As a newbie indie writer in the UK, I remember many forum discussions on what seemed a dry topic back in the innocent days of the late 2000s as we tried to grapple with the logistics of what was still a fairly niche path to pursue. That topic was “Given that we are protected by UK copyright law, why would we need to follow the complicated and expensive (many of us were penniless) process of registering copyright with the US Copyright Office?” This broke down into two practical subquestions: “Is it really practical to imagine that we will sue someone for infringing our copyright?” and “What would it actually gain us?”
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
As of last week, it turns out the answers are “yes” and “$3,000.” And a lot of us are probably wishing we’d paid more attention in those nursery days.
The Numbers Behind the Settlement
$3,000 is, it seems, the amount agreed upon as a payment per book whose copyright was infringed by being used by Anthropic in pirated form after being downloaded from Pirate Library Mirror or Library Genesis. The estimates seem to be that there are 500,000 books that fall into this category and also meet the criterion of having been registered in a timely fashion with the US Copyright Office. Timely here means before the download happened and within five years of publication.
This would make the total settlement $1.5 billion. That sounds like a huge amount. Interestingly, that’s a figure it is easy to contextualize in relation to Anthropic. Because more or less add a zero ($13 billion) and that’s the amount Anthropic has just raised in an investment round. And if you add a second zero ($183 billion), that’s what the latest investment makes the company’s value. It’s rather easy for $1.5 billion—or less than 1 percent—to get lost in that.
Winners, Losers, and Uncertainty
The CEO of the Authors Guild believes this is an excellent result for writers. Others are not so sure. Mark Williams made the case last week that any settlement would mean essentially accepting the fair use judgment in the case, meaning all AI companies would have to do in the future is acquire people’s books at retail price and they could start using them. And for the many authors whose pirated works were downloaded but who did not register with the US Copyright Office, there will be no benefit at all from this case.
In breaking news, Judge Alsup has rejected the settlement. He was concerned that too much was left unanswered, including who was in the class and each author’s right to opt in or out. In short, it seems likely that if a settlement comes, it will still carry the $3,000 figure. But for those of you worried you might have missed the boat, there should be more—and clearer—notice.
Further coverage: TechCrunch, NPR.
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