During the hearing, Squires also confirmed that the agency’s Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC) would soon be revived, following an offer to join PPAC extended last night to an undisclosed independent inventor...

The full House Judiciary Committee’s Ranking Member, Jamie Raskin (D-MD), also hammered Director Squires on President Trump’s influence, raising questions throughout the hearing about the USPTO’s role in filing two trademark applications for “Board of Peace” on behalf of President Trump...

Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s (D-CA) concerns over Squires’ PTAB reforms involved not just the centralization of decision-making authority over IPR proceedings but the lack of explanation for decisions to not institute or de-institute stemming from what Lofgren called “barebones summary denials.” Squires responded that PTAB judges work from a record of more than 600 written decisions, and that controversial reforms like settled expectations have cut both ways in favor of patent owners and challengers. However, Lofgren commented that the 64% of IPRs discretionarily denied under Director Squires was due to the adoption of discretionary considerations and a centralized Director review process acting as barriers that Congress never envisioned."

Anthropic Suddenly Cares Intensely About Intellectual Property After Realizing With Horror That It Accidentally Leaked Claude’s Source Code; Futurism, April 3, 2026

 Frank Landymore, Futurism; Anthropic Suddenly Cares Intensely About Intellectual Property After Realizing With Horror That It Accidentally Leaked Claude’s Source Code

"The AI industry largely acts as if it’s above lowly copyright laws — unless, of course, those laws happen to be protecting its own interests.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Anthropic is scrambling to contain a leak of its Claude Code AI model’s source code by issuing a copyright takedown request for more than 8,000 copies of it — a gallingly ironic stance for the company to be taking, considering how it trained its models in the first place.

The leak isn’t considered to be an outright disaster; no customer data was exposed, Anthropic says, nor were the internal mathematical “weights” that determine how the AI “learns” and which distinguish it from other models. But it did expose the techniques its engineers used to get its AI model to act as an autonomous agent, a form of digital infrastructure coders call a harness, and other tricks for making the AI operate as seamlessly as it does.

Hence Anthropic’s copyright takedown request, which targets the thousands of copies that were shared on GitHub. It later narrowed its request from 8,000 copies to 96 copies, according to the WSJ reporting, claiming that the initial one covered more accounts than intended.

It’s certainly within Anthropic’s right to issue the takedown request, but the hypocrisy of Anthropic running to the law to protect its intellectual property is plain to see, especially for a company that’s relentlessly positioned itself as the ethical adult in the room."

Claude's Constitution; Anthropic, January 21, 2026

 Anthropic, Claude's Constitution

Our vision for Claude's character

"Claude’s constitution is a detailed description of Anthropic’s intentions for Claude’s values and behavior. It plays a crucial role in our training process, and its content directly shapes Claude’s behavior. It’s also the final authority on our vision for Claude, and our aim is for all of our other guidance and training to be consistent with it.

Training models is a difficult task, and Claude’s behavior might not always reflect the constitution’s ideals. We will be open—for example, in our system cards—about the ways in which Claude’s behavior comes apart from our intentions. But we think transparency about those intentions is important regardless.

The document is written with Claude as its primary audience, so it might read differently than you’d expect. For example, it’s optimized for precision over accessibility, and it covers various topics that may be of less interest to human readers. We also discuss Claude in terms normally reserved for humans (e.g., “virtue,” “wisdom”). We do this because we expect Claude’s reasoning to draw on human concepts by default, given the role of human text in Claude’s training; and we think encouraging Claude to embrace certain human-like qualities may be actively desirable.

This constitution is written for our mainline, general-access Claude models. We have some models built for specialized uses that don’t fully fit this constitution; as we continue to develop products for specialized use cases, we will continue to evaluate how to best ensure our models meet the core objectives outlined in this constitution.

For a summary of the constitution, and for more discussion of how we’re thinking about it, see our blog post “Claude’s new constitution.”

Powerful AI models will be a new kind of force in the world, and people creating them have a chance to help them embody the best in humanity. We hope this constitution is a step in that direction.

We’re releasing Claude’s constitution in full under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Deed, meaning it can be freely used by anyone for any purpose without asking for permission.

