Anthropic Bought and Shredded 300,000 Physical Korean Books for AI Training Following Digital Piracy Lawsuit

Anthropic illegally downloaded digital copies of at least 22 books by 15 Korean authors, including three works by Nobel laureate Han Kang, before transitioning to a massive physical book acquisition program. Court documents from the Bartz v. Anthropic copyright lawsuit reveal the company subsequently purchased an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 physical Korean-language books from wholesale distributor Woongjin Booxen. Under an internal initiative named "Project Panama," Anthropic scanned the physical books in bulk to train its AI models before shredding and discarding the physical copies. A U.S. court ordered Anthropic to compensate rights holders $3,000 for each eligible pirated digital work, with compensation claims filed for 440,490 of the 482,460 eligible works as of April 16. Woongjin Booxen stated it has since halted all transactions with AI companies following the controversy, noting the Anthropic deal generated an estimated $2.46 million in overseas sales. "Korea is effectively shifting from a producer of knowledge to a supplier of raw knowledge and a consumer of AI services." — Prof. Seo Yong-seok.