Devlin Hartline

@ClubWPT *trip sevens

Pocket Eights Look Great - Until THIS Happens😱 John’s pocket eights look strong preflop, but Paul hits trip kings on the flop. Who takes the pot in this wild all-in showdown? For more #poker action follow us on @ClubWPT

Thaler Is Dead. Now for the AI Copyright Questions That Actually Matter. copyrightlately.com/thaler-is-dead… via @copyrightlately

The Milky Way as seen from @Space_Station, with stars as points, rising sun, and cities as golden streaks below. Taken with Nikon Z9, Sigma 14mm f1.4 lens, 15 seconds, f1.4, ISO 6400, with homemade orbital sidereal drive to compensate for orbital pitch rate (4 degrees/min)

If you're a law student diving into patent law, I've got you covered. Free Patently-O subscription for students. Just reach out and let me know you're enrolled. Happy to help you learn. patentlyo.com/login-2

It’s actually about massive copyright infringement.

@LeeHepner I can handle it when you call me names, but it's beyond nonprofessional when you do that to a federal judge simply because you disagree with him. My colleague @GusHurwitz has a good little piece on the excesses of the HSR requirements. networklawreview.org/hurwitz-merger…

One absolutely crazy part of the $1.5 billion Bartz v. Anthropic copyright settlement: Authors whose works were in Books3 - the pirated dataset Anthropic trained their models on, and on which the original complaint was based - aren't getting paid. Judge Alsup said that the Books3 dataset didn't have good enough metadata for the authors / titles to be reliably identified - so they don't get paid. There were 196,000 books in this dataset. Roughly 500,000 books that were included in the LibGen & PiLiMi pirate libraries that Anthropic downloaded (of 7 million total) are included in the settlement. Their authors will get ~$3,000 each. So if your book is in Books3, but is not also in the list of 500,000 books from LibGen / PiLiMi that met the class certification requirements, you don't get paid. To be clear, the settlement in general is a good thing - $1.5 billion flowing from the AI industry to the book industry on account of piracy. But is is sad that so many authors who should be getting paid won't be.

"Can ICE Enter a Home To Make an Arrest With Only an Administrative Warrant?" a deep dive for the law nerds new from me, posted over at Volokh. reason.com/volokh/2026/01…

I had a blast discussing the Cox v. Sony case with @zvisrosen, @bensheffner, & Jake Tracer. Thanks to all three panelists for the wonderful conversation! The video from this morning's webinar is now available on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=GVFyTj… Hope you can check it out!

The Supreme Court is set to weigh in on a major question at the intersection of copyright law and the internet: Can an ISP be held liable—and even “willful”— for knowing about user infringement and failing to terminate those users’ access? With Cox v. Sony Music now before the Court and oral argument set for December 1, the Justices will review a 4th Circuit decision that opened the door to massive copyright damages for ISPs that don’t aggressively police user activity. Join us TODAY at 11:00 am  for a Courthouse Steps breakdown of what happened in the courtroom and what this case could mean for the future of digital copyright enforcement. Featuring @devlinhartline and @zvisrosen Tune in: fedsoc.org/events/courtho…

Tomorrow at 11:00 AM ET: I'm excited to be discussing the Cox v. Sony oral argument with my favorite #copyright geek @zvisrosen at the "Courthouse Steps" webinar hosted by @FedSoc. I hope you can join us! Register here: fedsoc.org/events/courtho…

@McCoySmith Sure. Putative class members must meet the definitional requirements of the class. But I don't think the potential damages numbers are really important. The class certification and class-wide liability issues are what's needed to shut this nonsense down.

@devlinhartline To get to the $750 statutory amount though you have to satisfy 412(c). Otherwise it’s actual, which is going to be hard to show any substantial amount. The “name” authors probably can show pre registration, but that’s probably not going to get you huge multipliers.

“Given the size of the class and risk of statutory damages up to $150,000 per work, Anthropic faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential liability—a tremendous amount, particularly for an emerging company.” #copyright #FAFO

@McCoySmith As Judge Alsup said: "Instead of millions of separate lawsuits with millions of juries, we will have a single proceeding before a single jury, Napster style." Anthropic shouldn't benefit from the scale of its wrongdoing. Even if damages are at the minimum $750/work, authors win.

@McCoySmith Gotcha. But I think Judge Alsup is correct in recognizing that common questions predominate and complete relief is not possible without class certification. I have no sympathy for infringers arguing that their wrongs are so great that a concerted response is not possible.

@McCoySmith Registration status seems simple since it's binary and objective. The fair use issue seems to me more particularized and perhaps more problematic. Judge Alsup discusses these issues in his order granting class certification: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

@devlinhartline 17 U.S. Code § 412(b) gonna be a problem for that theory.

@neilturkewitz Those arguments certainly used to work, so it's no surprise they're being recycled here. But thankfully the courts aren't coddling "the internet" like it's 1999. The tech companies are just big mad that the rules for everyone else are now being applied to them.

@devlinhartline Responsibility and consent are so elitist. So bourgeois. So 20th century. Such a downer. Wake up dude. Permissionless innovation is where it’s at. There’s no looking backward—history is for losers.

Let me translate: “how come no one told us that there could be consequences for ignoring creators while using their works to build our products? It’s not fair. I mean…what we were doing was fair, what’s happening to us is unfair. Can’t we just take something down when notified?

@neilturkewitz Not sure why the link didn't work. Here's Judge Alsup's order on class certification: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…

@neilturkewitz Imagine knowingly risking your company's fate by downloading millions of copyrighted works from pirate sites and then complaining that your company's fate is now at risk because of those choices. #copyright #FAFO gov.uscourts.cand.434709.244.0_2.pdf