Many people at Anthropic and beyond contributed to the creation of this document, as did several Claude models. Amanda Askell is the primary author and wrote the majority of the text. Joe Carlsmith wrote significant parts of many sections and played a core role in revising the text. Chris Olah, Jared Kaplan, and Holden Karnofsky made significant contributions to its content and development. More detailed contribution statement and acknowledgments below.

The preface and the acknowledgements are not part of the official constitution."

The Catholic Priest Who Helped Write Anthropic’s A.I. Ethics Code; Observer, March 31, 2026

Alexandra Tremayne-Pengelly , Observer; The Catholic Priest Who Helped Write Anthropic’s A.I. Ethics Code

"Father Brendan McGuire is writing a novel about a disenchanted monk and his A.I. companion. He’s doing it with Claude. That detail—a Catholic priest using Anthropic’s chatbot to explore questions of faith and artificial consciousness—tells you something about where Silicon Valley’s moral reckoning has arrived. McGuire, 60, leads St. Simon Catholic Parish in Los Altos, Calif., a congregation that counts some of the Valley’s A.I. researchers among its members. Earlier this year, he and a group of faith leaders helped Anthropic shape the Claude Constitution, the set of guiding principles governing how its A.I. behaves.

He is not, in other words, an outside critic. He is something more complicated: a true believer in both God and technology, trying to hold them in the same hand. “I left the tech industry, but it never really left me,” McGuire told Observer...

McGuire wasn’t Anthropic’s only religious collaborator. Bishop Paul Tighe of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education and Brian Patrick Green, a technology ethics director at Santa Clara University, also reviewed the Claude Constitution. Green and other Catholic scholars recently filed a federal court brief supporting Anthropic in its lawsuit against the U.S. government, which challenges the company’s effective blacklisting by the Pentagon after it refused to allow its A.I. systems to be used for autonomous warfare or domestic surveillance. The brief praised those ethical limits as “minimal standards of ethical conduct for technical progress.”...

Anthropic says its engagement with religious voices—part of a broader effort to engage a wide variety of communities to keep pace with technological acceleration—is only a beginning. The company plans to expand outreach beyond Catholic institutions to other religious leaders going forward."

What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots; The New York Times, April 4, 2026

  

Kashmir Hill

Photographs by Frances F. Denny

, The New York Times ; What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots

"There are a growing number of companies offering social chatbots that can act like friends, enemies, lovers, adventurous companions, or the manifestation of a fictional or real person you’ve always wanted to meet. You can pick A.I. Elon Musk’s brain or spar with A.I. Draco Malfoy. The myriad characters, often created by fellow users, offer drama, romance, therapy and LOLs.

Apps that feature role-playing chatbots are used by tens of millions of people, with engagement times that rival or surpass those of social media behemoths such as TikTok, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The majority of teens surveyed by Pew use A.I. chatbots, with one out of 11 saying they had used Character.AI.

“If you think your child is not talking to chatbot companions, you’re probably wrong,” said Mitch Prinstein, co-director of the Winston Center on Technology and Brain Development at U.N.C. Chapel Hill.

Chatbots are surging in popularity as society is still grappling with how social media has affected young people; a wave of lawsuits is moving through the courts seeking damages from companies that plaintiffs say have deliberately created addictive products. (A jury in California recently found that Meta and YouTube were liable for $6 million in damages to one young woman.) And now parents and caregivers have a new attention-absorbing technology to reckon with.

At the beginning of last year, a high school teacher in Chicago told me that some of her students were dating chatbots, and she worried that they were having their first erotic experiences with them. I wanted to find out what teens had to say about that, so I joined communities devoted to social chatbot apps on the online messaging forum Discord. I introduced myself as a reporter and “an old,” and explained that I was interested in talking to young people who used the services regularly."

Small Kansas town gets its first library after mysterious donation; CBS, April 4, 2026

 [Video] CBS; Small Kansas town gets its first library after mysterious donation

"Frontenac, Kansas, is a community of 3,000 residents. When its city administrator received a mysterious $4.6 million dolllar donation from a couple whose dying wish was for a library to be built, the town sprung into action to solidify its legacy."

