Is copyright in America different to Britain? There, it is legal to download books you don't own. Only distribution is a crime, which most torrenters break by seeding.
I think it's very similar in both countries, but you have got it wrong. Downloading a book without permission is copyright infringement in both countries, regardless of whether you distribute it.
In the UK it's a criminal offense if you distribute a copyrighted work with the intent to make gain or with the expectation that the owner will make a loss.
Gain and loss are only financial in this context.
Meaning that in both countries the copyright owner can sue you for copyright infringement.
What relevance does that have to the present case? The judge, in this civil matter, said there would be a trial. He didn't say anything about it being a criminal trial. The strings 'crim' and 'felon' do not appear in the ruling.
We will have a trial on the pirated copies used to create Anthropic’s central library and the resulting damages, actual or statutory (including for willfulness).
There can always be a trial, even if nothing was done to warrant it.
I think the distinction between civil and criminal trials is smaller in my home country. The fact that there is a trial at all implies that someone commited a ‘crime’.
