Anthropic reached a settlement in a copyright class action last year. After the court determined that using copyrighted materials to train AI models could be considered fair use, but that obtaining such materials through piracy was not allowed, this settlement was finally approved in July of this year, and the payment of damages has since entered the enforcement phase.
The compensation standards have been clarified.
According to the settlement terms, authors of nearly 500,000 works will receive compensation of $3,000 for each work that has been illegally copied. If the work is still being sold by a traditional publishing house, the compensation is usually split equally between the author and the publisher; if the work is self-published or the copyright has reverted to the author, then the author should receive the full amount.
The author focuses on reflecting on the abnormal applications.
As the compensation process progressed, some authors began to post on social media, questioning whether publishers had claimed compensation that they were not entitled to. The suspense novelist April Henry stated that a work of hers, for which she had already asserted her author's rights as far back as 17 years ago, was still being claimed as part of the compensation by HarperCollins.
Commentator Victoria Strauss, who has long been paying attention to issues in the publishing industry, stated that she has received an unusually large number of similar feedbacks in the past two days, and the problems reported by the authors are highly similar. This makes her suspect that these errors are not just common oversights in large-scale compensations, but may be more widespread in the recording and reporting processes.
Intermediary agencies have also been involved in the controversy.
However, those who spoke publicly did not generally attribute the problems directly to malicious actions. Strauss stated that she tends to believe that in many cases, poor file management can explain the issues, and some publishers have already acknowledged these as errors and have requested that Anthropic make corrections.
The CEO of the American Writers Association, Mary Rasenberger, also stated that she does not believe this is a deliberate attempt by publishers to compete for compensation payments. It seems more like a result of long-term poor record-keeping, coupled with the complexity of the settlement enforcement process.
In addition to publishing houses, literary agencies are also alleged to be claiming a share of the compensation payments. Strauss stated that complaints she received indicated that some agencies were also making such claims, and since agencies are typically not the holders of book copyrights, this has further intensified the controversy.
