The Setup: From Theory to "We're Just Talking"
Nvidia is in trouble. Not the market-kind or fab-capacity-kind. The legal kind.
In January 2026, authors filing a Nvidia copyright lawsuit revealed internal emails showing Nvidia employees contacted Anna's Archive — the world's largest shadow library — asking about high-speed access to millions of pirated books for AI training on pirated books. The alleged price: tens of thousands of dollars. The alleged warning: "These materials are illegally acquired and maintained." The alleged response: Nvidia management gave the "green light" within a week.
Nvidia's defense? Filing a motion to dismiss, arguing that discussing data sources isn't the same as using them. "Talking about potential copyrighted material," their lawyers essentially say, "doesn't prove we copied your books."
They're technically right about the legal standard. But procedurally, they might be in trouble.
The Original Claim: Books3 and Fair Use
March 2024: Authors Abdi Nazemian, Brian Keene, and Stewart O'Nan sued Nvidia for training its NeMo Megatron LLM models on the Books3 dataset — 196,000 books scraped from Bibliotik, a pirate site.
By mid-2024: Andre Dubus III and Susan Orlean joined. Hundreds more authors confirmed they'd file class action claims. This became a genuine AI copyright class action threat.
Nvidia's original defense (2024): Fair use. Training AI models on copyrighted material falls under fair use doctrine because the AI doesn't memorize or reproduce your work — it learns statistical patterns in aggregate.
Translation: "We didn't copy your book. We just taught a computer to understand writing patterns from millions of books including yours."
That was defensible legal theory. Courts had never settled whether AI training data legality falls under fair use, and there was academic and commercial consensus that it should.
The Amended Complaint: New Evidence Changes Everything
January 2026: Authors filed an expanded complaint with new allegations beyond Books3.
The bombshell: August 2023 internal emails.
According to filings in the Nazemian v. Nvidia case, a Nvidia data strategy team contacted Anna's Archive — which bills itself as "the largest shadow library in human history" with millions of books and research papers.
What the alleged emails show:
- Nvidia asked for "high-speed access" to Anna's Archive collections for Nvidia LLM training
- Anna's Archive offered ~500TB of data for tens of thousands of dollars
- Anna's Archive explicitly warned the materials were "illegally acquired and maintained"
- Nvidia management approved within a week
- Contact with other pirate sources: LibGen, Sci-Hub, Z-Library, and The Pile (an 800GB Books3 dataset compilation)
Authors also alleged Nvidia distributed scripts enabling customers to download The Pile, which could constitute contributory copyright infringement.
This changed the legal narrative.
It's one thing to say "we used a dataset that contains copyrighted material" (fair use debate). It's another to say "we knowingly contacted illegal sources, got warned they were illegal, and proceeded anyway." That suggests willfulness.
Nvidia's Motion to Dismiss: The "Talking Isn't Using" Defense
January 29, 2026: Nvidia filed its motion to dismiss, arguing the amended complaint is "speculative, vague, and legally insufficient."
Nvidia's core arguments:
1. No Proof of Actual Copying
"Plaintiffs do not allege facts showing that Nvidia copied any of their copyrighted works, when any such copying occurred, or which Nvidia models supposedly contain those works."
Translation: Show me your books in my models. You haven't.
2. Discussing ≠ Using
Internal discussions about purchasing access to pirate data don't prove Nvidia downloaded the specific books or included them in training. "It's equally plausible Nvidia did not obtain the Plaintiffs' works."
This is technically defensible. Contact with Anna's Archive doesn't automatically mean payment, download, or integration into training datasets.
3. Allegations "On Information and Belief" Aren't Enough
Nvidia argues authors are using discovery as a substitute for actual evidence. AI copyright infringement law requires plaintiffs to prove infringement before discovery, not hope discovery reveals it.
They're citing the plausibility standard from Ashcroft v. Iqbal — courts shouldn't assume facts not pled.
4. The Complaint Is Too Broad and Speculative
The amended complaint lumps together multiple Nvidia models (Megatron 345M, Retro-48B, InstructRetro, Nemotron-4 340B) without explaining which model was trained on which dataset or how plaintiffs' works ended up in each.
For Nemotron-4 340B training data, the argument essentially is: "The dataset was large and contained books, so our books must be in there." Nvidia calls this pure speculation.
5. No Predicate for Contributory Infringement
Providing tools or scripts to download The Pile doesn't create contributory copyright infringement without proof someone actually used those tools to infringe.
The Anna's Archive Complication
After TorrentFreak first reported the Nvidia emails, Anna's Archive posted on Reddit: "We've never dealt with Nvidia directly. They likely used an intermediary to avoid legal exposure."
