But the company is still on the hook and must now go to trial over how it acquired those books by downloading them from online “shadow libraries” of pirated copies.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup of San Francisco said in a ruling filed late Monday that the AI system’s distilling from thousands of written works to be able to produce its own passages of text qualified as “fair use” under U.S. copyright law because it was “quintessentially transformative.”

“Like any reader aspiring to be a writer, Anthropic’s (AI large language models) trained upon works not to race ahead and replicate or supplant them — but to turn a hard corner and create something different,” Alsup wrote.

But while dismissing a key claim made by the group of authors who sued the company for copyright infringement last year, Alsup also said Anthropic must still go to trial in December over its alleged theft of their works.

“Anthropic had no entitlement to use pirated copies for its central library,” Alsup wrote.

A trio of writers — Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson — alleged in their lawsuit last summer that Anthropic’s practices amounted to “large-scale theft,” and that the company “seeks to profit from strip-mining the human expression and ingenuity behind each one of those works.”

As the case proceeded over the past year in San Francisco’s federal court, documents disclosed in court showed Anthropic’s internal concerns about the legality of their use of online repositories of pirated works. So the company later shifted its approach and attempted to purchase copies of digitized books.

“That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for the theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages,” Alsup wrote.

The ruling could set a precedent for similar lawsuits that have piled up against Anthropic competitor OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, as well as against Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

Anthropic — founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021 — has marketed itself as the more responsible and safety-focused developer of generative AI models that can compose emails, summarize documents and interact with people in a natural way.

But the lawsuit filed last year alleged that Anthropic’s actions “have made a mockery of its lofty goals” by tapping into repositories of pirated writings to build its AI product.

Anthropic said Tuesday it was pleased that the judge recognized that AI training was transformative and consistent with “copyright’s purpose in enabling creativity and fostering scientific progress.” Its statement didn’t address the piracy claims.

The authors’ attorneys declined comment.

Universal Music Group has opened its second physical retail location globally, launching the UMusic Shop inside its UMusic Hotel in Madrid.

The Madrid shop joins Universal Music’s existing retail presence in Tokyo’s Harajuku district, where the company operates a flagship store.

The two-floor Madrid store will open on July 8 to coincide with the city’s Mad Cool Festival, with performances from UMG artists.

The development arrives nearly three years after UMG opened the doors to UMusic Hotel Madrid in November 2022.

The first ever UMG hotel, with 130 rooms and suites, is located inside the historic Albéniz Theater building in the Spanish capital.

The new UMusic Shop features high-fidelity audio systems, digital displays and curated merchandise including vinyl records, apparel and artist-specific products from Universal Music’s catalog.

It also houses a café corner offering refreshments, as well as fitting rooms and modular displays to accommodate brand collaborations.

A press release from UMusic said the Shop would “combine the sale of exclusive products with immersive music experiences for dedicated music superfans”.

“At UMusic Hotels, we’re always exploring new ways to bring fans closer to the music and the artists they love, while delivering an exceptional entertainment, retail and hospitality experience.”

Jordi Solé, UMusic Hotels

Universal Music Japan opened the Harajuku store in October 2023 as a concept retail store and as a hub for “UMG artists and fans from around the world to connect offline.” Spanning four floors, the shop features dedicated fan experiences, product launches, and retail pop-up shops.

UMG describes the Madrid shop as “more than a retail move – it’s a cultural statement.”

“The UMusic Shop is more than a store; it’s a space for discovery, inspiration, and fan connection. We’re proud to bring this vision to life in Madrid, and it’s only the beginning.”

Jordi Solé, UMusic Hotels

Jordi Solé, President, UMusic Hotels, said: “At UMusic Hotels, we’re always exploring new ways to bring fans closer to the music and the artists they love, while delivering an exceptional entertainment, retail and hospitality experience.”

“The UMusic Shop is more than a store; it’s a space for discovery, inspiration, and fan connection. We’re proud to bring this vision to life in Madrid, and it’s only the beginning.”

Universal’s growing presence in direct-to-fan retail tallies with the company’s ongoing strategy surrounding ‘superfans’.

In January, Sir Lucian Grainge, CEO & Chairman of UMG, wrote: “This year will see us expanding our product offerings to fans, as we continue to redefine the ‘merch’ category and create superfan collectibles and experiences.

“Some of this will be done through our current partners and some through our own D2C channels, which we will continue scaling to meet the massive appetite of fans.”

Meanwhile, Universal Music Group has outlined expansion plans for additional UMusic Hotels across Europe, the US and Latin America.

Originally, UMG announced in 2020 that Atlanta, Georgia; Biloxi, Mississippi; and Orlando, Florida would house the first three locations through a previously announced joint venture with entertainment investment group Dakia U-Ventures. Madrid ultimately became the debut property instead.

UMG launched the UMusic Hotels brand in October 2020, at a time when the hotel industry and the whole hospitality sector was still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.Music Business Worldwide

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Donald Trump lashed out at both Israel and Iran as he battled to preserve the fragile truce agreed after 12 days of war between two of the Middle East’s most powerful militaries.

The ceasefire brokered by the US president appeared to be holding on Tuesday evening despite what Trump denounced as violations by both sides, which led him to issue a rare rebuke of the Israeli government.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” he told reporters at the White House before leaving for a Nato summit in the Netherlands.

The outbreak of a full-blown war between Israel and Iran has long been one of the region’s worst-case scenarios amid fears it would spill across borders and engulf the entire region.