A folk musician became a target for AI fakes and a copyright troll; The Verge, April 4, 2026

Terrence O'Brien, The Verge; A folk musician became a target for AI fakes and a copyright troll

"The worlds of generative AI, music distribution, and copyright are complex with multiple points of failure and opportunities for abuse."

Mysterious donation gives small Kansas town its first public library; CBS News, April 4, 2026

 

Elissa Candiotti , CBS News; Mysterious donation gives small Kansas town its first public library

[Kip Currier: Incredibly inspiring story underscoring the positive impacts that one person -- or in this case two people, a librarian and her husband -- can have on the world.

Keep this story in mind and pass it along to anyone who questions the value of and need for libraries in our communities.]

"For over 140 years, the small town of Frontenac, Kansas had almost everything its 3,000 residents needed – except a public library. 

All that changed when city administrator John Zafuta got an unexpected phone call in 2019. 

"It was a surprise," Zafuta said. "An attorney told us that we were the sole beneficiary of the Tavella family trust."

Richard and Jeanette Tavella had both grown up in Frontenac before moving north to Kansas City, where Jeanette worked as a librarian until her death in 2019. Richard had died the year before. The couple wanted to use their parting gift to write a new legacy in their hometown. The town would receive $4.6 million from their estate, and use it to build Frontenac's first public library...

Building a space for community 

Seth Nutt, a teacher, historian and Frontenac native, was brought on as the library's director...

Today, its shelves hold over 17,000 titles. The library also hosts activities catered to different age groups, including story time for children, cooking classes for teens and book clubs for adults. It's also home to the McKay Street Coffeehouse and the Heritage Hall Museum. The museum is the first dedicated exclusively to Frontenac's history, and is also overseen by Nutt. 

"You hear people debate, do you need a library, do you not? And once you see it, and once you see how involved the community is with it, we've definitely needed it," said fire lieutenant and building inspector Justin Ziesenis, who had brought his six-year-old daughter to the library to pick out books. 

"I think it has made a difference in this community. It's drawing more people here, and more students are getting involved with reading books," said eighth-grader Rylinn Girth-Barnow, who had come to the library for a cooking class."

Copyright Head Chides Supreme Court’s ‘Shocking’ Cox Opinion; Bloomberg Law, April 3, 2026

Annelise Levy

 , Bloomberg Law; Copyright Head Chides Supreme Court’s ‘Shocking’ Cox Opinion

"US Copyright Office Director Shira Perlmutter said the Supreme Court put “little thought” into the implications of its recent decision absolving an internet service provider for not shuttering accounts of users who repeatedly pirated music.

"The throwing out of many, many decades of copyright law on secondary liability so quickly and with so little analysis was shocking," Perlmutter said Friday at a Stanford Law School event."

AI agents are scrambling power users' brains; Axios, April 4, 2026

 Megan Morrone, Axios ; AI agents are scrambling power users' brains

"A growing number of software developers say AI coding tools are frying their brains. 

The big picture: The most popular agentic AI systems have triggered something that looks a lot like addiction among some of tech's highest performers."

‘Occasionally a picture can change the course of history’: 33 scandalous photos that shocked the world; The Guardian, April 4, 2026

Gaby Hinsliff, The Guardian; ‘Occasionally a picture can change the course of history’: 33 scandalous photos that shocked the world 

"The Bullingdon Club photograph, 1987

By Rona Marsden

In 2007, the Mail on Sunday published a photograph taken 20 years earlier: a group portrait of the Bullingdon Club’s class of 1987. Ten young members appear in the bespoke uniform of the exclusive all-male “dining club” at the University of Oxford. Among them are two future luminaries of the Conservative party: David Cameron (standing, second left) and Boris Johnson (seated on the right).

The club’s reputation as a drinking society for badly behaved posh boys – in 1987, a plant pot was thrown out of a window during a Bullingdon party – made the photo a source of embarrassment for Cameron, then leader of the opposition. “We do things when we are young that we deeply regret,” he said in 2009.