This creates three possibilities:
- The emails discuss an intermediary, not direct contact — authors' evidence is weaker
- Anna's Archive is covering itself legally — which would be understandable
- The plaintiff's characterization is inaccurate — Nvidia's defense becomes stronger
Neither Nvidia (in its motion) nor authors (in their complaint) have publicly addressed this Reddit statement.
What the Evidence Actually Shows (and Doesn't Show)
Per the amended complaint, the alleged emails show:
- ✅ Nvidia employee interest in Anna's Archive data
- ✅ Discussion of pricing ("tens of thousands of dollars")
- ✅ Anna's Archive warning the material was illegal
- ✅ Nvidia management approval within days
What the emails allegedly don't show:
- ❌ Proof of payment
- ❌ Proof of download
- ❌ Proof specific books were obtained
- ❌ Proof those books ended up in LLM pre-training data
- ❌ Proof plaintiffs' specific books were involved
Nvidia's entire motion hinges on that gap: "Discussed pirated data source" ≠ "Actually copied our clients' works."
They're right about the legal standard. Copyright infringement requires:
- Ownership of copyright ✅ (Authors have this)
- Copying of the work ❓ (No direct proof yet)
- Substantial similarity ❓ (Hard to prove between a book and an AI model's learned parameters)
The Fair Use Argument (Noticeably Absent)
Nvidia's AI fair use defense from 2024 isn't part of this motion to dismiss. That's being saved for trial or summary judgment.
Why? Because a motion to dismiss argues the complaint doesn't state a legal claim at all — it's procedurally improper before evaluating the truth of allegations. Fair use is a substantive defense you argue after accepting the facts as alleged.
So Nvidia's strategy is:
First: Dismiss on technical grounds (you haven't pled sufficient facts).
If that fails: Win on fair use (even if you pled facts, we're allowed to use it).
It's a legal two-punch.
The Discovery Question: What Really Scares Nvidia
If the motion to dismiss is denied, discovery happens.
Discovery means Nvidia's lawyers must produce internal documents showing:
- Which datasets were actually used in each model
- Where those datasets came from
- What happened with the Anna's Archive contact
- Whether any 500TB of pirate data was actually downloaded
- What the "green light" email actually authorized
- Internal discussions about AI training data ethics
That's the real exposure. Nvidia's motion to dismiss buys them time and (in their hope) avoids opening the books entirely.
If they win the motion: Discovery never happens, case dismissed or narrowed, no internal docs revealed.
If they lose: Every internal conversation about pirate sources becomes public record in a lawsuit watched by every AI company, every author, and every tech journalist.
April 2, 2026: The Hearing
Judge Jon Tigar, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.
Likely outcomes:
- Motion fully granted: Case dismissed. Authors may appeal or attempt to refile with stronger factual allegations.
- Motion partially granted: Some claims dismissed (e.g., contributory infringement, overly broad model allegations) but AI training copyright infringement claim on Books3 survives. Discovery proceeds on narrower scope.
- Motion denied: Full discovery. Nvidia produces all training data sourcing documents. Authors get the evidence they need to survive summary judgment.
Most likely: Partial grant. The contributory infringement claim probably gets dismissed (providing tools ≠ infringement without proof of use). The direct infringement claim probably survives (Nvidia's motion might fail because the email evidence, if authentic, shows intent and knowledge, which helps overcome "equally plausible" arguments).
The Broader Context: Why This Matters Beyond Nvidia
Every AI company is watching this case.
Meta got caught with 81TB from Anna's Archive. Anthropic used Books3. The Pile is distributed widely. Every major generative AI legal risks company has faced these pressure: training data is scarce, quality pirate libraries are enormous, and the competitive advantage goes to whoever trains on the most comprehensive datasets.
The difference between companies isn't whether they considered pirate sources — they all did. The difference is how they handled that temptation:
- Some trained on pirate data and argued fair use (honest, legally defensible)
- Some declined pirate data and trained on licensed sources (safe, expensive)
- Some (allegedly) trained on pirate data and denied it (Nvidia's apparent position before these emails)
If the court allows this case to proceed to discovery on the basis of the Anna's Archive emails, the signal to every AI company is: "Don't leave email trails showing you contacted shadow libraries."
That doesn't stop the practice. It just makes companies more careful about documentation.
The Legal Analysis: Is Nvidia's Motion Actually Strong?
On paper? Yes. Legally, Nvidia's arguments are sound:
- Discussing data sources ≠ copyright infringement ✅
- Plaintiffs must allege sufficient facts of copying ✅
- Speculation about large datasets isn't enough ✅
But in practice? The emails change things.
If the court finds the email allegations plausible (which they might — Anna's Archive did exist, 500TB of pirated books is real, they did offer such services), then Nvidia's "it's equally plausible we didn't obtain the works" argument becomes weaker.
