I wonder when I will run out of news about the Anthropic lawsuit. Not quite yet is the answer, though I was reminded in Jane Friedman's fascinating account in her newsletter this week that there will be a final hearing for approving the $1.5 billion settlement on April 23, so maybe the end is in sight. The latest update though is a fascinating intervention from copyright law professor Lea Bishop. Professor Bishop's official objection to the settlement motion has two points of particular interest.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
First up is a reminder of Judge Alsup's call for an investigation into the fee-sharing arrangement between lawyers acting for authors and those acting for publishers. This investigation is not mentioned in the class's motion for settlement. Professor Bishop holds this arrangement is likely to be to the detriment of authors.
Copyright Registration Controversy
The second point is also one that will be of interest to many of the indie authors who've asked us questions about the settlement at ALLi. And that's the opinion that insisting on registration with the US Copyright Office—this insistence removed around 2.5 million titles from the class—Professor Bishop cites an amendment to the Copyright Act that was intended to remove the requirement, which created a barrier for those based overseas.
Whether or not anything comes of this latter point in particular, it does suggest that some of the messaging coming from this case about how necessary it is to register copyright in this way may not be fixed in stone. Though for now, it would be wise to consider nothing has changed.
Editors Using AI on Manuscripts
Meanwhile, continuing the fuss over whether editors are using AI, the Bookseller has a fascinating article on concerns raised by literary agency giants Curtis Brown, who are deeply concerned over just that, raising not only issues about whether authors are consenting but what the guardrails are around what AI firms might do with the manuscripts so uploaded (that is, are they uploaded into ring-fenced systems, or do they form part of the general training dataset?).
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