Soon after, the company that holds the copyright for the image withdrew permission to republish it. This painting by Oxford-based artist Rona Marsden was commissioned by BBC Newsnight as an alternative. The image remains a striking illustration of the elitism of Britain’s ruling class, and the vast inequality within the country. GS"

AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear.; The Wall Street Journal, April 2, 2026

 Bernie Sanders , The Wall Street Journal; AI Is a Threat to Everything the American People Hold Dear. It kills jobs, equality, connection, democracy and maybe the human race. Congress must act.

"The American people are deeply apprehensive about the impact that artificial intelligence will have on their lives. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 55% of Americans think AI will do more harm than good, 70% think AI will lead to fewer jobs, and only 5% think AI development is being led by people and organizations that represent their interests.

In the midst of all of this deep concern about the future of AI, 74% of Americans think the government isn't doing enough to regulate the use of AI."

OpenAI Buys Streaming Show ‘TBPN,’ Aiming to Change Narrative on A.I.; The New York Times, April 2, 2026

 Mike Isaac, The New York Times ; OpenAI Buys Streaming Show ‘TBPN,’ Aiming to Change Narrative on A.I.

"On Thursday, OpenAI said it had bought “TBPN” for an undisclosed amount and would continue to support it as the show promoted the business of technology and media."

Sanctions ramping up in cases involving AI hallucinations; ABA Journal, April 2, 2026

 AMANDA ROBERT, ABA Journal ; Sanctions ramping up in cases involving AI hallucinations

"The use of monetary sanctions against attorneys is seemingly on the rise as courts continue to address artificial intelligence-generated hallucinations in case documents."

Exclusive: Trump's DOJ says he's not required to turn over official records; Axios, April 1, 2026

 Alex Isenstadt , Axios; Exclusive: Trump's DOJ says he's not required to turn over official records

[Kip Currier: This is an appalling anti-democratic determination by Trump 2.0's DOJ. The post-Watergate Presidential Records Act of 1978 was enacted through bipartisan legislating, signed into law by President Jimmy Carter, to curb government corruption and promote transparency, in the wake of actions by Pres. Richard M. Nixon and his administration. The Act codifies that presidential records are the property of the federal government, not the President and the Executive Branch, and are public records.

Democratically-elected officials must be accountable to their citizenries. The Presidential Records Act represents a vital means, among others, for holding Presidents and their administrations accountable for their actions by ensuring preservation of and access to their records by present and future generations.]

"President Trump's Justice Department has concluded that a federal law requiring presidential records to be turned over to the government is unconstitutional, a senior White House official tells Axios.

Why it matters: The finding is an indication Trump will be reluctant to give all of his official records to the National Archives at the end of his term, as presidents have done for nearly a half-century under the Presidential Records Act of 1978.

The law, passed in the post-Watergate era as a hedge against government corruption, states that every official record regarding a president's decisions or policies belongs to the U.S. government, not the president."

Library Director in Tennessee Fired for Refusing to Move Gender-Themed Books; The New York Times, April 2, 2026

 Emily Cochrane and Sonia A. Rao, The New York Times ; Library Director in Tennessee Fired for Refusing to Move Gender-Themed Books

The director, Luanne James, was fired at a board meeting for the Rutherford County Library System on Monday after she refused to move certain books to the adult section.

"It is still an uncertain moment for Ms. James, who had taken the position believing it would be where she would finish out her career. And she remains overwhelmed by both the scrutiny and public attention, even if there is nothing she would do differently.

“I’m just a librarian,” she said. “That’s who I am.”"

AI gaps in the boardroom are becoming a reputational risk; Axios, April 2, 2026

 Eleanor Hawkins, Axios; AI gaps in the boardroom are becoming a reputational risk

"The big picture: Companies across every industry are being forced into rapid AI-driven transformation, but many corporate boards lack the expertise to guide strategy, manage risk or communicate decisions credibly to stakeholders.

By the numbers: Only 39% of Fortune 100 boards have any form of AI oversight, such as committees, a director with AI expertise, or an ethics board, according to McKinsey research.

Another recent report found that only 13% of S&P 500 companies have at least one director with AI-related expertise.

Similarly, McKinsey's survey of directors found that 66% say their boards have "limited to no knowledge or experience" with AI, and nearly one in three say AI does not even appear on their agendas.

