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Some authors hoping to receive their share of Anthropic\u2019s $1.5 billion copyright settlement said they received surprising emails this week \u2014 emails informing them that someone else was making a claim on their payments.<\/p>\n
Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit<\/a> last year, after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use doctrine, but pirating that material was not. The deal received final approval<\/a> in July, allowing the payments to move forward.<\/p>\n Under the terms of the settlement, the authors of nearly 500,000 titles will be paid $3,000 for each pirated work. If the book is still in-print with a traditional publisher, the money will be split 50-50 between author and publisher. If the book was self-published, or if the publisher reverted the rights by allowing the book to go out-of-print, then the author should get the entire payment.<\/p>\n But writers have been posting on social media that publishers seem to be claiming more than their fair share of some payments. For example, mystery and thriller author April Henry asked<\/a>, \u201cWTF is HarperCollins playing at? They claimed one of my books on the Anthropic Settlement that reverted back at least 17 years ago AND on the same day I got a credit alert saying they had been added as my employer! (which they never were).\u201d<\/p>\n At the popular blog Writers Beware<\/a>, Victoria Strauss wrote that she\u2019s been receiving author complaints that fall into two broad categories: one where publishers are seeking payment for works that they no longer have a legitimate claim on (because the rights have reverted), and another where publishers are seeking a full 100% payment when they\u2019re only entitled to 50%.<\/p>\n In both cases, Strauss said she\u2019s \u201creluctant to attribute to malice what can be plausibly explained by poor recordkeeping\u201d \u2014 and she noted that some publishers have already said this is a mistake that they\u2019ve asked Anthropic to fix.<\/p>\n Similarly, Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger told The New York Times<\/a> that she doesn\u2019t see this as \u201ca grab by the publishers\u201d and that she doesn\u2019t believe publishers are \u201cspecifically trying to screw any author over.\u201d Instead, she argued that this is the predictable result of bad record-keeping and a confusing settlement process.<\/p>\n Strauss also acknowledged that any complaints she\u2019s seen are just \u201ca peek through a small crack in a massive wall.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut the unusually large number of reports I\u2019ve received over the last two days, as well as the fact that authors are reporting the exact same errors over and over, suggest to me that these aren\u2019t the kind of routine glitches you might expect from such a large operation, but something much more wide[s]pread and systemic,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n And publishers aren\u2019t the only ones seeking a cut of the payments. Strauss said she\u2019s gotten complaints that a number of literary agencies are also making claims, which she said is surprising since \u201cagents are not rightsholders in the books that they sell.\u201d<\/p>\n Author Courtney Milan (the pen name of former law clerk and law professor Heidi Bond) was more blunt in a post on Bluesky<\/a>, writing, \u201cApparently some agents are trying to claim percentages on the Anthropic settlement, and I do not REMOTELY think they should do this, what the fuck, stop that shit!\u201d<\/p>\n Milan<\/a> and the Authors Guild<\/a> also shared more details about how authors can dispute their payment allocations. (One tricky issue: When the rights to a specific book reverted. In order for an author to make a 100% claim on a book, the rights reversion needs to have happened before August 10, 2022, which is the \u201cdownload date\u201d in the settlement.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n