Authors Dispute Publisher Claims Over Anthropic Copyright Settlement

Authors expecting payments from Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement are raising alarms over claims made by publishers and agents. The settlement follows a court ruling that while training AI on copyrighted material is legal under fair use, pirating that material is not. The agreement provides $3,000 for each of nearly 500,000 pirated titles. Payments are split 50-50 between the author and publisher if the book is still in print; otherwise, the author receives the full amount. However, writers, including mystery author April Henry, have reported that publishers are claiming payments for books whose rights reverted years ago. Victoria Strauss of the blog "Writers Beware" noted two main issues: publishers seeking payment for works they no longer own and publishers claiming 100% of payments they are only entitled to half of. Some publishers have attributed these errors to poor recordkeeping and have asked Anthropic to correct them.