And a report from the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) found that only 17% have established an AI education plan for directors, and 6% have a dedicated committee to oversee AI.

Between the lines: Having an AI-savvy board is a major competitive advantage, according to a recent MIT study."

The Supreme Court’s Decision on Indirect Internet Copyright Liability Could Have Far-Reaching Effects; The National Law Review, April 1, 2026

 Jeffrey D. Dyess, Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP , The National Law Review ; The Supreme Court’s Decision on Indirect Internet Copyright Liability Could Have Far-Reaching Effects

"On March 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision that will reshape not only how copyright law applies to the internet for years to come, but could impact other areas of intellectual property law as well. In Cox Communications, Inc. v. Sony Music Entertainment, the Court held that internet service providers cannot be held indirectly liable for their customers’ copyright infringement simply because the ISPs knew the infringement was happening but failed to prevent it. The decision reversed and remanded a billion-dollar judgment against ISP Cox Communications and drew a more clearly defined line around secondary copyright liability."

Anthropic boss makes big call on Australian copyright as artists say pay up; Australian Broadcasting Corporation, April 1, 2026

 Clare Armstrong , Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Anthropic boss makes big call on Australian copyright as artists say pay up

"In short:

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has told a Canberra forum AI is moving faster than any technological change before it.

Mr Amodei says he is not trying to change Australia's mind on copyright, is worried about AI in the hands of autocratic countries, and feels a tax on profits is inevitable.

What's next?

The $555 billion company behind AI program Claude is facing pushback from artists over the use of copyrighted material to train its technology."

USPTO announces agentic AI-assisted evaluator for patent eligibility determinations; United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), April 1, 2026

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ; USPTO announces agentic AI-assisted evaluator for patent eligibility determinations

"As part of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's (USPTO) continued efforts to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into agency operations—first with the Artificial Intelligence Search Automated Pilot Program, or “ASAP!,” for patent prior art references followed by the Trademark Classification Agentic Codification Tool, or “Class ACT,” for trademark searching—the USPTO today announced the first-of-its-kind agentic AI tool to assist in patent eligibility determinations under 35 U.S.C. §101. 

America’s Innovation Agency’s new AI system, termed “McConaughey Agentic Tasking Technology Helping Examiner Workload,” or “MATTHEW,” for short, will help examiners tackle the thorniest of eligibility questions as to whether claims presented are an abstract idea or a patent-eligible invention. “MATTHEW will greatly enhance our ability to make the close calls—or any call, really—as I herewith also suspend all applicable precedent, including Desjardins, Alice, and Mayo,” said USPTO Director John A. Squires. “Basically, in terms of eligibility, if MATTHEW says your invention is ‘Alright, Alright, Alright,’ then it’s ‘Alright, Alright, Alright’ with the USPTO.” 

“Initially, we had some concerns that we would be introducing a three-part test in place of the two-part test under Alice and Mayo, but I think we’ll be al…um, okay,” he continued.

“We want to equip our examiners—the best in the world at what they do—with the best tools to assist them,” said Director Squires. “In fact, MATTHEW was selected after careful evaluation of best-in-breed offerings, including the ‘Binary Eligibility Engaged Translation Language Environment Joint User Interface Computational Evaluator,’ or ‘BEETLEJUICE,’” he stated. “But the coders had some issues in testing when they said the name three times. I hope they’ll be al…um, okay,” remarked the Director. 

When asked if the USPTO licensed its tool in light of famed actor McConaughey’s recent Name Image and Likeness (NIL) ‘non-traditional’ registrations, Director Squires retorted, “Well, he’s the one who said, ‘trademark yourself!’—I think the Founders would have wanted this.” When asked if he had heard from Mr. McConaughey’s lawyers, Director Squires produced an unintelligible, guttural chanting sound and began rhythmically beating his chest with his fist.

For more information on this trailblazing AI system, please visit the USPTO website."

Anthropic Races to Contain Leak of Code Behind Claude AI Agent; The Wall Street Journal, April 1, 2026

  Sam Schechner, The Wall Street Journal; Anthropic Races to Contain Leak of Code Behind Claude AI Agent

Developer issues copyright takedown request in bid to prevent competitors from cloning coding tool’s features

"Anthropic is racing to contain the fallout after accidentally exposing the underlying instructions it uses to direct Claude Code, the popular artificial-intelligence agent app that has won the company an edge with developers and businesses.

