On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway reports on urgent updates in the Anthropic class action case, with a fast-approaching deadline for authors to register their works. He explains the eligibility rules, why U.S. Copyright Office registration matters, and how writers can take part. Dan also introduces a new competency tool from the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading to help publishing professionals assess and build their skills.
Listen to the Podcast: Anthropic Class Action Deadline Nears
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About the Host
Dan Holloway is a novelist, poet, and spoken word artist. He is the MC of the performance arts show The New Libertines, He competed at the National Poetry Slam final at the Royal Albert Hall. His latest collection, The Transparency of Sutures, is available on Kindle.
Read the Transcript
Dan Holloway: Hello and welcome to another Self-Publishing News podcast. As I prepare to head off to the Creative Thinking World Championships again this week, and you might expect the rest of the Northern Hemisphere to be heading on its summer holidays, it is actually a relatively busy news week, or specifically there is some important and urgent-ish news around the Anthropic class action legal case.
This, of course, is the case we've been covering a lot in recent weeks, and it is in this podcast today because the deadline is looming if you want to have your work registered so that it can be considered for being attached to the case.
Huge thanks to Jane Friedman for her always fascinating newsletter and also to Victoria Strauss for a very detailed and clear post over at Writer Beware. I will be drawing very heavily on that. I do recommend you go over and read it.
This gives details of the things you need to do if you would like your book to be added to the Anthropic case.
So, just to recap, of course, this is a case that was originally brought by three authors against Anthropic. Following an initial judgment, a subsequent case was brought for piracy, and the judge in that case ruled that this could become a class action, and the class in that class action are pirated books that have been downloaded from the Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror sites.
Basically, if you want your book to be considered to be part of that class, there are various things that you need to do.
The first is, of course, to check your eligibility.
One of the things I reported on initially is that your book has to have been downloaded in pirated form from one of these two specific shadow libraries. So, this isn't all shadow libraries, it's not all pirated copies that are covered. It is only copies downloaded from Library Genesis or Pirate Library Mirror.
It is very hard to find out whether your book is contained in the latter of those two, but it is much easier to find out if your book was in Library Genesis because the Atlantic had a search engine that has been doing the rounds for quite some time now. Authors have been able to identify their books as being in there. Several of mine were in there. Most people have got books that have been pirated and are available through there. So, that's the first stage of your eligibility check.
Second, and this is the really important one that is going to catch out quite a lot of indie authors, and I'm quoting here that, for your book to be counted, book in this case refers to “any work possessing an ISBN or ASIN”.
So, that's the first thing, which will indeed be most books, because even if it's only on Kindle, you'll have an ASIN.
And this is the really important bit, “registered with the United States Copyright Office within five years of the work's publication, and registered with the United States Copyright Office before being downloaded by Anthropic.”
So, you remember that the word timely was used in the judgment, and this is what timely means. It has to be officially registered, so that unfortunately is going to mean a lot of people's books in the indie community aren't counted or aren't able to be included in this class.
But also, you couldn't find your book within Library Genesis and go along and register it retrospectively and have it count in this class.
Nonetheless, there will be many people whose works are counted or are eligible under these considerations, and if that is so then, from what I understand from Jane Friedman, you have until the 1st of September to register your interest in having your book considered as part of this class.
At the moment, your book, by registering it, does not become part of this class. What happens is that by registering it, after the trial on December the first, the courts will get in touch with you and at that stage further steps can be taken to establish that your book is a part of this class and that you are eligible for damages.
For this to happen, you have to provide contact details as required by the courts.
Again, thanks to Victoria Strauss, there is a form through which you can do this on the website of the lawyers, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein. These are one of the legal firms that is acting for plaintiffs in the case.
They have a form; you can enter details of your book, contact details where the courts can get in touch with you after December the first, and give you further instructions on how to make sure your book is counted as part of the class.
As I said last time, I think I said it last time, I've certainly reported on it last week, in terms of damages, prospective damages, what it is likely that the courts are going to do is they're not going to be calculating individual damages per book. They're not going to be looking at what the actual damage done to each author or each book was. They are going to be looking at statutory amounts and those statutory amounts range from $750 to $150,000 per work. So, if your works are included in this class, and the class action is successful, then it looks like there will be a minimum payout of $750 from the courts.
That said, of course, Anthropic are appealing, and they are making all sorts of noises about how damaging it could be to their bottom line, should they be forced to pay what the potential damages could be, because these potential damages could run into not just billions, not just tens of billions, but hundreds of billions of dollars potentially, because there could be several million books involved at around a thousand dollars per time. That's a lot of potential damages.
People have been saying this is going to send them out of business. It is unlikely that the courts will make a company of that size go bankrupt just to pay damages. So, what the actual damages will be, what the actual punishment will be, if indeed the class is successful, remains to be seen.
But if you want to be part of that class, go fill in the form on the website. I will make sure I send a link to Howard for it to be put in the description of this podcast.
New Editing Resource from CIEP
Dan Holloway: Talking of links and useful forms, a new, very useful download has come out from the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading.
This is a UK-based organization, but the PDF is globally applicable, and it is a competency tool which enables you to basically work out what you know about editing. That sounds really uninteresting and really dry; it's actually an incredibly useful tool.
There are two sections so far to this called, “Working as a Professional” and “Editorial Knowledge and Practice”.
For each of these two areas, they go into great detail, breaking them down section by section, and for each section they describe what it would mean to be everything from exploring to expert via the intermediary stages of emerging and experienced.
So, you can assess what you know about editing, where the gaps in your skills are, what skills you may have to offer to people. It's also got an incredibly useful glossary of editorial terms.
Areas it covers are things like the various roles of editorial professionals. It goes from if you are exploring, then it means that you would be aware that there are different roles within the editorial profession. For example, copy editor, proofreader, editorial project manager, and that the scope of those roles differs all the way up to expert where you can advise on the types and levels of editorial services available and identify which are most appropriate for specific projects.
So, it's basically, which of the descriptions can you see yourself in, and that will enable you to decide what level you have that competency and then that might be the area where you need particular help, or it might be an area where you want to bring your skills up.
There's lots of cool stuff about legal stuff you might or might not know about ethics, professional relationships and communications and so on.
Hugely recommend it. It's a 69-page PDF. I have spent several hours immersing myself in it, finding out what I don't know about editing, and as a result of having read it, I feel that I know a lot more.
Dan Holloway: But there is more indeed to learn and with the thought of being summoned by a detailed editing PDF, I will leave you to return thence and look forward to speaking to you again at the same time next week. Thank you very much.