Trump added that he was “really unhappy” with Israel in particular, but insisted that “the ceasefire is in effect”.

He had triumphantly declared the end of hostilities between the two countries on Monday.

The president promised to usher in new era of peace in the region after 48 hours in which the US claimed to have destroyed Iran’s principal nuclear sites and Tehran staged a largely symbolic retaliation against the largest US air base in the Middle East.

But in the hours before the ceasefire took effect early in the morning, Israel said it had killed “hundreds” of Iranian security personnel in bombing raids in Tehran, while an Iranian missile pierced Israeli air defences, hitting a residential building in Beersheba, killing at least four people.

After the truce came into force, Iran fired three further missiles, according to Israeli officials. The attacks left no casualties, but sparked outrage in Israel, which dispatched bombers in retaliation and struck an Iranian radar station.

“ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” Trump posted on his Truth Social network as the US mobilised its diplomatic efforts to halt the conflict. “IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”

After a conversation between the US president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel said it had “refrained from additional attacks”.

Netanyahu’s office added: “President Trump expressed his great appreciation for Israel, which achieved all of its objectives for the war, as well as his confidence in the stability of the ceasefire.”

Trump said on the flight to the summit that he thought the ceasefire would be in place “for a long time”, adding that he respected “very greatly” Israel’s decision to “hold back the planes”.

While maintaining that Iran had also breached the truce, he offered conciliatory gestures towards Tehran’s leaders, adding that the country was “going to do well and . . . not going to have a nuclear weapon”.

The president said he was not looking for regime change in Iran, despite floating that possibility on Sunday.

“I don’t want it. I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible,” he told reporters on Air Force One.

“Regime change takes chaos and ideally we don’t want to see so much chaos. So we’ll see how it goes.”

Trump also said China could “now continue to purchase oil from Iran”, in an apparent reversal of policy after his administration spent months imposing sanctions on Chinese refineries for buying Iranian crude.

Vice-President JD Vance sought to portray Trump’s rapidly shifting positions on the crisis in the Middle East as a “foreign policy doctrine” that would “change the country (and the world) for the better”. He added that the focus on US interests would involve “no mission creep” or protracted, ill defined ‘nation building’ BS”.

In a move Trump hailed as “great”, oil prices fell as Tuesday’s ceasefire appeared to take hold, trading 6.1 per cent lower at $67.13 a barrel.

Crude had dropped sharply following Iran’s attack on the US air base in Doha, which traders interpreted as designed to avoid a further response from the US.

Netanyahu launched Israel’s military campaign against Iran nearly two weeks ago, vowing to eliminate what he said was a threat from Tehran’s missile and nuclear programmes. Iran has maintained its nuclear programme is peaceful.

Today, we face new challenges: winning the global AI race and fueling an American manufacturing renaissance.

Doing so requires an enormous amount of electricity—much more than America can generate today. It’s an undertaking that will take Herculean efforts of infrastructure building unlike anything we’ve seen since the end of World War II.

To maintain American dominance on a global stage, the U.S. 450 gigawatts of generation over the next five years—to put that in perspective, that’s the equivalent of adding enough generation to power 75 Miami metro areas or 11 Floridas. For context, just over 40 gigawatts of new natural gas and nuclear has been built over the last five years in the U.S.

Now is not the time to take options off the table. The stakes are too high. Finishing second in artificial intelligence cannot be an option. Nor should squandering an opportunity to create American jobs.

Clean energy tax credits

It’s why the debate over clean energy tax credits cannot be just about renewable energy. It’s much more than that. It’s about whether we want to turn our backs on the only forms of power generation available at scale at a time when the U.S. needs every electron it can get.

I say this not as an ideologue, but as the CEO of the country’s largest electric provider and America’s quintessential all-forms-of-energy company.

NextEra Energy is not just a leader in home-grown renewables. We own and operate more natural gas power plants than anyone in America. We also operate one of the nation’s largest nuclear fleets. We own pipelines and a natural gas extraction business. Our sole abiding interest is delivering low-cost energy to our customers as quickly as possible.

It’s clear Congress —we’re not here to debate that. But for the sake of America’s power supply, economy, and national security, we urge lawmakers to take a measured approach.

Because new nuclear power plants are not available until the mid-2030s and traditional power plants take years to build and turbines , a full-stop, immediate elimination of credits or a change to start of construction would effectively shut off America’s supply of new power plants through the end of the decade.

Until then, America’s only option is to build wind, solar, and battery storage—which can serve as a bridge while we expand traditional power plant supply chains and workforces.

Lower energy costs

Last week’s Senate Finance Committee acknowledges this reality and offers a pragmatic approach to phasing out the clean energy credits, recognizing that businesses signed contracts and made enormous capital decisions based on current law. By some estimates, over $1 trillion of U.S. energy infrastructure investments could be put at risk.

Practical, commonsense provisions, like tying credits to the start of construction as they are phased out, provide a runway to finish projects and put much-needed electrons onto the grid while keeping power prices low for American homes and businesses.

Remember, energy companies do not get the credits—they flow directly to American homeowners and business owners through lower energy costs. And in rural communities across America, renewable and storage projects inject significant tax revenue often used for essential services like police, schools, and roads.

Investing in American infrastructure and putting our country first should not divide us. We should be united about what’s at stake, compromise in deference to the facts, and work together to build what America needs.

We have a golden opportunity to meet this uniquely American moment. Let’s come together and get this right for America.

John Ketchum is the chairman and CEO of NextEra Energy, one of the largest electric power and energy infrastructure companies in North America.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

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