By Wednesday morning, Anthropic representatives had used a copyright takedown request to force the removal of more than 8,000 copies and adaptations of the raw Claude Code instructions—known as source code—that developers had shared on programming platform GitHub."

Tennessee librarian fired for refusing to move LGBTQ books from children’s to adult section; The Hill, April 1, 2026

 LEXI LONAS COCHRAN, The Hill; Tennessee librarian fired for refusing to move LGBTQ books from children’s to adult section

"The Rutherford County Library Board in Tennessee fired its top librarian for refusing to move LBGTQ books out of the children’s section.  

The board voted 8-3 Monday to fire library system director Luanne James after she said she would not move more than 100 LGBTQ books from the children to the adult’s section, The Associated Press reported."

Taylor Swift Sued for Trademark Infringement Over ‘The Life of a Showgirl’; The Hollywood Reporter, March 30, 2026

Winston Cho , The Hollywood Reporter; Taylor Swift Sued for Trademark Infringement Over ‘The Life of a Showgirl’

Maren Wade owns the trademark for 'Confessions of a Showgirl.' She claims that the singer undermined her brand with the chart-topping album.

"Taylor Swift‘s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, has sparked a lawsuit from a writer, who accuses the singer of knowingly disregarding her claim to a similar name.

In a lawsuit filed on Monday in California federal court, Maren Wade brings claims for trademark infringement, false designation and unfair competition against Swift and UMG Recordings. She seeks unspecified damages and a court order barring the singer from continuing to use the name of her chart-topping album."

Copyright Law in 2025: Courts begin to draw lines around AI training, piracy, and market harm; Reuters, March 16, 2026

Edward D. Lanquist and Benjamin West Janke , Reuters; Copyright Law in 2025: Courts begin to draw lines around AI training, piracy, and market harm

"In 2025, U.S. courts issued the first substantive, merits-stage decisions addressing whether the use of copyrighted works to train generative artificial intelligence systems constitutes "fair use." Although these rulings do not settle all open questions — and in some respects highlight emerging judicial disagreements — they represent a significant inflection point in copyright law's response to large language models, image generators, and other foundation models.

Taken together, these cases establish early guideposts for AI developers, publishers, media companies, and enterprises deploying generative AI systems. Below, we summarize the most important copyright ​decisions and pending cases shaping the law in 2025...

Conclusion and recommendations

The ​2025 decisions reflect cautious but meaningful progress in defining how copyright law applies to generative AI. Courts are increasingly receptive to fair use arguments for training on lawfully acquired data, deeply skeptical of speculative market-harm claims, and uniformly intolerant of piracy. At the same time, cases involving direct competition, news content, and human likeness may test the limits of these early rulings."

I broke up with my Kindle. My new e-reader treats me better.; The Washington Post, March 31, 2026

 Michael J. Coren, The Washington Post; I broke up with my Kindle. My new e-reader treats me better.

After Amazon’s Kindle removed my ability to download and back up my own e-books, I went in search of an alternative.

"As corporate walled gardens have replaced the freewheeling, open internet of the 1990s and 2000s, we’ve ceded control over almost everything about our online experience. Nearly every keystroke, swipe and tap is now monitored, recorded and analyzed for potential profit.

The Kindle ecosystem is perhaps the apotheosis of this shift. One Guardian reporter found Amazon had recorded every title, highlight and page turn on her Kindle app (40,000 entries over two years). The company’s dominance sets the terms for everyone in the marketplace.

Including me. Like tens of millions of others, I have owned a Kindle (a Paperwhite). Last year, it started to feel as if it owned me. The final straw was when Kindle removed my ability to download and back up my own e-books. So I went in search of an alternative.

I bought a Kobo.

Was it the bibliophile Eden some Kobo fans described? Not quite. The reality was messier than I expected. It turns out we can’t escape Big Brother on our e-readers just yet. But a more open society is coming into view for book lovers — and perhaps all of us.

Here’s how to turn the page."