A group of Canada’s largest news publishers is taking Anthropic to court. Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press filed suit in Ontario on October 6, Global News and MobileSyrup reported. They allege the company copied their content to develop its Claude models without a licence, and got around technical measures meant to stop that copying.
The claim goes beyond training. It says scraping of the publishers’ sites is ongoing, driven by what users ask Claude to do. None of the allegations have been tested in court, and the reporting didn’t say how much the publishers are seeking.
It’s the second time this group has gone after an AI company. The same publishers, plus CBC, sued OpenAI in 2024, and that case is still unresolved. They’ve also been pressing Ottawa to deal with AI and copyright directly, after the national AI strategy left the question alone.
The data centre fight
The lawsuit lands as Anthropic’s other Canadian story heats up. The company is the tenant for a proposed AI data centre near Port Hawkesbury, Cape Breton, owned by Halifax-based EverWind Fuels. The first phase is due online by the end of 2027, and the second in 2028.
A Change.org petition started by a local resident had about 11,800 signatures by October 19. It argues the benefits will go to “a select few” while Nova Scotians carry the costs. Both companies say they’ll pay for any upgrades the provincial power grid needs. There have also been protests in Halifax, and Hamilton has already rejected a large data centre proposal after public pushback.
Why it matters: Canada wants AI infrastructure built here. But the two fights AI companies face everywhere, over who gets paid for training data and who pays for the power, are now playing out in Ontario’s courts and on Cape Breton’s grid.