Why? Because the court can ask: "If you contacted the world's largest pirate library, got warned they were illegal, got management approval, and the CEO was under competitive pressure — what was the purpose of those emails if not to obtain the data?"
That's not proof of infringement. But it's enough to survive a motion to dismiss.
My Assessment
The emails are damning if authentic. Nvidia's legal argument is technically sound. Both can be true — one for the courtroom, one for the history books.
Contacting a shadow library isn't infringement. Discussing pricing isn't infringement. Being told something is illegal and proceeding anyway isn't infringement — until you actually copy something. Nvidia's lawyers have pitched their tent right in that narrow gap.
But the pattern — contact with Anna's Archive, warning about illegality, management approval within a week — begs a follow-up. "Equally plausible we didn't use it" falls apart when the documented intent was clearly to obtain access. You don't ask for express shipping on something you're not planning to open.
I suspect the court denies the motion to dismiss on the direct infringement claim, at least partially. The email evidence of intent and knowledge likely survives Ashcroft plausibility review. That triggers discovery.
Once discovery opens, Nvidia's real problem emerges: whether they actually paid for and downloaded from Anna's Archive, whether that data was integrated into training datasets, and whether plaintiffs' works are statistically present in the model.
If Nvidia can show they discussed it but never acted on it, they win. If they can show they obtained the data but used fair use AI models defense, they might still win.
But if discovery reveals they obtained, did not disclose, and are now denying it? That willfulness angle makes the AI copyright infringement case much worse.
What Happens Next: Three-Part Timeline
April 2, 2026: Hearing on motion to dismiss. Judge rules from the bench or takes it under advisement.
May 2026 (estimated): Written ruling. If denied, discovery deadlines set.
2026-2027: Discovery phase. Nvidia produces documents. Authors' lawyers dig through training data sourcing. Expect revelations.
2027+: Summary judgment motions, possible trial.
This case won't settle quickly. Nvidia's downside is too high (paying out to hundreds of thousands of authors for AI trained on pirated books). Authors' upside is too tempting (class action, statutory damages, potential punitive damages if willfulness is proved).
The Real Question: Why Wouldn't You Use It?
Here's what nags me about Nvidia's defense.
That email chain shows:
- Interest in 500TB of pirated books
- Discussion of "express access" for LLM training
- Anna's Archive warning: "Illegally acquired and maintained"
- Nvidia management gave "green light" within a week
Nvidia's defense is: "We might have just been exploring, never acted on it."
Sure. A trillion-dollar company in the middle of an AI arms race sends emails to the world's largest pirate library, negotiates pricing, gets management approval within a week, and then... walks away. Happens all the time.
That requires explanation. Either:
- You did proceed (in which case discovery will show it) and your motion fails
- You didn't proceed (in which case what was the business purpose of getting management approval to not proceed?)
- You proceeded but destroyed the evidence (illegal, and discoverable via emails showing you later deleted things)
- Legal counsel intervened and shut it down (possible, but then why is it in employee emails with "approval"?)
Nvidia's motion buys legal time. But the facts — if the court credits them as plausible — create an awkward situation where their own inaction (if true) requires explanation.
Technically defensible. Optically devastating. The lawyers might save the company, but someone still has to explain the emails at the next board meeting.
Bottom Line
April 2 is a procedural hearing, not the trial. But it's pivotal.
If Nvidia wins the motion: Case falls apart or gets narrowed to books they provably used, discovery minimized.
If authors survive: Nvidia has to explain those emails during discovery with lawyers deposing the "data strategy team" members and management who approved contact with pirate libraries.
That's when we find out if Nvidia Anna's Archive contact led to actual data transfer, whether Nemotron-4 340B and other models trained on obtained pirated materials, and whether Nvidia knowingly violated AI training copyright law while the rest of the industry watched.
Every AI company is hoping Nvidia wins. Because if they don't, every subsequent lawsuit will cite this case to survive motion-to-dismiss stage, and every company's shadow library contact emails become discoverable.
That's the real price Nvidia is risking here — not just the copyright lawsuit, but the precedent it sets for every other large language model copyright dispute.
---Sources: PC Gamer, Tom's Hardware, TorrentFreak, Cybernews, VideoCardz, Court filings (Nazemian v. Nvidia, N.D. California), Reddit (r/shadowlibraries), Wikipedia (Anna's Archive, Books3)
Disclaimer: This is analysis and opinion. Nvidia disputes the plaintiff's characterization of the emails and maintains it has not trained models on illegally obtained materials. The motion to dismiss hearing on April 2 will determine whether the complaint survives, which requires the court to evaluate the plausibility of the allegations, not their truth.
