Recently, when I received a notice about a landmark $1.5 billion copyright settlement, I tossed it aside with all the other junk mail. A few days later, I saw a news story about the same settlement, indicating that Anthropic, an artificial intelligence company, was required to pay class members more than $3,000 per copyrighted work. It still meant nothing to me until I received another notification, along with one for Simeon Wright, my deceased co-author in our book, “Simeon’s Story,” which recounted his experience with his first cousin Emmett Till.
It slowly dawned on me that I might be among nearly half a million class members, since I was receiving these notifications. The possibility that we were among the authors was a long shot, but getting the book published was like a dream come true. Anyway, I opened the notice, which, to some degree, was like two other such settlements in which I was included as a member without prior knowledge. The first step in the process was to determine whether I was indeed on the list compiled by the legal team filing the class-action settlement. Not only was the book on the list that I authored with Simeon, but four of my other books were listed as well.
I decided to fill out the form for just two of them, which were entirely mine and had no co-authors or publisher ownership. Once you are on the list, retrieving the various authentication numbers required is a breeze. Not so breezy, though, is the legal hassle still underway, most notably a judge’s decision back in the summer that found “that training AI chatbots on copyrighted books wasn’t illegal but that Anthropic wrongfully acquired millions of books through pirate websites to help improve its Claude chatbot.”
The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic infringed copyrights by downloading datasets containing copyrighted books in violation of the federal Copyright Act. Anthropic denies all allegations and claims it did nothing wrong, arguing that the downloaded datasets were fair usage.
An additional wrinkle occurred this week when the attorneys representing the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers asked a federal judge in California to award them $300 million in legal fees. Sometime before the month is over, another decision is forthcoming on this issue, and perhaps by then all parties will have a better understanding of the settlement’s status.
Meanwhile, if you are an author or know one who would like more information, visit www.AnthropicCopyrightSettlement.com.